In 2020, nearly one quarter of the U.S. workforce was made up of non-White individuals, while slightly less than half of the total working population were women. In 2021, the labor force also saw an increase in the portion of workers with a disability, rising from 3.8% in 2020 to 4.1% the following year.

While the actual makeup of the workforce is evolving, it makes sense that what employees look for in a workplace is evolving as well. In fact, 76% of respondents to a recent study by Glassdoor noted a diverse workforce as an important factor in their job search, with 1 in 3 stating they would not even apply with a company that lacks diversity.

It is obvious that if you are not focusing on diversity and inclusion within your current workforce, it will be hard to grow in the future. Keep reading to learn more about what DEI means and how these important issues can benefit your organization.

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Defining the Terms

Before we dig into why diversity, equity and inclusion are important to incorporate into any workplace, let’s quickly look at what each of these truly mean. While they often — including here — are grouped together for practical purposes, they of course each have their own definition.

Of these three terms, diversity is likely the most straightforward and the one people can most easily identify. A workplace is considered diverse when there are employees representing a variety of characteristics, including age, ethnicity, physical or mental ability, political affiliation, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background and many others.

Equity refers to fairness regarding individual needs related to different demographics. On the other hand, equality occurs when everyone is given the same opportunities. This may seem like a good strategy, but not all employees come from the same starting point, meaning companies should focus on equity rather than equality, where the focus is on equal outcomes, not necessarily equal treatment.

Inclusion occurs when every employee feels valued and, importantly, feels they can add value. Oftentimes, inclusion can be considered an overarching idea that includes both diversity and equity. This is true, but remember that if you create an inclusive workplace, it does not automatically mean there are no inequalities.

It is crucial you consider these pieces as separate, and equally important, areas of focus. One or two of them will certainly help move your workplace toward being a more welcoming and opportunistic place. However, incorporating all three into your business shows both your employees and your customers that you are committed to creating a truly safe, hospitable and effective work environment.

6 Benefits of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace

While these are separate ideas, the goal should be to incorporate all three into your organization. When you address diversity, equity and inclusion together, you can be certain you are covering all your bases and will gain more than you would by just focusing on one issue.

Opens a wider candidate pool

Let’s look at just one aspect of diversity: race. Out of 76 million baby boomers in the United States, 72% are white. On the other hand, only 56% of the roughly 87 million millennials are white. Unsurprisingly, similar trends exist in numerous other characteristics of diversity. 

It is easy to see how being overly picky about traits that don’t affect talent or work ethic will significantly decrease the number of people you can even consider. If you are not setting out to embrace diversity in your organization, you are going to miss out on many future candidates. Embracing diversity and striving for inclusion are key to finding good hires.

Decreases employee turnover

Despite what many managers and executives may want to believe, employees often leave a job because of internal company issues. Purdue University, consistently one of the top colleges in the country, understands and explains that creating an environment where people feel wanted and appreciated can help cut down on employee turnover. 

Decreased turnover, of course, helps the company overall because they don’t have to worry about the time and expenses required to find, hire and train new employees. Additionally, employee turnover often breeds more turnover, as even the employees who seem content will notice people leaving, which can cause them to rethink their own situation. Employee turnover is a dangerous cycle for any company to become involved with.

Offers new perspectives

It may seem obvious to say, but increasing the diversity within your workforce will help your organization in coming up with new, different and — of course ideally — better ideas, from individual projects to overarching business strategies. 

Different perspectives can also aid in boosting problem solving and productivity. A recent study found that inclusive groups in the workplace make better decisions 87% of the time, and make those decisions twice as fast with half the normal amount of meetings. Clearly there is something to be said for bringing in differing viewpoints.

Demonstrates a higher rate of innovation

Beyond simply welcoming employees with different perspectives, exposure to such variety also encourages creativity. When you have a group of people from similar backgrounds, everything from their thought patterns to life experiences to problem-solving skills are likely to be similar as well.

On the other hand, when you put together a group of people who see the same thing in different ways, you are more likely to get fresh, new, and creative ideas. New circumstances are known to spark fresh ideas. According to HR expert Josh Bersin, companies who are highly inclusive are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders.

Boosts employee morale

It should seem fairly obvious that when people feel welcomed and appreciated in their place of employment, they are much more likely to work hard to see themselves and their teammates — and, by extension, their company — succeed.

And just like how employee turnover often breeds more turnover, positive employee morale tends to breed better morale. A positive working environment helps people feel valued and engaged, leading to happy employees promoting a positive company culture and creating happy employees. When you demonstrate that every employee, no matter their background or identity, is included

Increases company profits

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there have been numerous studies showing that inclusive teams perform better, which results in increased profits. However, the benefits don’t stop at having a diverse workforce. A study from global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that U.S. companies with diverse executive boards have a 95% higher return on equity than those with homogenous executive boards. 

Similar to what we noted above about innovation, having a workforce — or even management or boards of directors — that introduces and encourages different viewpoints is clearly good for business.

A DEI Wrap-up

As an employer, it should be clear by now why incorporating diversity, equity and inclusion into your workforce, from top to bottom, needs to be a priority. When your employees feel valued for what their unique experiences can bring to the table, they are much more likely to work hard and encourage others to do the same.

At the same time, when you are seeking out services or vendor relations from other companies, you should try to find like-minded businesses that demonstrate diversity, equity and inclusion within their own organizations. Many of the largest companies in the world now include DEI information on their websites and it doesn’t hurt to find out if a potential business partner does the same.

Contact SafetySkills today to learn more about how creating, welcoming and encouraging a diverse workforce, including everything from non-native speakers to workers with any of a range of disabilities, can help your business succeed in both a corporate sense and on a more real, human level.

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While not every team or organization may feel like they are fully prepared to switch to online learning, the process does not have to be as overwhelming as it sounds. Plus, the numerous benefits to you and your workforce should make the decision to transition an easy one.

What digital learning offers

Though different companies across different industries will naturally have their own unique experiences when incorporating online training courseware into their safety programs, here are a few general benefits this type of forward-thinking content provides.

Training in native languages

One powerful benefit of mobile training is the ability to offer important safety and HR topics in a way that works for all employees. A common issue with conventional methods is delivering training courses only in English even if that is not the native language of all trainees. Unsurprisingly, many studies have found limited English proficient (LEP) workers not only understand less of English-language training, but they also do not have the skills to convey their lack of understanding.

Spanish might be the obvious first thought when it comes to multiple language options — especially considering Spanish is spoken by roughly 1 in 7 Americans — but don’t forget things like German, French, Portuguese or even Mandarin.

