I still remember my college days when I started developing a passion for reading books. I loved reading novels by authors like Paulo Coelho, Chetan Bhagat and many others. One of the novels, which made waves, was Chetan Bhagat’s book, “Five Point Someone”. Later on, Feature film director Rajkumar Hirani came up with the movie “3 Idiots” based on the same novel. The movie became a super hit and people who didn’t know Chetan Bhagat came to know about him and his work.

From this event, I concluded that if you want people to pay attention, you have to tell a good story. The selection of an audio-visual medium for story-telling gives great results, as it evokes two very important senses simultaneously, i.e. hearing and sight. Even the most serious of speeches has one or two stories tossed in it, just to make it interesting. Being audio visual in nature, animated movies can be easily understood even by non-literate/domestic work-forces.

We, as humans, relate very much to stories and characters in real life. Apart from just entertainment (romance, drama, fiction or horror), visually captivating scenes tend to remain in memory for a longer time and are easy to understand for all. Isn’t that how we’re able to recall a great dialogue? Whether it is “Kitne aadmi the?” from the film ‘Sholay’ or “Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai” from the film ‘Don’ and many more like these.

The same concept, if applied in training people, can yield better outcomes instead of just classroom lectures. If ’true to life’ scenes are shown via animation and great story-telling, then training becomes more interesting and is easy to understand. Furthermore, critical information can be retained for a longer duration.

When we talk in particular about EHS (Environment, Health & Safety), the functionalities in itself may be quite boring but still are a very important cog in the wheel. Many incidents/accidents are reported everyday on-site and off-site. Hence proper & effective training becomes a must. Most of the safety training needs to convey serious information. Yet, compelling safety training videos that include great stories can be used to make a greater impact on the viewing audience. In addition to this, safety animated movies can easily address multi-lingual needs to cover audiences of various nationalities and cultures.

Animated safety videos can be used in safety training, to invoke excitement in the audience and align them with your training goals. Good story-telling can hook them using an emotional touch. Once their attention is grabbed, it becomes easier for professional trainers to impart the rest of details.

The animation movies can represent true-to-life situations that are faced every day. Also, information can be imparted in every training session using animated videos, consistently. Animated safety movies are ideal for demonstrating processes which are impossible to observe (in a practical setting) with the naked eye. Cross sections of a complex machine can be easily demonstrated using animated movies. Incidents or accidents can be replicated and shown to highlight the key mistakes, thereby, take appropriate prevention measures in future. Technical trainings can also be enhanced using simulated animation movies.

A global trend of using different forms of animation is now being used in all its entirety for bringing about a sea-change in training methods.

Please share your thoughts on how it can be used at your work-place.