Employee Emergency Training that Puts You in the Moment via Visualization

Every employer in America will enthusiastically promote the importance of employee training in emergencies.

However, the vast majority of employers in America have little to no understanding of how employee training is defined. 

Training Defined by Law

Training employees for workplace emergencies is defined by OSHA regulations (29 CFR 1910.34, .38 and .39). This definition has been in effect for four-plus decades for all employers, no matter what your size or business model:

• You shall train all employees from the CEO to the just-hired, unpaid summer intern.
• You shall train all employees in a classroom with the trainer and trainees live. No Zoom.
• You shall train all employees annually.
• You shall train employees upon hire.
• Your training shall be site-specific.
• You shall train employees when the plan is created, when the plan materially changes, and when there are changes in people in important positions in the plan.
• You shall employ a qualified trainer, qualified by experience, training or certification.

That’s the law—all of it with the goal of training effectiveness. 

Now, what about the trainer? How do we achieve effectiveness?

Scare Our Employees?

One of the excuses I hear constantly from senior management for not training as the law requires: “We’ll scare the employees. Your consultants use hyperbole, scary images, and all-too-real videos. Shameful! Then I must listen to all the whining from offended employees.”

Yes, we do use sharp words, images, and videos to train for scary emergencies. Trauma and freezing are the initial reactions to real workplace emergencies, which can range from tornadoes to fires, medical emergencies, and active shooters. 

How do we effectively train ourselves to cope with fearful events without picturing them? We can, you can’t. 

Most employers in America have little or no idea how employee training should be constructed to be effective.

Tactical Performance Imagery

Master Trainers use a technique that puts trainees in the moment. This long-proven technique is called Tactical Performance Imagery. TPI has been tested and proven effective for civilians for 50 years. You may jump to the conclusion that TPI was developed by elite military units, such as Navy SEALs, or by hard-assed police officer trainers. Not so. TPI was developed by U.S. Olympian trainers for young female gymnasts in the early 1970s. These gymnasts were learning scary maneuvers such as multiple somersaults, vaults, flying on uneven bars, jumps on balance beams—lots of dangerous maneuvers that could end in horrific injuries—much like workplace emergencies can end in appalling injuries—and worse.

Ironically, TPI originated in the civilian world but is now also widely used in militaries and police departments worldwide.

Visualization

The heart of TPI's effectiveness is often referred to as visualization. The successful trainer puts trainees into the moment, employing the creation of mental images. TPI experts usually call this crisis rehearsal, or the mental preparation to respond to traumatic emergencies, implementing complex skills such as evacuate, move, shelter, run, hide, or fight—often in a rapid sequence that can be different for each responding employee depending on their location in your workplace during any emergency.

As visualization connotes, Master Trainers use images and video to spark mental images that are the crisis rehearsal. The Master Trainer’s axiom, “Don’t tell them. Show them.” TPI also fits neatly into a culture where whole generations of employees absorb information primarily on screens, rather than through written or read material.

Trained Civilians Save Lives

One study involving civilian CPR trainees demonstrated that visualization and crisis rehearsal can significantly enhance emergency medical skills. The study concluded that civilians trained using visualization techniques retained more accurate CPR skills after six months, with an average of 93.3% correct skills, compared to 75.6% correct skills for the group that received no visualization training during CPR certification. At the end of 12 months, the results drastically improved for the group that received no visualization training, to 53.3%, while the group that had received visualization training dropped only slightly to 88%, respectively.

While I was in the U.S. Army, we had a large operations room for mission planning. On the wall in front of us, next to the large screens, our commander displayed this truth: “We don’t rise to the occasion,” in an emergency, spontaneously knowing the correct response. “We sink to our level of training.” And untrained, we just sink.

So, the next time your boss or colleague says, “We’ll scare the employees!” your retort is, “They’re already scared. Visualization training will make them confident to help us save lives.”

Amateurs talk scare tactics. Professionals discuss the importance of visualization training that can save lives.