Regularly updated and compliant

One of the most important aspects of any training course is that the information presented must be current to applicable regulations or laws. With standard in-person training, there will almost certainly be times the material is out of date, whether that is regarding official regulations, industry standards or even simply topical references.

With mobile training, course content can be updated whenever it is deemed necessary, typically either via a manual course update from the provider or simply an automatic content refresh.

Keeps safety in mind

Think about the last time you took a safety training course. It’s likely for the next few days, you were more aware of the hazards mentioned in that particular lesson than before. Toolbox talks, which provide a quick meeting to discuss a certain relevant safety topic, do the same thing as a full training course but can be implemented on a more regular schedule.

A short, engaging toolbox talk is more likely to have a lasting effect on workers. Additionally, a toolbox talk could spark a conversation within management regarding the way something is done. Having a regular “safety chat” creates a new opportunity to see, and review, certain procedures.

Gives employees what they want

While the majority of employees may want on-the-job training, that doesn’t mean they want to spend hours or even days in training sessions. In 2020, the average company provided 55.4 hours of training per employee, up from 42.1 hours in 2019. That may not seem excessive, but it is more than one week of normal working hours. And remember this is the average, meaning many companies will be well over 55 hours.

Online training courses allow the topic in question to be presented in a more efficient manner because employees can access a short training module on their desktop, laptop, phone or tablet when it best fits their schedule and immediately get on with their day.

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You must provide for a changing workforce

Over time, no matter what events are happening in the United States and beyond, the American workforce is always evolving. Generations age out of the workforce, younger employees take over and the way people work changes. But perhaps now more than ever, employers are having to deal with changes in the look and expectation of their employees.

More remote workers than ever before

Before COVID-19 hit the United States in early 2020, nearly half (47%) of employees in the U.S. reported never working from home. At the peak of the pandemic, almost every employee, aside from essential on-site roles, was working remotely. Now, more than two-and-a-half years later, more than 60% of employees still work remotely at least one day per week, and roughly 1 in 6 companies are fully remote.

Of course, there are numerous jobs that simply cannot be done remotely, such as construction, manufacturing, or oil and gas, but an evolving workforce means employers need to find new ways to keep employees safe. Online courseware means training is fully accessible to employees at any location.

And even if a team has resumed fully on-site operations, online training can still be extremely beneficial. Taking training online can save a company time and money, as online training does not require a physical classroom setting or bringing an in-person trainer to the jobsite.

Technology is king

The generation raised on technology and smartphones has now become the largest segment of the workforce, so it makes sense that learning and development techniques have changed accordingly. One of the most significant changes is the increased use — and near requirement — of mobile-optimized content.

The popularity of mobile phones has increased since their technology and accessibility has improved, but ownership has recently become truly universal. According to the Pew Research Center, 93% of Millennials, 90% of Gen Xers and a whopping 98% of Gen Zers, now own a smartphone. The pervasiveness of always-connected mobile devices means learning should be available at all times and accessible from anywhere.

A key part of offering mobile-ready training is that the content must not only be accessible on a mobile device, but it must function just as well as it would on a desktop computer. Think about when you visit a website on your computer versus on your phone. The look, feel and overall usability need to match in order to provide the best experience. The same can be said of learning and development.

Keep it short and sweet

Along with the popularity of smartphones, there has been a corresponding proliferation of social media apps such as Snapchat and Instagram. In the U.S. alone, Snapchat has almost 108 million users while Instagram has an astounding 170 million. Even the relatively new app TikTok has 100 million monthly users in the U.S. All of these platforms, and many others like them, are popular for the short videos users can upload and share.

Because we have become a mobile-first society and have developed an affinity for short interactions, it is necessary for training to be fully engaging from beginning to end. Users are far more likely to stay actively present in a 5-15 minute training video than in a full lecture lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to well over an hour.

Microlearning, the common name for these short learning modules, suits the reality of today’s learners very well. You can find them as short as three minutes, meaning they get directly to the point without any unnecessary “filler” content that may distract from the key information. This also means training can be completed without taking hours out of an employee’s day.

It’s not just about employee safety

Understandably, employers tend to focus only on safety topics when creating a training curriculum, leaving soft skills overlooked because it is believed they don’t directly correlate with company performance or contribute to the bottom line. However, this is an inaccurate assumption. 

A study by researchers at Harvard University, Boston University and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business found employees who received training on a variety of soft skills, including communication, time management and problem solving, helped grow productivity by 12%. Almost one year following training, the company’s return on investment was up 256%.

So what soft skills should you be training your employees on? There are a wide variety that can be useful, but here are a few universal soft skills that can help boost individual, team and company-wide performance.

Time management

It likely goes without saying time management is a crucial skill every employee should learn. Perhaps more than any other soft skill, this is one that can most directly affect a company’s bottom line. If workers cannot manage their own time well, they will likely be unproductive and waste the company’s time and resources.

Problem solving

Similar to time management, employees at any level should be able to demonstrate problem-solving skills. The basic tenets of problem solving are being able to assess a situation and find a solution. While some people are inherently good at creative thinking and others excel at critical thinking, problem-solving skills can be cultivated no matter what.

Communication

Strong communication skills are important both on and off the job. Think about all the interactions you have each day, from grabbing a morning coffee to meeting with clients or going out to eat. Speaking, body language and active listening are crucial for these encounters, but don’t forget about electronic communication as well, which is becoming increasingly common, even for formal communication.

Positive attitude

You may consider positivity as relevant only to public-facing employees, such as those in customer service or hospitality roles, but positive attitudes throughout the company help keep employee morale up and create a healthy working environment.

As many employees have taken on fully remote or hybrid roles, these soft skills become even more crucial, not only due to adjusting to new and potentially changing schedules, but also adjusting to less direct managerial oversight. Ensuring your employees have solid time management and communication skills, for example, will be imperative moving forward.

Including both hard skills and soft skills in your company’s training curriculum makes for well-rounded, satisfied employees, which leads to an efficient, productive company.

How to transition to digital learning

Whether you are new to online training, just need a refresher or are looking to improve your virtual training program, here are a few steps that can help you get on the right track toward transitioning to a more digital environment.

Find the best platform for your needs

One of the biggest decisions you will need to make is determining how to manage, deploy and track your training efforts. This is where a learning management system comes in handy. A good LMS will make this transition — and training moving forward — easy for your team. Keep reading to find more specific tips on choosing an LMS.

Assign and deliver the training

With a fully equipped LMS, this step will be simple. Your employees can see what training they need to take, access all the materials from the platform and complete their courses as they can (or by a previously determined due date). 

