Safety Training Net - June '25 ☀️👨🏽‍💻 🌬️💬

Refresher Training Activities, FOUR IAQ Activities, Large Language Models, Creating a GpT, and Radical Candor in Safety

Jun 30, 2025

∙ Paid

Can you believe that half the year is gone? This can be a great time to step back and see where your safety training and communication efforts are doing well, and where you might want to make a few adjustments. What has worked really well? What hasn’t? Part of a good training program is frequent review and adjusting - just like we should be doing with every type of safety program.

This is also a great time of year to review and update your refresher training. Refresher training is required by OSHA for a number of topics including occupational noise exposure, HAZWOPER, respiratory protection, LOTO, fire extinguisher use, machine guarding, and many more.

Refresher training is a great match for safety training activities and in fact, starting off a refresher safety training class with an activity is a great way to bring back key concepts and ideas to trainees who may have forgotten what they learned originally as well as give you, the Trainer, an idea of what trainees remember and what needs to be covered in more detail.

A few easy activities (shown above) to adapt for refresher activities include:

A-Z Race Consider starting off a refresher class by introducing the A-Z Race activity. Without any refresher content presented first, this activity will be challenging but will cause trainees to attempt to pull previously stored information from their memories.

Safety Bingo is a great activity for any training class but can be an effective way to kick-off a refresher class. When using BINGO, the clues read by the trainer can serve as a partial refresher and will remind the trainees of the previously covered content. The answers to the questions asked in the clues will be in front of trainees when provided in the squares of the BINGO cards and this can further help them remember key points. The Safety BINGO link in this paragraph leads to a BINGO activity for heat stress that you can download and use.

Hazard Hunt scenes are a great way to let trainees demonstrate what knowledge they have retained from previous years as well as a way to help trainers identify which areas might need extra review within the class. Give each trainee a copy of a HazardHunt scene (or photo of the workplace that includes many items for trainees to identify) and ask them to identify the hazards and be able to explain why the identified items are hazards. After trainees have provided their explanations, trainers can fill in the holes and provide the additional information needed to make training complete. It is important to use a hazard hunt activity that is directly related to the refresher class. If several topics are combined together in a refresher class, hazard hunt activities can be even more valuable. The Hazard Hunt activity link provided in this paragraph leads to a Hazard Hunt scene for a chromeplating shop but many groups will be able to relate and learn from the hazards included.

As you will see on the 2025 Safety Training Calendar above, the birthday of the American Industrial Hygiene Association occurs in June. Awhile ago, I created a fairly difficult crossword puzzle that was based on CIH exam prep study materials. Games like this can be a challenging way to review and learn content. If you’d like to give it a try, you can download it here.

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)

Related to Industrial Hygiene is the topic of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). When I set out to create an activity related to IAQ, I didn’t realize I would end up creating 4 different activities! (an IAQ crossword puzzle and IAQ BINGO Packet for all subscribers plus an IAQ Clue board game and an online IAQ Memory Match game for VIP Subscribers). Click on the links below to access the first two activities.

Download the IAQ Crossword Puzzle here.

Download the IAQ BINGO Packet here.

The IAQ CLUE game packet is inspired by the CLUE board game that many people are already familiar with. In this version, which includes a printable game board and all necessary materials, teams must work to identify the contaminant, source, and location involved in a mysterious workplace incident.

A few pieces of the IAQ Game Board available to VIP Subscribers

The IAQ Memory Match online game is similar to Concentration, another game familiar to many, but in this online version, cards are matched by their connection to each other with respect to IAQ. For example, “a card that says “What powder from plants can make people sneeze indoors” only matches with “pollen.”

The links to download IAQ CLUE and the site for the IAQ Memory game can be found in the VIP Section below.

Communication Corner - Radical Candor

Most popular non-fiction bestsellers do not mention or set out to connect to workplace safety but in many cases, there are lessons that can crossover. This is the case with Radical Candor by Kim Scott, a business book that appeared on multiple bestseller lists for several years. The book focuses on the management strategy of “Caring Personally while Challenging Directly,” which aims to create an environment where people feel safe being honest with themselves, their team, and leadership. As you can imagine from this description, these ideas can be directly applied to workplace safety. A few key points are highlighted below. You can also read more about radical candor in safety in the this SafetyFUNdamentals blog post.

Upskilling in 2025

It’s June and Large Language Models is the upskilling topic of the month!

AI is everywhere these days so it’s exciting to talk about Large Language Models (LLMs) this month. To be clear, LLMs are AI systems designed specifically for understanding and generating human language. About half of U.S. adults now use large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Copilot for personal or informal learning according to a March 2025 survey by Elon University.

To share a few ideas for how you can use LLMs in your safety training efforts, I used ChatGpT, as well as an online platform I sometimes use for diagrams called SketchWow. To be clear, although I really like SketchWow, it’s AI capabilities still have a way to go and I often spend a lot of time editing to get what I want but you can check it out here if you like.

In previous newsletters, I shared two custom chatbots I created in ChatGpT, a LLM. One for everyone called Your AI Safety Training Friend and the other, a private chatbot for VIP subscribers that was created based on the contents of several of my books. VIP Subscribers can find details on accessing that in the VIP section below. Creating your own chatbot is much easier than you would think. I’ve broken down the steps for doing it in ChatGpT if you are interested in giving it a go. You can find that here. (Note: this option is only available in ChatGpT for Plus subscribers).

Still Recruiting Campers!

Summer Camp is not just for kids!

If you have been reading this newsletter for awhile, you know that I am passionate about professional development. If you are looking to do a deep dive into safety training and communication topics, while having fun, consider registering for Safety Training Summer Camp!

The Safety Trainers’ Summer Camp is a 4-week virtual program that provides education and resources on a variety of safety and communication topics. Camp sessions will be offered once a week for 4 weeks in August.

To learn more and receive registration information as it becomes available, complete a short form here.

Need a Gift Idea?

If you are passionate about safety, and I bet you are if you subscribe to this newsletter, check out this new book by safety pro Martika Shanel, The Adventures of Suzy the Safety Bee: In the Bustling Town of Builder's Ravine! Martika is on a mission to educate children on the field, exposing them to different industries and what it takes to keep employees safe at each jobsite. You can get your copy on Amazon here.

ASSP’s Safety 2025

Many of the subscribers of this newsletter are also members of the American Society of Safety Professionals and attend the Society’s biggest learning event of the year, the annual professional development conference. Safety 2025 will be held in Orlando, July 22- 24, and I’d love to see you there. I will be speaking on Wednesday, the 23rd, at 3 PM, and my presentation title is Outdated to Outstanding: Upgrading Safety Training with Better Content, Design, and Delivery. Will you be there? Let me know.