Danny Maron, owner/trainer of Ideal Forklift Training in Canada's national capital, is an independent consultant, providing the education lift truck operators require, to businesses and government, to minimise the chance of incidents in the workplace. Before founding Ideal in 2000, Danny was a trainer at Canada's largest forklift dealer.
As I mentioned in my last column, I have been experiencing difficulty agreeing to the time element in delivering specific training. Although the norm for new students is eight hours as outlined by the Canadian Standards Association, and even a longer period of time in certain countries, I have been getting a rash of enquiries from people trying to dictate the duration of courses.
I find that terribly amusing as I have been a professional forklift safety trainer for 17 years, and people coming out of the woodwork are telling me that they know better, and this is how it should be. And how should it be? Well, less than a half a day, according to their scheduling and workload.
Sorry, guys, that is not how it works. There are standards stating the prescribed time allotment for high-lift trucks, and that amounts to eight hours. In some cases, it can exceed those eight hours.
Here are a few examples of what I was up against the past few weeks. A gentleman had agreed to training on a specialty forklift, and after we finalised the date for training, he quizzed me once again regarding duration of the training session. He explained that HE had previous training, and that all he required wass a refresher course. I still could not get any details regarding his staff, but he felt that the training would be too long, and that he, and his staff, could not afford the time off their jobs. He was wondering whether I could do the training in half a day, and I responded 'certainly not!' He continued to state that he had been trained before, and when I found out which firm had trained him, I replied that it would definitely be a full day!
He was curious as to why I earmarked that company, and I responded that I did not earmark any company, but when push comes to shove, the judge would disregard any previous training, and focus on the current training, which would have been me.
Anyway, the training is on hold, as far as I can tell, until such time as he and his staff have the time to become trained, and/or retrained. Need a driver's licence, you will be standing in line for a couple of hours and you'll just get it done. However, proper forklift training does take a back seat and can wait until one has the time to do it. Makes no sense to me, but that is how it goes.
How about another company at which I recently trained; the decision by the manager was to carry on for the full 8.5 hours. However, when I arrived at the jobsite, the supervisor was shocked to hear the duration of the session, and continued to state that all his staff had been trained previously, again by that same company, and there was no reason to take that much time. He demanded that the training end by noon - after just five hours. I did not make any promises, but agreed to shorten the duration by presenting a refresher PowerPoint presentation, and that I would be finished well before 3.30 PM.
Once the ball started rolling, I was told that three of the staff attending the training had never been trained before, and the experience of those three ranged from never having operated a sit-down forklift to some experience five years prior. So I commenced with my refresher, but was extremely detailed in my talk, and added much more information to that contained in the slides.
I did not finish at 12.00, and actually stayed there until about 2 pm, without any comments. The trained staff had mentioned that much of the information was new to them, so all was not lost.
The point is that not all training is the same. How people interpret training based on their current certification means nothing to other professional trainers who go the extra mile to deliver a comprehensive education. It takes time to deliver all of the pertinent information to minimise the risk of any incident, and rushing through it so the guys can leave early or get back to their jobs is a totally unacceptable practice.
And when people ask why the training is so long, I just tell them that death is longer. So why are the monkeys allowed to run the zoos?