Track course progress

Of course, you can assign and hand out all the training materials you want, but if your employees are not completing their courses, or are simply clicking through slides to be able to check off training boxes, then your training will not be effective. Make sure you follow up on course completions and, when possible, course failures so you know your employees and your company are safe.

What to look for in a training platform

If your organization decides an online learning management system is the right direction for you, then you need to select the best LMS for your needs. With hundreds of platforms available, there are many different features you should look at to compare and contrast to find your ideal match.

Top-tier content

To be effective, training material must keep the learner’s attention. Illustrating interesting visuals, implementing user-friendly navigation and utilizing relatable scenarios can help keep the training content fun and engaging, which in turn increases knowledge retention.

While training courses need to be engaging, they would be worthless if the content is outdated. Make sure any training content you use is regularly reviewed and updated by the creators to be consistent not only with industry trends but also with changing requirements and regulations.

Flexible pricing models

As with any software, pricing for LMS platforms can be somewhat confusing. Look for a system that not only offers a package that works for your needs but one that is transparent in their pricing and does not carry hidden fees for unneeded extras.

Typically, high-quality learning management systems will offer pricing levels per user, per course, or for course licensing. You may also find additional costs for things like implementation and support, but just be sure you are aware of every service you will be paying for.

Unmatched customer service

One aspect often overlooked — until you need it — is quality customer service. Most, if not all, of us have had an issue we needed resolved and can appreciate the importance of a quick, effective customer service team.

Now, this isn’t something every company will talk about on their website or in their sales pitch. But it may be something you want to ask about. Do they have quick response times? Are agents available at all hours? Will you be added to a long service queue every time you call? This may not be the most important aspect of an LMS, but it just might tip the scales toward one competitor over the other.

Partner with a professional

Taking training online is convenient and can save your company time and money, as online training does not require a physical classroom setting or bringing an in-person trainer to your jobsite. Employees can complete virtual training from anywhere with internet access.

However, remember some in-person training may also be required for certain roles or specific safety regulations. For instance, anyone can take an online forklift safety training course, but until an employee has gotten in a forklift and demonstrated how to safely operate the machinery, they could be considered a liability.

In the end, it simply comes down to what your organization is trying to achieve and what makes sense for your needs. For more than 20 years, SafetySkills has provided award-winning content, a powerful learning management system and unsurpassed customer service. Visit SafetySkills.com today to learn how we can help you comfortably and confidently make the switch to online safety training.

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While that is no doubt an important question, you should also consider this: What makes an effective team?

Across different industries and departments, it is rare to find employees that function at their best when being micromanaged at all times. Of course, there are occasions when that may be necessary, but the vast majority of the time, employees work best when they have the tools, ability and freedom to simply do their job.

Creating a working environment that encourages employees to be empowered helps not only the employees but also helps your organization overall. Keep reading to learn how promoting employee confidence can benefit your team and discover ways to start fostering this type of important environment in your own workplace.

Benefits Of Empowering Employees

Of course it seems logical that creating empowered and confident employees helps create better employees, but exactly how that happens may not be as obvious. Here are five benefits your team and organization may see take shape when you seek to promote confidence in your employees.

Developing more-skilled workers

As more jobs are becoming dependent on, and sometimes completely eliminated by, technological and AI advancements, many workers are taking this opportunity to expand their skill set. In a 2018 study about the skills gap, 80% of respondents said they would quit if their employer didn’t offer training on the newly required skills. It is obvious that employees not only welcome the opportunity to learn new skills, but actively desire it.

Improved work output

Employees who feel confident in their autonomy tend to take more pride in their work. Additionally, they will feel more capable of executing their given responsibilities without consistent oversight. Even a small amount of freedom — and trust — shown from a manager or other leader can encourage employees to work harder to produce better.

Increased employee satisfaction

There are many ways training helps boost employee morale, from making employees feel more valued to reducing turnover and creating an overall better company culture. Regardless of whether you see a direct corollary between training and how an employee feels about themselves and their work, it is undeniable that showing you care about your employees is beneficial.

Improved recruitment

An added benefit that typically comes with increased employee satisfaction is improved recruitment. Happier employees who are able to complete their work without being stressed and micromanaged are more likely to help spread the word about your organization. Remember — satisfied employees make the best recruiters.

Better customer service

This will not directly impact your entire workforce, but it should be obvious how this is a benefit. For employees who interact directly with customers, they can be certain they are capable of making the right decisions in any situation. And while those in back-end roles may not work with your end user, they still likely have “customers” within the organization. Self-confidence helps to build and maintain strong working relationships.

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Ways To Empower Employees

While not every one of your employees will have the opportunity — or even the need — to lead their own team, they should feel empowered enough to do so. Instilling employees with self confidence will help them, your team and your organization.

But empowering your employees is not the easiest task and must be handled carefully. Here are five ways to begin shifting toward creating a workforce full of empowered and confident employees.

Encourage self-paced learning

Employee empowerment begins with training. However, training is not one size fits all. The better we understand, the more confident we are, and the best way to learn is at our own pace. When employees learn at their own pace, they control how much time is needed to digest a certain concept instead of rushing through more “complex” ideas (and let’s not forget that what is considered “complex” can vary from person to person). Self-paced learning offers the benefit of increasing learning efficiency and competency development in a shorter time, as well as the ability to scale and reuse techniques.

Provide the resources needed

When you give your employees work tasks, you probably make sure they have the right tools to complete the job or project. That same mindset can apply when trying to empower your employees: Make sure they have the right tools. This could include access to templates, organizational or job-specific documents, training content and more. Employees won’t be able to feel they have done a good job if they lack the resources needed to accomplish their tasks. But remember to still be open to employees needing or wanting feedback, or just someone to act as a sounding board.

Delegate to develop

One of the most important ways to show your employees you trust them and their work — and therefore help grow their own confidence — is to delegate tasks and projects to them. But make sure you are not simply passing off difficult or time-consuming work simply so you don’t have to do it. Instead, delegate with the intent to grow and develop the capabilities and responsibilities of your employees. Show them how important they are and how they provide real value to your business by allowing them to work on meaningful tasks.

Communicate corporate visions

As younger generations become the majority of our workforce, it is also becoming more important for employees to feel like they are contributing to something rather than just being a faceless number at an organization. By clearly — and regularly — communicating the vision of your department and your organization, employees better understand their role in the big picture. Empowering employees with the knowledge that their contribution is making a difference creates more excited and more invested workers.

