Presented at the Safety Leaders Summit 2015 by Stephen Knightly, InGame

1. Interactive Safety Simulations
Engagement for
Safety Culture Change
Stephen Knightly
Safety Leaders Summit

2. The challenge

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. InGame’s New
Zealand examples

7. H&S Simulation: InGame & WorkSafeSIM

8. Safety Officer Procedures, NZ Fire Services

9. Safety Officer Procedures, NZ Fire Services

10. Safety Officer Procedures, NZ Fire Services

11. Household safety: SafeHouse, ACC
Falls Prevention for ACC
www.safehouse.co.nz

12. Farm Safety: Farm Rules, WorkSafe NZ & Dairy NZ

13. Medical safety: Ready To Practice, University of Auckland

14. International
Examples

15. Virtual Hotel – WorkSafe South Australia
Easy to access, scales well

16. PetroSims
Rehearse high-risk, expensive events

17. Project Canary (2009), Australian Mining Industry
Apply classroom learning

18. Trenching Safety (2010), National Research Council Canada
3D spatial awareness and familiarisation

19. Are they Effective?

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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

23. Evaluation: Safehouse by InGame and ACC

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. SafeHouse, ACC
Falls Prevention for ACC
www.safehouse.co.nz

28. SafeHouse, ACC
Falls Prevention for ACC
www.safehouse.co.nz

29. 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