3 important safety training tips for success
3 important safety training tips for success
Posted on April 18, 2017
3 important safety training tips for success
By Shane Stevenson, Safety Trainer
For many employers and workers, safety awareness is not an innate ability, but something in which they must train and school themselves before achieving the skill set needed to be considered ‘safety conscious.’ A safe employee is one who is trained to do a job and is aware of the hazards around them while continually assessing and maintaining a level of awareness with regard to themselves, their co-workers and their environment. Ideally, they would react in a logical and procedural manner to any unforeseen situations that may arise. Here are three tips to create a safety-conscious workforce:
- Create a system
An employer must show due diligence and build a safety management system that encompasses all the proper steps and checks. This ensures that all employees are aware of their responsibilities and are trained to safely carry them out; which is neither difficult in theory nor practice. Despite misplaced misgivings about negatively impacting production, time and time again statistics clearly show that safety training and awareness in fact enhance production and profits. Create a safety management system.
- Be proactive
A proactive and thoroughly trained workforce is more than smart; it’s ethically and financially sound. If your wish is to be constantly mired in investigations and excessive insurance rates, then turning a blind eye to safety is the fastest way to achieve that goal. If you’re found to be liable with regard to a fatal or life changing incident, you may very well end up in a penitentiary for your transgressions. We all need to be clear on this reality: if you’re aware of a hazard and direct someone to work without educating and training that person on how to deal with it, you’re digging yourself a hole you may very well never climb out of. Be proactive and take steps to address workplace safety.
- Stay consistent
Gone are the more deadly and careless days of yesteryear where phrases like ‘common sense’ held weight. Training is the only form of common knowledge on which we can rely, and only so long as the information and best practices developed are shared in a consistent manner. Even if two people have the exact same upbringing and experiences, they still wouldn’t have ‘common sense’ because they both interpret the world differently. Though they may have a shared experience base and draw many of the same conclusions because of it, they still may not have as many commonalities with regard to their understanding of an issue that many would assume they have. Consistency in policy application, programs and training is key.
We must do everything in our power to ensure everyone arrives home safely. If that means making sure our employees are properly trained, aware and competent; then we must do so. We need to be certain that we are properly prepared to deal with any foreseen issues, and that we are ready to deal with unforeseen matters that may arise. Made Safe is here to help. Call or email us anytime.