Interactive Safety SimulationsEngagement for

Safety Culture Change

Stephen KnightlySafety Leaders Summit

The challenge

Reality Check

Some risk factors identified by the government’s Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health & Safety:• insufficient knowledge of risks and specific hazards, • insufficient knowledge of regulatory requirements, • low worker engagement, • a risk tolerant culture, • and low literacy and poor communication skills.

High-risk workers

“Vulnerable groups include males, youth, older people, the self-employed and workers with low literacy and numeracy skills.“

“There is a lethal nexus between high-risk population groups and high-risk industries.”

• Independent Taskforce On Workplace Health & Safety

Busy workers

Casual and self-employed workers are also high-risk

But even highly-literate workers have challenges:• Busy• Multi-tasking• Short attention spans• Trained to want immediate gratification for anything digital• Facebook and YouTube are your competition

InGame’s New Zealand examples

H&S Simulation: InGame & WorkSafeSIM

Safety Officer Procedures, NZ Fire Services

Safety Officer Procedures, NZ Fire Services

Safety Officer Procedures, NZ Fire Services

Household safety: SafeHouse, ACC

Falls Prevention for ACC

www.safehouse.co.nz

32% did something

to fix their home

environment

Farm Safety: Farm Rules, WorkSafe NZ & Dairy NZ

Medical safety: Ready To Practice, University of Auckland

InternationalExamples

Virtual Hotel – WorkSafe South Australia

Easy to access, scales well

PetroSims

Rehearse high-risk, expensive events

Project Canary (2009), Australian Mining Industry

Apply classroom learning

Trenching Safety (2010), National Research Council Canada

3D spatial awareness and familiarisation

Are they Effective?

How effective are Training Games?

• 14% higher skill-based knowledge levels• 11% higher factual knowledge levels• 9% higher retention levels

Sitzmaan, T. (2010). “A meta-analytic examination of the instructional effectiveness of computer-based simulation games.” Personnel Psychology.

How effective are Training Games?

The most frequently outcomes and impacts were• knowledge acquisition/content understanding and• affective and motivational outcomes

Connolly, T., Boyle, E., MacArthur, E., Hainey, T. & Boyle, J., (2012). “A Systematic Literature Review of Empirical Evidence on Computer Games and

Serious Games.” Computers & Education 59.

Benefits of E-learning and Simulation

• Complete it at your own pace, own time• Easily accessed online• Scales well• Measurable – quizzes to track understanding• Measurable – track compliance

• Fail safely• Simulate high-risk inaccessible environments safely• Rehearse high-risk procedures• 3D spatial awareness and familiarisation

Evaluation: Safehouse by InGame and ACC

ACC’s Home Safety Serious Game

• Every year, more than 10,000 Kiwis need to take a week or more off work because of a home fall

• More than one third of the roughly 1.7 million claims ACC receives every year are for injuries received in and around the home

• Around 40% of home injuries happen because of falls• Most falls happen to working age people

www.safehouse.co.nz

Learning Objectives

• Identify risks and what to do about it• The assessment of a risk – low; medium; high. • Address the ‘it will not happen to me’ mindset • Understand the notion that familiarity leads to complacency• Understand that our actions change outcomes for others• Be able to assess the impact of gravity and heights

But how to get people to volunteer to play it?

Design Features

• Control a family of four• During a zombie invasion• Everyday household objects are either hazards for your

family, or weapons for zombies• Creates tension: Do I remove the hazard or use the

hazard?• Either way, the consequences of the hazard are

communicated• Transfer the learning to the real world. Stop and reflect:

Is there a stray power cord near you now?

www.safehouse.co.nz

SafeHouse, ACC

Falls Prevention for ACC

www.safehouse.co.nz

SafeHouse, ACC

Falls Prevention for ACC

www.safehouse.co.nz

32% did something

to fix their home

Safe House Pilot Results

8,769 people played the serious game in 3 months• which caused 70,846 virtual injuries• and 6,686 virtual deaths

• 63% of app users used it more than once• App users voluntarily played for 11:43 minutes on each visit• 45% app players reached level 3 (25 minutes of effort),

covering the core learning objectives.

• Exceeded expectations in user testing. Health and Safety was actually engaging.

www.safehouse.co.nz