Provide continuous development opportunities

Throughout your life, it is very unlikely you went about learning something new using a “one and done” method. Repetitive learning opportunities increase the likelihood of retaining the information, which, in the context of a working environment, makes for a more effective employee. One of the best ways to empower employees through training is through repetitive, habit-forming methods. After all, practice makes perfect, and by continuously practicing the art of learning, you can create an environment that can reshape its functions at the snap of a finger.

Start Training More Confident Workers Today

For more than 30 years, SafetySkills has helped train employees around the world on both workplace and off-the-job hazards, along with numerous HR-compliant topics and valuable soft skills. All our training can be individually assigned so you can create a custom training program that can be completed at any time, from anywhere, on any device as long as the user has access to the internet.

Contact SafetySkills today to learn more about ensuring your employees have access to the training and tools that will allow them to gain more confidence in themselves, in turn making them better employees for you and your entire organization.

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Environmental, health and safety has long been known for ensuring organizations are meeting safety compliance standards, but recently (even before these past few years) the field has been evolving to focus more on accident prevention rather than what is essentially damage control.

And now, more than ever, EHS professionals are finding their scope of responsibility has expanded. However, no matter what sort of changes may arise, the resiliency of employee health and safety can aid in the resiliency of an organization as a whole.

Training is still key

The impacts of safety training, when properly implemented and followed, are undeniable. The number of worker injuries and illnesses dropped from 10.9 per 100 workers in 1972 (the first full year following the creation of OSHA) to 2.7 per 100 workers in 2020, while the average daily worker deaths fell more than 65% during that same time.

Regardless of whether the EHS field has been mostly about accident prevention or about incident management, a key focus of these professionals has always been on employee health and safety training. In fact, training may be more important now than ever before.

Before COVID-19, nearly half (47%) of employees in the U.S. reported never working from home. Unsurprisingly, that completely changed after the pandemic, with 44% of employees reporting they work remotely at least 5 days per week.

Of course, there are numerous jobs that simply cannot be done remotely, such as construction, manufacturing, or oil and gas, but an evolving workforce meant safety professionals needed to find ways to continue keeping their employees safe. Introducing online training courses to an organization made learning fully accessible by employees at any location.

And now, even if a team is back to on-site operations, online training can still be extremely beneficial. Taking training online can save a company time and money, as online training does not require a physical classroom setting or bringing an in-person trainer to the jobsite. Additionally, workers can complete training on their own, whenever it can fit into their schedules.

Increasing your organization’s flexibility over how, when and where employees can complete their training gives you a leg up when it comes to staying resilient no matter what uncertainties you may face.

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The Rise of Total Worker Wellness

Everyone knows health and safety professionals have long been concerned with the physical safety of their employees, whether from direct hazards, like falling from elevated surfaces, or from potential workplace accidents, such as chemical spills.

But it has only become more recently understood that safety professionals should address worker health beyond just physical safety. Total worker wellness has become a more common term in occupational health and safety, with good reason.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly one in five U.S. adults suffered from some type of mental illness in 2019, and the numbers have not improved since COVID-19 hit the United States in January 2020 and thrust millions of Americans into isolation, unemployment and illness.

Of course, every organization will have their own mental health-related issues to address, due to different company sizes, industries, jobsite setups and employee demographics. However, here are a few options that practically any workplace could look into implementing:

• Let employees take mental health days
• Encourage a healthy work-life balance
• When possible, keep work at work
• Provide mental health resources
• Create and maintain quiet spaces

Mental health awareness should — without question — be part of your workplace culture and can easily be tied into any safety program. The best thing you can do is talk to your employees. Find out what their concerns are, work together to come up with solutions and be open in continuing discussions.

While the direct benefits of total worker wellness may not be immediately apparent for an overall organization, keep in mind when employees are happy, they are more actively engaged at work, are less likely to suffer the effects of workplace stress and display more loyalty to their employer.

Employee training, especially when it includes a focus on mental health, can boost employee morale, which has numerous positive effects. High employee morale can even help create stability within a team or organization during times of flux.

EHS Technology

Many times, people think of the health and safety industry as old and outdated, resistant to change. In reality, the EHS function often welcomes the opportunity to adapt new technologies to suit their needs. 

Immersive technology, like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), can be incredibly beneficial in the safety training arena as employees can insert themselves into different situations without actually putting themselves in harm’s way.

Even the technology used to create safety training videos is always improving. Techniques such as motion capture help to create realistic — and therefore more effective — videos, which of course is ideal in a safety training setting. 

However, it is not just the technology used for training itself. For instance, mobile safety apps can help simplify safety management by providing multiple tools in one location. And even aspects of apps or safety programs themselves can be up-to-date and useful.

Artificial intelligence, in the context of a safety app, can be used to catch potential hazards before they cause an incident, or can help identify potential solutions to a safety issue based on previous inputs regarding how hazards were successfully managed.

While organizations do not need to be at the forefront of technology implementation, with many EHS professionals already interested in bringing such advancements on board, it is easy to see how quick adaptation can assist in maintaining status quo through uncertainty.

Conclusion

Any of the strategies mentioned here can be helpful for a safety program. But when all these pieces — safety training, total worker wellness, emerging technology — are implemented together, the chances of improving employee safety plus overall organizational resiliency only increases.

While it should go without saying, training serves as the foundation for helping your entire workforce minimize safety risks, making your organization less likely to fall out of compliance and your workers less likely to have an on-the-job incident that needs to be recorded.

However, be sure not to neglect the total health of your employees and keep mental health needs in mind. Additionally, it is not only the crucial job skills employees want to be trained on. More and more employers are seeing the value of offering training on soft skills, such as teamwork, active listening or problem solving. 

Introducing new technologies related to safety training or employee health can boost your safety program’s effectiveness, thereby of course keeping your employees safer but also protecting your company from potentially costly, or deadly, incidents.

If anything, these last couple of years have shown how resilient the EHS function is, and in turn how helpful it can be for a company’s overall resiliency. Contact SafetySkills today to learn more about introducing online safety training — or a full safety management system — to help boost your organization’s preparedness. 

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Terms to Know

Before digging too deeply into the importance of audits and inspections, let’s take a look at these two terms in the context of a safety program.

Most people are likely familiar with safety inspections, which typically cover the day-to-day tasks and activities involved in a job. Inspections can include looking at machinery and tools or conducting jobsite walkthroughs to identify potential safety hazards.

On the other hand, safety audits aim to identify weaknesses in an overall safety program by reviewing processes and procedures. Audits also help to ensure operations meet safety requirements and best practices.

However, try not to get too hung up on these terms. Many organizations use them fairly interchangeably, and some may even use the terms opposite of the widely used definitions outlined above. 

