HEALTH & SAFETY IN FOCUS
Know your audience
By Doug Potter
So what’s going on with all these Code of Practices (COPs) coming up?
What is the biggest secret to education
/ skills development? Know your target
audience. You may have heard this before
but there is a deeper meaning. If you are
speaking to children, you adapt to their
age bracket but what about culture and
customs. If you are speaking to children
from Cape town or Durban the terms
regatta, sailing and starfish might be
common but will the child in the Northern
Cape know what these are. If you are
speaking to children from Lesotho they
will understand snowboarding, skiing and
repelling but will children in the Karoo
know these?
We are Predictive Safety and our world
class programmes take all these into
consideration. Our team has won seven
international awards on communication
alone. Our skills development takes the
following into consideration:
Grade R-3
We have programmes for children on
fatigue that start with colouring books,
teacher’s additions and games for the
children to play regarding wellness, health
and fatigue.
Grade 4-7
These children are exposed to classroom
training and in class workouts. Emphasis is
placed on nutrition and cleanliness. There
36 _ QUARRY SA | MAY/JUNE 2018
are comic books on hygiene, physical
fitness and nutrition as leave behinds.
Grade 8-12
These young adults receive a higher
education version of the middle school
training with extra comic books on
nap strategies and working night shift,
preparing them for the terminology and
expectations if they or their friends choose
an occupation with shift work...
Workers
Skills training is given to the adult
workers regarding keeping healthy and
production. If we teach them the skills to
be a more alert employee during shift and
how to get a good night sleep that spills
over to a happier home life. Emphasis in
this training is hands on so that workers
do not have to sit through one more
boring PowerPoint when they get the
chance to catch up on Facebook. We
constantly engage them, so they learn and
feel part of something bigger because in
the end they are. ■
Skills development
Dr Doug Potter is the director of Fatigue
Education at Predictive Safety.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Doug Potter is the director of Fatigue Education for Predictive Safety, a fatigue and
wellness company that focuses on the shift work patterns of 24/7 industries such as
mining, manufacturing and trucking. He has worked with multiple major mining houses
on their fatigue management COPs and programmes.