No matter how discerning you are in the hiring process, you can’t always rely on your employees to know the most important priorities when it comes to safety or have the knowledge necessary to achieve your safety goals. Instead, it’s incumbent on you, the employer, to provide your employees with the safety training they need to prevent and respond to accidents that happen in your business.
The question is, how much safety training do your employees really need and how do you give it to them effectively?
The Value of Safety Training
There’s no question that safety training is valuable. If you maintain a safer workplace environment, you’ll save money in the form of potential claims and insurance costs, your employees will be happier and more productive, and your business will benefit from a better reputation. If you deal with the general public, providing your employees with safety training can also keep your customers and patrons safer as well. Ultimately, safety training is a small investment that can save you both materially and invaluably in ways that far outweigh the initial costs.
Safety training comes in a variety of forms. You can give your employees general safety principles, informing them of your safety culture so they can address even the most unique situations with the right mentality. You can train your employees on how to operate and handle specific pieces of equipment in a safe manner. You can also have your employees trained in CPR, AED, and first aid, so they can respond to accidents and injuries more immediately.
Improving Your Safety Training
How do you improve the safety training you provide to your employees?
- Create a multifaceted plan. Consider taking a step back and creating a multifaceted, high-level plan for how you want to improve safety. What are the most dangerous aspects of your business or place of work? What are the critical areas you need to focus on? Have you suffered from accidents or injuries in the past, and why did they happen? What types of safety training are you willing to provide?
- Start with the culture. A safety-focused culture is the foundation of all your work. After all, it won’t matter how knowledgeable your employees are if they don’t care about applying that knowledge. A safety culture essentially creates and enforces a mentality that safety is the highest priority. It can be established by your core values, but it needs to be demonstrated and reinforced by the leaders within your organization.
- Identify specific goals. In creating new safety training programming, identify specific goals. What pieces of knowledge do you want your employees to walk away with? What actionable steps should they take once that training is complete? How do you want your safety statistics to look when all your training is complete? Goals not only help you shape proper training programs and stay motivated, but they also give you a measuring stick to evaluate your progress.
- Hire the best trainers you can. Work with the best safety trainers you can. Sometimes, that means promoting and working with people already in your business. Sometimes, that means hiring designated outside trainers. Either way, you need people who are knowledgeable about their chosen subject matter and who are excellent communicators and trainers. A training program is only as good as the person leading it.
- Practice microlearning. Microlearning is a process that attempts to reduce learning fatigue, while simultaneously improving retention. The basic concept is simple: you need to break training and learning processes into smaller chunks, so they’re more easily digestible. Try to convert all your safety training processes and procedures into a microlearning format.
- Cater to different learning styles. Of course, it’s also important to cater to different learning styles. Some people prefer visual modes of learning, while others prefer a more hands-on approach. Try to serve individual preferences whenever possible.
- Offer relearning and refreshers. For most people, learning something once isn’t enough. You need to offer opportunities for relearning and refreshers if you want your training materials to stick.
- Get feedback. Finally, get feedback from your trainees. This is arguably the best tool for continuous improvement, since it’s going to provide you with opportunities for optimization that you may not have noticed on your own. What did employees appreciate most about the training programs they went through? Was there anything they didn’t like or didn’t understand? Do they have ideas for how to make this training more effective in the future?
Once you start providing your employees with superior safety training, your organization is going to become safer overall. There are costs associated with providing your employees with better safety training, but you should think of them as an investment. The more you put into keeping your business and workplace environment safe, the more rewards you’ll yield.