Regardless of what your team calls these safety reviews, all that matters is that these tasks serve to identify and create the safest working environment possible.

What is Required?

We know it can feel overwhelming to think about the hundreds of potential OSHA regulations your company must uphold at any given time, and there are some extremely specific OSHA rules detailing inspections for certain equipment or situations, such as cranes or powered trucks.

But when it comes to self-inspections, it can help to think of safety on a basic level. For example, no matter what type of work you are involved in, you will need to abide by OSHA’s General Duty Clause, which requires employers to provide a place of employment that is “free from recognizable hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious harm to employees.”

While the General Duty Clause does not specify that you must carry out workplace inspections, it is easy to see how doing so can allow you to create a safer environment for all employees. After all, inspecting equipment or reviewing procedures will help you identify potential issues or safety hazards — ideally before an incident occurs.

Additionally, you need to remember that OSHA conducts literally thousands of workplace inspections each year. About 60% of inspections are unplanned, which means they occurred because of employee complaints or due to an incident.

OSHA inspections can result in massive potential fines. In fact, in 2022, employers could face fines ranging from $1,036 up to $145,027 per violation. Aside from the obvious risk of potentially endangering employees, OSHA violations are clearly something to be avoided. 

Self-inspections could help in this area, bringing to light potential dangers before an official visit from an OSHA inspector happens.

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Conducting a Safety Inspection

If you didn’t before, you likely now understand that inspections are an important part of any workplace safety program. But how do you go about completing them? Well, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

One way to conduct safety inspections is to have employees conduct informal inspections every day. In fact, many employees probably already do this without realizing it, for instance checking for slip or fall hazards or inspecting personal protective equipment before use.

Making sure employees always follow up with a supervisor or manager regarding what they find during these basic inspections can reinforce safety in a simple, everyday way.

Another option is, of course, conducting a formal inspection. These reviews should occur regularly, based on your organization’s needs — they can happen weekly, monthly, quarterly or on some other set schedule that best fits your industry and your hazards.

These inspections should be led by someone knowledgeable in the area(s) they will be looking at. This doesn’t always have to be a safety professional in title, but for many teams, it probably will be.

Similarly, the items an inspector reviews will vary depending on industry, job hazards, how detailed each inspection is, and other factors. However, there are some basic checklist ideas that could apply in nearly any situation, to give you an idea of hazards to be on the lookout for:

• Are safety signs or warnings posted where appropriate?
• Is a first-aid kit available and adequately stocked?
• Are operating permits and records up-to-date?
• Are fire suppression system inspections current?
• Are all work areas properly lit?

There are practically endless checklist items that can be added to an official inspection and it may seem overwhelming to know where to start. It can be helpful to use a template guide that provides checklist criteria that is potentially related to the operations at your organization.

While creating your inspection checklist is of course important, the crucial part of an inspection actually occurs when it is complete. What are the next steps?

If your safety inspector comes across a situation or piece of equipment that fails the checklist inspection, logically, that issue will need to be corrected. The safety inspector — or someone further up the chain, where applicable — should set up corrective or preventive actions (CAPAs) intended to resolve the failed inspection.

Corrective and preventive actions can essentially be anything that will fix the situation, from replacing a piece of equipment to assigning employee training. Regardless, your CAPA should always have a specific employee (who will be responsible for the action) and a specific end goal (that can be documented as “completed”).

Don’t think of failed inspection items or even corrective actions as negatives. On the other hand, these can be seen as positives, because they represent potential hazards that may have caused larger, more severe incidents in the future.

By conducting a thorough safety inspection, you can be sure your team is regularly checking for safety hazards, keeping your employees safe and your company out of trouble.

Conducting a Safety Audit

Unlike a safety inspection, a safety audit is likely not being done on an everyday basis by any regular employee. As mentioned previously, safety audits cover processes and procedures, meaning they will typically be completed by someone with not only safety experience, but knowledge of the organization and its inner workings. 

Similar to safety inspections, the details of a safety audit will be up to each organization, but there are four basic steps that can help you understand and outline what should be done for your own safety audits.

1. Inspect the general environment. One of the first things a safety auditor will do is inspect the overall workspace to get a general understanding of what might need to be addressed. Remember that common areas should be checked, because places such as restrooms, parking lots and break rooms are likely not free from hazards.
2. Review work processes. Next, the auditor should perform a physical inspection of all work areas. They will need to investigate the premises, procedures, people and programs, looking for any clear violations and potential hazards or safety issues. Auditors often take pictures or interview employees and organizational leadership for further details.
3. Create a report. Once the audit is complete, the auditor should summarize what is and isn’t working within each department or area, indicating the priority and severity of different safety issues. This report can also include deviations from industry best practices and safety procedures that are not being followed properly.
4. Make recommendations. Of course, just like with safety inspections, the follow-up recommendations are key. This step isn’t necessarily completed by the safety auditor, but their guidance can be helpful. Again, here is where the corrective and preventive actions come into play, correcting existing problems and preventing future potential accidents.

As mentioned, OSHA does not require any safety inspection or safety audit, but they do offer an audit tool to help organizations evaluate how well they are implementing their safety program, identify weaknesses and focus on continued improvement.

Partner with Safety Professionals

Incorporating safety audits and safety inspections into your organization may seem daunting, but consider how important these tasks can be in identifying and preventing serious occupational incidents. 

Whether you decide to simply start having your employees conduct informal — but documented — inspections or you want to implement annual safety audits, knowing where to start is typically the hardest part.

For more than 30 years, SafetySkills has been working with customers around the world to implement health and safety training programs and offers a full-suite of safety management tools, including those necessary for effective audits and inspections.

Contact SafetySkills to learn how audits and inspections can help reinforce safety in your organization and to access free template guides with safety audit and inspection checklists today.

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Based on your choices, you could end up with a different story each time. Those books are a simple form of adaptive learning that creates a custom path with varied content based on the answers selected.

While there is not a firm definition everyone agrees upon, the one most commonly referenced defines adaptive learning as an educational experience that adjusts to a user’s interactions in real time to provide individual support.

Adaptive learning makes the user an active participant, increasing the likelihood the information will be retained once the lesson is complete.

In 2018, researchers at West Virginia University published the results of a four-year study looking at the use and effects of an adaptive online homework system compared to a traditional online system. The study found increased odds that average, below average and failing students receive a higher final letter grade and 69% of students self-reported changes in study habits.

If this type of learning technique works well in educational settings, it makes sense that it could be applied to workplace training.

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Adaptive Safety Training

When it comes to training, creating a completely personalized experience can be expensive, both in money and time. But customization to a certain extent can be reached through the use of branching logic, which creates a custom path with varied content based on the answers selected. Many times, this is presented in a way that the user does not even notice, and you may not realize would be considered “customized” training.

