antony_c, Regarding your comment: "Any insights into US training would also be helpful."...

In the USA, professional training practices have evolved since the 1960's and continue to evolve...for the better, in my opinion. For safety training in particular, there is a consensus standard published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and organized by The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). You can learn much of their practical approach by searcing "ANSI/ASSP Z490.1". For forklift operator training, I started with substantially the same general approach in 1985, as I learned the original version directly from its author, the late Robert F. Mager. Mager published extensively on "Criterion Referenced Instruction" and related practices. His unique contributions to the field of human performance improvement have been as humorous as he has been instructive.

As training and testing have evolved with some in the US and in other countries, there are those researchers and practitioners of behavior analysis who do not find the fault-point scoring approach to operator testing useful. (Yes, this method gets you compliance with government regulations, but does little, if anything, to allow for any inferences as to an operator's skills.) Some have upped their "game", just as most USA military training commands, and larger organizations, have done for decades. New testing approaches have been found to be more useful, fair, and generally acceptable. I will leave it to you to decide if fault-point test scoring approaches should be improved before you conclude that they may produce as much good as they produce potential harm. To decide, here are three questions you can ask about your forklift operator testing practices:

1. If an operator fails just ONE (1) item during the test, AND I pass them as a qualified operator, is it possible that the ONE skill they failed to perform on the test could get them killed, seriously injured, or cause catastrophic economic damage on the job?

2. If the answer to the above is "YES", Ask: Did I just pass an operator into performing a job, knowing they could get killed, or seriously injured becuse they never performed that ONE item under test conditions?... and...

3. If the answer to number 1, above, is "NO", Ask: Why are we waisting precious resources testing operators on items that make no difference to anyone's safety?

To me, the role of forklift operator instructor and examiner is an important one. With operator testing practices, we can help move the world of forklift operations forward making the kind of difference that maters.

Best wishes,

Joe

LIFTOR (Lift Truck Operating Resources)