How to Measure Whether Your Safety Game Is Working

Set a measurable objective

“We want a useful safety conversation” is a reasonable starting point. Make it specific enough to evaluate: participants will explain a chosen concept, identify where to check a procedure or agree on a question for the next briefing.

Choose a measure that matches that aim. Counting attendance tells you who was there. A short question tells you something about understanding. A later check tells you about recall. Following up an agreed action tells you whether the conversation led somewhere.

The four checks below are a suggested PlayBest planning framework. They are not a validated assessment scale and do not replace a required competence assessment.

Ask about the experience and check the learning.

In a 2019 randomized study of introductory university physics instruction, Deslauriers and colleagues found that students in active classes learned more while reporting a lower feeling of learning than those in passive lectures. The study illustrates why perceived learning and demonstrated learning should be measured separately. It did not test safety games or workplace performance. (Deslauriers et al., 2019)

For your session, you might ask whether the activity was easy to follow, then separately ask a fresh question about the topic. Those two responses can help you improve different parts of the next session.

Four checks for evaluating a safety game

Keep the record proportionate to the activity. A short meeting may only need a few group-level notes. For any formal assessment, use the organisation’s appropriate process and explain to participants how the information will be used.

Make a fair comparison where you can.

Example: suppose 8 of 12 participants answer a scenario correctly before a session and 10 of the same 12 answer a comparable question correctly afterwards. Report those counts and the questions used. That is an increase from about 67% to 83%, or 17 percentage points after rounding. It describes this small group’s immediate answers. A later check would tell you more about recall, and a comparison group would help test whether the game caused the change.

Use questions that match the intended topic and are reasonably similar in difficulty. Keep instructions consistent. Note whether the group has already covered the material and whether other training took place between checks.

If you compare two session formats, try to keep the topic, available time and participant experience comparable. Random assignment, where appropriate and practical, strengthens an evaluation. A simple before-and-after pilot can still inform the next session, but its results need to be described with that limitation.

Agree on what would be useful before seeing the results. Otherwise, it is easy to highlight whichever number happens to move while overlooking the question the session was meant to answer.

Keep workplace outcomes in perspective.

Bisbey and colleagues’ 2026 safety-training meta-analysis found that average effects differed across learning, workplace transfer and safety indicators. That supports evaluating the stages separately rather than treating a good learning score as proof of fewer injuries. (Bisbey et al., 2026)

If incident figures form part of a wider evaluation, consider exposure, reporting and simultaneous workplace changes. A short game session rarely supplies enough evidence to attribute an incident trend to the game alone.

Finish with a useful session record.

A simple record can include the date, audience, game or activity, intended objective, questions used, results and follow-up owner. Add a short note about what you would change next time. Keep personal answers to conversation prompts out of the evaluation unless there is a clear, agreed reason to collect them.

For a starting format, see our team-meeting guide. To plan the close, use the debrief article. Together, they help turn a game into an activity you can explain, evaluate and improve.