Think about a training course over different types of gloves. The user may be required to choose the right glove for certain situations. If they choose incorrectly, the content that appears next would walk the learner through what is wrong with that option. If they choose correctly, the course would continue moving forward.

Instead of the usual quiz style where you are simply shown the correct answer on a missed question, this adaptive style explains the correct answer. In the context of occupational health and safety, it is often just as important to understand the “why” as it is to understand the “what.”

This might not appear at the outset to be very adaptive, but not every user will have the same experience. Additionally, if a user completes the course multiple times, they may have a slightly different experience each time as well.

A Unique Solution

As a leading online training company for more than 30 years, SafetySkills incorporates adaptive learning into the backbone of more than 850 training courses using a proprietary development tool known as Adaptive Branching Learning Engagement, or ABLE.

Building training content with this development tool results in dynamic, interactive courseware that provides learners with a unique and memorable training experience.

There are multiple pieces of online safety training where adaptive learning can play a role, including the courseware itself, the competency quiz questions and even the language selection.

Adaptive Branching Courses

Let’s say your employees are taking a driver safety course. One user might choose to turn right at a stop sign where they see a child chasing their dog across the road, while another user chooses to turn left and comes across a group of bicyclists in the street.

These users will experience different hazards during their training but they will both end up learning about safe driving. In safety training, the learning competencies are important, but providing unique training experiences — that make a lasting impression — is perhaps even more important.

Adaptive Branching Quizzes

As mentioned, if learners don’t retain the information provided in a safety training course, then the training is essentially useless. Similarly, if users can blindly click through competency quizzes to find and memorize the right answer, or can copy from a neighbor going through training at the same time, they also will be doing themselves a disservice.

Adaptive branching inserts dynamic quizzes within safety training courses, ensuring learners answer their given quiz questions on their own. This means users may take the course multiple times but will never see identical quiz questions. Additionally, because the quizzes are dynamic, those taking the course at the same time cannot simply copy off their neighbor.

Adaptive Branching Languages

A common issue that arises with one-size-fits-all training is delivery typically being only in English even if that is not the native language of all trainees. Unsurprisingly, many studies have found that limited English proficient (LEP) workers not only understand less of English-language training, but they also typically do not have the skills to convey their lack of understanding.

Utilizing this unique authoring tool means language selectors are available within the courses themselves, allowing the learner to select their own course language from a language list. This takes the burden off the training administrators to know which language each learner would prefer to take their training in.

A Personalized Training Experience For Your Employees

Every SafetySkills course follows the concept of competency-based training, meaning the user must successfully answer all questions of one section before moving onto the next. Integrating this type of learning solution into your safety training provides assurance that your employees fully understand the material presented to them.

Combining this standard with the proprietary development tool used to build every SafetySkills training course provides a personalized feel to your safety training, which can make the information more easily retained and therefore much more effective.

Browse the full SafetySkills course catalog to see everything we offer or schedule a free demo today to learn more about how utilizing adaptive branching learning engagement can help your organization and your employees.

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However, all the regulations and safe practices in the world cannot guarantee total safety. Most companies will find themselves faced with a workplace safety issue at some point, whether it be a minor injury or a major disaster.

And when that happens, it is important for anyone involved to understand the next steps. Training your entire workforce on incident management is wise, because you never know who will be involved in an incident, and therefore who might need to initiate a report.

Keep reading to take a deeper dive into two of the crucial steps of incident investigation: conducting a root cause analysis and establishing action items to prevent similar incidents from happening.

Take the guesswork out of training your employees.

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Root Cause Analysis

The name “root cause analysis” might sound official, but in reality, we conduct root cause analysis (RCA) throughout our lives to solve any number of problems. Simply put, the goal of a root cause analysis is to identify what happened, why it happened and how you can prevent it from happening again.

There are dozens of RCA methods in use today with varying levels of intensity and involvement on the part of the analyzer.

• A flowchart creates a visual map through different sections or departments that could help you identify a locational source of an incident’
• Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a step-by-step guide for recognizing all potential failures in a product or business process.
• A Pareto chart can help to prioritize the given causes of the adverse event. The Pareto principle says roughly 20% of causes result in 80% of effects.
• Fault tree analysis uses boolean logic (using AND, OR, and NOT) to map the logical relationships between faults and the subsystems of a machine.

However, the most common methods, especially in the health and safety industry, are the fishbone diagram and the five whys.

Fishbone diagram

A fishbone diagram is helpful when conducting a root cause analysis because it makes it easy to visually group potential causes into different categories.

As the name suggests, this method mimics a fish skeleton. The problem is placed at the far right, like the fish’s head, while the causes extend to the left, as the bones of the skeleton. The major causes that you brainstorm then branch off like ribs.

Although the basic concept has been around since the 1920s, fishbones gained popularity in the 1960s when Kaoru Ishikawa began implementing them in Japan’s Kawasaki shipyards as part of his quality control process. This usage gives the fishbone diagram its other well-known name: Ishikawa diagram.

There are three main causal models used within a fishbone diagram:

• The 4 Ss
  • Surroundings, suppliers, systems, skill
• The 6 Ms
  • Manpower, method, machine, material, mother nature, measurement
• The 8 Ps
  • Product, price, place, promotion, people, process, physical evidence, performance

Each of the above models have preferred usage in certain industries. For instance, the 4 Ss are commonly used in the service industry, the 6 Ms typically help solve manufacturing problems and the 8 Ps are mostly used for marketing issues. However, any model can be used at any time — it is up to your team to decide what makes the most sense for your needs.

Completing a fishbone diagram can help you dig through all the causal factors that contributed to the incident and decide which are significant (those that you can control) and which are not significant (those that you cannot control).

In theory, you should only focus on the significant factors. After all, if it is something you cannot control, it is probably something that doesn’t have an actionable item to take to avoid a similar incident in the future.

While a fishbone diagram helps to determine potential causal factors, there is another method that serves to find the hidden causes of those significant factors.

The five whys

The five whys method was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda, whose son, Kiichiro Toyoda, would later establish the Toyota Motor Corporation, where the five whys method was heavily used during the evolution of its manufacturing methodologies.

The five whys technique is as straightforward as it sounds: For each significant factor, repeat the question “Why?” Each answer forms the next question, and after “five whys” the base cause should be clear.

This may sound silly, but many of us use the five whys method daily, without even thinking about it. For example, maybe one day you went outside and your car wouldn’t start. It is likely you conducted your own root cause analysis and didn’t realize it.

