How to Plan for Successful Safety Training

The first step in planning safety training is assessing needs. To do that, you have to ask a number of critical questions. For example:

• Is training required by federal or state regulations for any operations performed by your workers?
• Do you know specific training requirements mandated by the regulations?
• Have you reviewed your OSHA 300 logs to see the types of illness and injuries occurring in your workforce?
• Have you studied accident reports for all the incidents that have occurred in your workplace over the past year?
• Have you reviewed reports of all near miss incidents during the past year?
• Have there been any employee complaints about unsafe conditions?
• Have you observed employees at work in all situations that might be hazardous?
• Have supervisors seen indications of lack of knowledge, inadequate performance, or carelessness among their workers?
• Do you have a list of all hazardous substances in the workplace?
• Have you introduced any new equipment, procedures, or substances into your workplace?

Checklists keep your workplace and your workers safe. See how with the award-winning Safety Audit Checklists program from BLR. New 2013 Edition includes GHS changes! Learn More.

Planning Checklist

Once you’ve assessed safety training needs, you’re ready to plan to conduct necessary training. The following checklist can assist you in that endeavor.

Have you:

• Assigned someone to coordinate training programs?
• Identified which safety topics you will focus on?
• Developed objectives for each training topic?
• Determined how much information to cover in training?
• Identified skills that will be taught?
• Determined the training method (e.g., classroom, safety meeting, demonstration, on-the-job, computer-assisted, etc.)?
• Set up a training schedule (including makeup sessions for absent employees)?
• Selected trainers and trained them, if necessary?
• Identified employees who need training?
• Decided how you will evaluate the effectiveness of training (e.g., quiz, post-training job performance evaluation, etc.)?
• Established a schedule for periodic refresher training?
• Determined criteria for retraining (e.g., incidents, poor performance, new equipment or procedures, etc.)?

Examine the best-selling Safety Audit Checklists program for 30 days at no cost —not even for return shipping. Try out the new 2013 Edition including GHS changes! Click Here.

Also consider these final points:

• Set the scene for successful safety training by planning ahead.
• Avoid the "closing the barn door after the horse has escaped" training mentality that only trains after an incident.
• Remember that a well-planned and well-executed safety program is the best way to prevent accidents and injuries.