Recommended Best Practices for Safety Training

Training is a vital part of your safety program, it may be required by specific standards that apply to your workplace, and it can provide a natural environment for communication between management and employees about safety and health issues.

But not all safety training will accomplish these ends. Badly planned, poorly executed training may do more harm than good if it fails to convey necessary information or leads to misunderstandings between management and workers.

According to Cal/OSHA, effective training:

• Relates directly to the work being done by employees. Why waste time teaching workers something they don’t need to know, or that doesn’t relate directly to their jobs? Workers may very well tune out such training, missing the bits that are relevant to them and making the entire program a wasted investment. If you choose a video- or computer-based training program, make sure that it can be customized and that you take the time to see that workers get the training they need—without a lot of training that they don’t.
• Provides practical and specific information about hazards and how to perform work safely. It might sound obvious, but many training programs don’t do this. Make sure each worker gets the level of detail that he or she needs.
• Communicates information in a language and by methods understandable to all employees. Many workplaces have employees whose first language is not English. Because safety training frequently covers highly technical or specialized information, workers whose command of English is less than fluent can run into communication problems that did not affect them during the hiring process. You may need to tweak the content and the delivery of your training program for non-English-speaking workers.

---

Think you have no time to train? Think again. BLR’s 7-Minute Safety Trainer helps you fulfill key OSHA-required training tasks in as little as 7 minutes. Try it at no cost and see!

---

• Helps establish a relationship with employees to improve trust and communication. How one-sided is your training program? Do workers get the impression that you’re just trying to dot all of your i’s and cross all of your t’s, or do you convey the message that safety is more to you than just regulatory compliance? Do they understand that their employer is investing in them, and that the safety program is a way of protecting something—its workforce—that is valuable to the company?
• Is participatory and involves employees by drawing on their own real-life experiences. Workers need to understand how their training relates directly to them. Give them opportunities to participate in training, perhaps by operating equipment under the watchful eye of a trainer or acting out situations they might encounter. Help them relate their own experiences to the topic: Have they ever suffered a chemical burn? Do they know someone who was injured at work? Getting them involved will help them buy into the program.
• Allows group hazard identification and problem solving through demonstrations, questions, discussions, and observations and stories. Many workers have valuable experiences—invite their input. These workers can bring their stories of what did or did not work. If they feel welcome to speak, they will be more willing to ask questions and participate in discussions, which will help to cement information in their minds and encourage them to think of safety as a team effort rather than a set of externally imposed rules.
• Provides opportunities to demonstrate newly learned safe work practices and the safe use of tools, equipment, and chemicals. It’s important to let workers actually try out what they’re learning—you may discover problems this way. For example, the seat belt on the forklift might not fit a large worker, or the one-size-fits-all welding gloves won’t fit the new woman on the welding team. The time to learn these lessons is in training, rather than when life and limb are at stake.
• Provides concrete safety and health changes in how work is set up and performed. After the training, do more workers follow safe work procedures, treat safety as if it really matters, or wear their safety gear? Do your communications between management and workers on safety actually improve? If your training program produces no observable results, it’s time to rethink the program.
• Is repeated as often as necessary. This might mean at predetermined intervals, if you’re complying with a specific standard, but it might also mean whenever you observe a need for retraining—after an accident or near miss, when worker compliance with safe practices is slipping, or when a condition in your facility changes.

---

Effective, 7-minute sessions providing comprehensive safety training at an average cost of $1 a day. Get the details.

---

E-Z Training at a Phenomenal Price

To help train employees in a broad range of safety and health topics, savvy safety professionals have for years relied on the BLR® 7-Minute Safety Trainer. This essential training resource allows you to provide concise, memorable training easily and effectively in just a few minutes. Materials are ready-to-use, and each session supplies a detailed trainer’s outline as well as a handout, quiz, and quiz answers to get your points across quickly—and cost-effectively.

All told, this “trainer’s bible” contains 50 prewritten meetings covering almost every aspect of safety you’d want or need to train on, in a format designed to be taught in as little as 7 minutes. Major topics include:

—Confined spaces

—Electrical safety

—Fire safety and emergency response

—HazCom
—Machine guarding and lockout/tagout

—Material handling

—PPE use and care

—Housekeeping/slips, trips, and falls

—and dozens more

Just make as many copies as you need of the included handouts and quizzes, and you’re ready to train.

Equally important is that the program ships new meetings every quarter to respond to new and changed regulations. This service is included in the program price, which averages just over $1 a working day. In fact, this is one of BLR’s most popular safety programs.

If you’d like to personally evaluate 7-Minute Safety Trainer and see how it can build safety awareness, we’ll be happy to send it to you for 30 days on a no-cost, no-obligation trial basis. Just let us know, and we’ll arrange it.

• Acids react with many metals to release hydrogen, a highly flammable gas that can ignite in air.
• Some acids are strong oxidizing agents (chemicals that support combustion by releasing oxygen) and can react violently when they come in contact with organic or other oxidizable materials.
• Alkaline chemicals can be strongly reactive. Alkali solids, in particular, react violently to contact with water; this is why sodium metal is stored in oil.