The problem is that the car wouldn’t start. 

1. Why? The battery is dead.
2. Why? The alternator is not working.
3. Why? The alternator belt is broken.
4. Why? The alternator belt is old and needs to be replaced.
5. Why? The vehicle was not correctly maintained and routinely serviced.

Now, completing the five whys for factors of an on-the-job incident may take a little more brainstorming than this, but finding the root cause could very well be this simple.

Once you have determined why something happened through your RCA, you are ready to identify the corrective and preventive actions needed to try and keep the same incident from happening again.

Corrective and Preventive Actions

First, you must understand the difference between these two types of actions, known simply as CAPAs. A corrective action is reactive and is intended to fix the situation in question. For instance, if an overhead crane falls because an old chain breaks, you replace the chain.

A preventive action is proactive, to ensure the incident, and those like it, don’t happen in the future. In our example, you could create a standard operating procedure to inspect all chains in the facility at regular intervals.

So how do you decide which CAPAs to assign to the identified root causes? Of course, the specific actions you choose to take will be based on your specific needs, but CAPAs will fall within the hierarchy of hazard control.

Here is a breakdown of the hierarchy of hazard controls, from most effective to least effective:

• Elimination consists of physically removing the hazard. For instance, if employees are working high above the ground, move the piece they are working on to ground level.
• Substitution replaces something that produces a hazard with something that does not. A common example is the use of titanium dioxide instead of lead-based paint.
• Engineering controls isolate people from hazards but do not eliminate the hazards themselves, such as adding guard rails rather than investing in fall arrest systems.
• Administrative controls change how people work in order to limit exposure to hazards. This ranges from installing warning signs to implementing procedural changes. 
• Personal protective equipment (PPE) reduces exposure to hazards when engineering and administrative controls are not feasible or effective. PPE is needed whenever there are hazards present.

Note that despite being at the bottom of this hierarchy, personal protective equipment is often much easier to implement than other controls. Various types of PPE can easily be utilized in a number of workplace scenarios and can even act as a temporary solution to bridge the gap while a more permanent fix is introduced.

Also remember that safety training can be an effective preventive action. In many cases, the incident may have occurred because an employee didn’t receive proper training, or their training was outdated. Safety training can help employees understand the uses of PPE, how to safely operate machinery, the risks of working with chemicals and hundreds of other topics.

While deciding on your chosen CAPAs is important, communicating your decisions with your employees is crucial. If a CAPA is assigned to a particular employee, conduct a follow-up with them to make sure it is completed. If a preventive measure requires a process change, make sure the change is well documented.

If not everyone is aware of the CAPAs you decide to put in place, there is a risk of the same incident occurring again.

Boost Your Safety Program

While so much of the occupational health and safety (OHS) industry these days is about being proactive and recognizing — and then hopefully eliminating — hazards before they can even become an issue, accidents do still happen. And when they do, everyone needs to be prepared.

For more than 30 years, SafetySkills has worked to incorporate important occupational safety topics into more than 950 mobile-friendly, interactive training courses.

See how SafetySkills can help you create an intuitive, functional and effective outcome-based safety training program that can help you document safety incidents, take steps toward preventing future incidents, implement engaging safety training and much more.

Ready to uplevel your online training and EHS management program? Get started with SafetySkills!

Now, more than two years later, much of the American workforce has settled into their new normal, whether that be working fully remotely, utilizing a hybrid role between the office and working from home, or back at their normal jobsite but perhaps with some social distancing guidelines in place.

Now more than ever, employers are implementing online training strategies to ensure their entire workforce is caught up on regulatory training requirements, while also utilizing the technology to teach employees new skills and address workplace safety concerns.

Mobile Training Is Easier Than Ever

Conducting employee training is one of the most important things any organization can do. New employees need to be trained on processes and procedures that may be unfamiliar to them, while all employees must stay up to date on regulations.

Online training can help your workforce get caught up on regulatory training requirements or maybe even learn new skills without requiring large numbers of employees to congregate in one area. 

Transitioning your safety training to an online training program provides a wide range of benefits, for both your company and your employees.

Increased flexibility allows users to complete their training from any location, meaning it doesn’t matter if you have employees in the office, at home or in the field. Additionally, you can introduce new information through pre-training before full training immersion takes place.

Accessibility options mean your employees don’t all have to be fluent in English — they can take training in their native language, which will help their understanding as well as their satisfaction. 

Staying compliant is crucial in any industry, and online training lets you know your training material is always up to date with safety regulations. Plus, it is easy to offer retraining for your employees over any topic you’d like.

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Now Is the Time To Take Safety Training

Despite the importance of completing training over safety topics, employers and employees alike often feel it takes time away from the job at hand. With online training, course completions can be done from any location, and what better time than when workers can’t fully do their normal jobs?

Many safety topics don’t require hands-on training and are perfectly suitable for online coursework, such as electrical safety or lockout/tagout. These are both training areas that affect a large number of employees but are easily offered through virtual training.

Additionally, while all personal protective equipment (PPE) should be tried on and tested before being used in the field, now is the perfect time to introduce, or reintroduce, all of your employees to the different types of PPE. Utilizing online training for PPE allows employees to become more comfortable with equipment they may encounter on the job.

Train Employees on Soft Skills

While safety topics are often crucial for a particular job, and for your employees and the company to meet regulatory compliance, there is an entirely different set of skills that create fully trained, well-rounded employees: Soft skills.

Employers often overlook the inclusion of soft skills in a training curriculum because they don’t seem to directly correlate with company performance or contribute to the bottom line. However, this is an inaccurate assumption. 

A study by researchers at Harvard University, Boston University and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business found that employees who received training on a variety of soft skills, including communication, time management and problem solving, helped grow productivity by 12%. Almost one year following training, the company’s return on investment was up 256%.

So what soft skills should you be training your employees on? There are a wide variety that can be useful, but here are a few universal soft skills that can help boost individual, team and company-wide performance.

Time management

It likely goes without saying that time management is a crucial skill every employee  should learn. Perhaps more than any other soft skill, this is one that can most directly affect a company’s bottom line. If workers cannot manage their own time well, they will likely be unproductive and waste the company’s time and resources.

Problem solving

Similar to time management, employees at any level should be able to demonstrate problem-solving skills. The basic tenets of problem solving are being able to assess a situation and find a solution. While some people are inherently good at creative thinking and others excel at critical thinking, problem-solving skills can be cultivated no matter what.

