Learning That Happens Outside of the Classroom Is Important for Safety
By Madison Hanscom, PhD As we know in safety, formal training is incredibly important for employees to learn the practices, procedures, values, norms, and behaviors surrounding safe work. This provides the foundational knowledge for employees to do their jobs safely. Another important component to learning safety best practice is less official – it’s referred to as informal learning. Informal learning happens outside of official instructional efforts like training. Because we only spend a small amount of time in training compared to normal operations on the job, it makes sense that the majority of workplace learning takes place informally (about 80%) (1). This