OSHA says “Train-em and Keep-em Competent.” They just don’t say HOW!
Employers are empowered to decide the best way to educate and refresh our workers. As an employer, considerations for meeting training needs include:
- The hazards employees face by workers in their profession.
- What OSHA or other regulatory requirements apply.
- How much time is needed and who is competent to train workers
- What is the cost of training in production time & manhours for initial and refresher training
- How to keep workers educated and following safe work practices between training updates.
Integrate Safety into production training – Safety doesn’t stand alone. Perform a Job Hazard Analysis of the tasks in your production process to determine:
- The steps in each task.
- The hazards or regulations associated with each task.
- Determine what safety protections or practices need to be put in place at each step in the production process, to keep workers hazard free.
- Establish a new hire training curriculum that includes the safety requirements as an integrated part of the production or task training.
Train them once to cover production and safety. It’s easier to remember safety requirements when taught as steps in the production process and not as a separate item.,
Field reinforcement of safety training is a cost effective and positive approach to keeping your training current.
Reminders:
- Train supervision to reinforce safety training requirements as part of their productivity. Workers follow the work steps that supervision sets as the production process, integrated safety steps keeps them competent and reduces or prevents injuries .
- Provide safety reminders around the workplace.
- Make the safety rules a visible, positive, reinforcement that workers make a part of their day. Re-educate every day.
Training, Refreshers, & Passive Reinforcement
Classroom training is a required investment when starting new workers on the road to a safe and productive employment. Annual or periodic retraining can help to redefine safety requirements. Yet without reinforcement of those basic principles of safe work habits, that investment can be lost.
Visual Reinforcement – Training Outside the Class
Visual reinforcement aids help employers to cost effectively maintain the value of the training investment and reinforce a strong safety philosophy by following some basic rules.
Posters, handouts, Safe-T-Shirts and supervisory reminders are just some of the ways to keep employees refreshed and training costs down. Passive reminders mean:
- Little or no classroom Manhour Expense
- No productivity down time
- Safety training is refreshed every day Photo Credit Safe-T-Shirts.com
- Passive aids help establish a strong “Safety Identity”
- Show Workers & Clients “We do it Safe!”