By Dr. Brian Nel, CEO DBCon Global

There is a frustrating cycle that occurs in the mining industry. A mine identifies a safety problem. They hire an external training company. The consultants arrive, run a few workshops, and leave. Safety statistics improve for three months, but then they drop back to previous levels.

This happens because you cannot rent a safety culture. You have to build it.

At DBCon Global, our goal is to make ourselves obsolete. We believe that if we are still holding your hand after 12 months, we have failed. To achieve sustainable results, we focus heavily on Training of Trainers (ToT).

We take your internal leaders, your Shift Bosses, Foremen, and Senior Artisans, and we turn them into safety coaches.

The Problem: Great Artisans Are Often Poor Teachers

There is a common assumption that if someone is good at their job, they can teach others how to do it.

In practice, this is rarely true. Your best Senior Artisan often suffers from “Unconscious Competence”. They have done the job for 20 years. They do it automatically. They do not think about the individual steps anymore.

When they try to train a junior, they get frustrated. They say things like “Just watch me” or “Use common sense”. They lack the instructional skills to break the task down into teachable steps.

This results in the “Shadowing Trap”. The junior follows the senior around, picking up their bad habits along with their good ones. No formal standard is transferred.

The Power of Peer Influence

Research consistently shows that employees trust their direct supervisors more than they trust external consultants or senior management.

When a DBCon consultant walks onto a site, we are respected, but we are outsiders. We do not know the specific struggles of the night shift.

However, when a Shift Boss tells a team member to wear their PPE, that instruction carries weight. The Shift Boss controls the culture. If the Shift Boss ignores the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), the whole team will ignore the SOP.

Therefore, the most effective way to change safety behaviour is to train the Shift Boss to be the trainer.

The DBCon ToT Methodology

Our Train-the-Trainer programme is not a soft-skills workshop. It is a technical intervention. We identify the natural leaders in your workforce and give them the tools to transfer knowledge effectively.

1. Teaching Them How to Teach

We teach your supervisors the basics of adult learning. We show them how to demonstrate a task, how to observe the learner, and how to verify competence. We teach them patience. We teach them that “telling” is not “teaching”.

2. From Policing to Coaching

Many supervisors believe their job is to catch people doing things wrong. We shift this mindset. We teach them how to be coaches.

• Policing: “Put your gloves on!”
• Coaching: “Why did you take your gloves off for this task? Is the glove making it hard to grip the tool?”

This approach builds trust and uncovers the root cause of unsafe behaviour.

3. Transferring the IP

We do not hoard our training materials. When we develop a training module for your mine, we hand it over to your internal trainers. We give them the lesson plans, the checklists, and the visual aids. We want them to own the material.

The Financial Case for Internal Capability

Developing internal trainers is an investment that pays off on the bottom line.

It reduces your reliance on expensive external providers. You do not need to pay a contractor to fly in every time you have a new intake of cadets. Your internal team can handle the induction and technical training.

It also ensures consistency. Your internal trainers are there every day. They can do spot-checks at 2 AM. They can reinforce the training during the morning meeting. An external consultant cannot do that.

Conclusion

A truly safe mine is one that manages its own risks.

My job as a consultant is to assess the gap, fix the technical procedures, and then train your leaders to maintain the standard.

If you want to break the cycle of fluctuating safety stats, you need to invest in your own supervisors. You need to give them the skills to be the teachers.

Are you ready to stop renting safety and start owning it?

Contact DBCon Global to discuss our Train-the-Trainer programmes.