Communication

Strong communication skills are important both on and off the job. Think about all the interactions you have each day, from grabbing a morning coffee to meeting with clients or going out to eat. Speaking, body language and active listening are crucial for these encounters, but don’t forget about electronic communication as well, which is becoming increasingly common, even for formal communication.

Positive attitude

You may consider positivity as relevant only to public-facing employees, such as those in customer service or hospitality roles, but positive attitudes throughout the company help keep employee morale up and create a healthy working environment.

As many employees take on fully remote or hybrid roles, these soft skills will become even more crucial, not only due to adjusting to new and potentially changing schedules, but also adjusting to less direct managerial oversight. Ensuring your employees have solid time management and communication skills, for example, will be imperative moving forward.

Including both hard skills and soft skills in your company’s training curriculum makes for well-rounded, satisfied employees, which leads to an efficient, productive company.

Safety Means Mental Health, Too

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly one in five U.S. adults suffered from some type of mental illness in 2019, and the numbers have not improved since COVID-19 hit the United States in January 2020 and thrust millions of Americans into isolation, unemployment and illness.

In recent years, numerous studies have been conducted on mental health in adults, with most focusing on millennials (25-40 years old in 2021) and the adult segment of the Gen Z generation (18-24 years old). But studies have found that every working generation suffered from a mental health issue during the pandemic (71% of Gen Zers, 59% of millennials, 36% of Gen Xers and 22% of baby boomers).

Of course, every organization will have their own mental health-related issues to address, due to different company sizes, industries, jobsite setups and employee demographics. However, here are a few options that practically any workplace could look into implementing:

• Let employees take mental health days
• Encourage a healthy work-life balance
• When possible, keep work at work
• Provide mental health resources
• Create and maintain quiet spaces

Mental health awareness should — without question — be part of your workplace culture and can easily be tied into any safety program. The best thing you can do is talk to your employees. Find out what their concerns are, work together to come up with solutions and be open in continuing discussions.

Understand OSHA Reporting

As with most government-related topics, OSHA recording and reporting requirements may seem complicated and overwhelming. However, it is often these types of topics where it is even more important to get things right, especially when it comes to COVID-19.

Knowing when to track incidents and what kinds of records you need to maintain can help your company meet OSHA compliance and, ideally, avoid costly fines. With OSHA records, there are three main terms you will come across:

Recording is simply the act of tracking an on-the-job injury or illness. There are multiple forms and logs that need to be filled out and maintained by each company, with different details required of each one.

Reporting means notifying OSHA of certain outcomes from occupational incidents, such as a death. These types of incidents must be reported within a certain timeframe, depending on the occurrence.

Submitting is similar to recording, in that this does not apply to all employers. However, for those that fall within the restrictions, there is a specific injury and illness form that needs to be electronically submitted to OSHA each year.

While it may go without saying, training your entire workforce not only helps to minimize safety risks, it also means you may be less likely to have an on-the-job incident that needs to be recorded.

Whether you have employees returning to the office and needing safety training refreshers, or you now have a remote workforce that may need training over cyber security issues, introducing online training allows employees — in any location — to receive the necessary safety training.

Start Training Remotely Today

For more than 30 years, SafetySkills has helped train employees around the world on both workplace and off-the-job hazards, along with numerous HR-compliant topics and valuable soft skills. All our training can be individually assigned so you can create a custom training program that can be completed at any time, from anywhere, on any device as long as the user has access to the internet.

Contact SafetySkills today to learn more about ensuring your employees can be productive and continue learning whether they are working from home or have returned to the normal workplace environment.

Ready to start your online safety training program with SafetySkills?

However, compliance doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are five easy steps to follow to make sure you are setting your safety program, and entire organization, up for success from an employee safety standpoint and from a legal standpoint as well.

Establish safety policies and procedures

This probably feels like it should go without saying, but any solid safety program must start with creating complete policies and procedures for your workplace. If something is important to the success of your business and the safety of your workers, it should be documented. These policies and procedures do not have to be sophisticated or complicated —  they just need to be accurate for your needs.

As you’re crafting your safety policies and procedures, consider getting input from all levels of your company. Also, keep in mind that you’re creating a living document that must be maintained regularly. As things change, you should update your documents. Any policies and procedures that remain static will inevitably become outdated and irrelevant.

Looking for more online safety training courses?

Invest in employee training

When solid safety training is implemented, you can be sure your employees are aware of the correct steps to take to create a safe working environment. While you need to be aware of workplace-specific hazards, there are many general safety topics employees should be trained on. For example, in 2020, slips, trips and falls accounted for nearly 17% of workplace fatalities, but this type of accident can often be easily avoided by offering a fall safety course.

One important factor to keep in mind is that over the last five years alone, Hispanic and Latino workers have seen the highest-increasing rate of workplace fatalities, rising from 16% of all workplace fatalities in 2016 to more than 22% of such deaths in 2020. In many cases, employees with limited English-language skills cannot fully understand given safety training, or cannot easily convey their difficulties. Every employee has the right to work safely. You must be sure you are providing information and training for your employees in a format — and language — they understand.

Continue employee awareness

Training is crucial, but it is also important that you make it easy for employees to keep safety top of mind at all times. OSHA provides numerous types of free downloadable or purchasable safety content that can be hung up or placed around your worksite, from quick fact sheets to larger posters and even multi-page booklets. Whether you want to inform workers of proper handwashing technique or post specific safety regulations, keeping safety reminders around at all times helps instill a safety culture.

An oft-overlooked part of employee awareness includes worksite first aid measures. Every employee should know where first aid kits are kept at any location, from an office to a remote construction site. They should also be aware of site-related first aid measures that may need to be taken and pertinent information to inform superiors. Additionally, multiple employees should be trained on any specialized equipment you may have, such as an AED machine.

Encourage open communication

Most companies like to believe they have an effective communication system in place, and they very well may be good at disseminating information throughout their organization. But when information only goes in one direction, can you really consider that communication? At that point, all you are doing is telling.

Of course top-down communication makes sense when it comes to relaying employee training and continued safety awareness, but those in management positions should also listen to their employees. Two-way communication is especially important when it comes to safety because, after all, those workers below management level are the ones doing the jobs you are wanting to train over. They know the work the best, and can help a safe and effective worksite.

Conduct audits and inspections

You can have all the best training and safety systems in the world, but without testing those systems and processes, you’ll never know if what you’re doing is working. Compliance audits and safety inspections allow you to not only make sure employees are taking the correct measures, but also ensure that your systems are still effective. 

Many times, employees feel like process audits are set up almost as a trap to catch them doing something incorrectly, whether they actually are or not. However, audits should never introduce this kind of pressure. During every audit, whether announced or unannounced, make sure all employees know they aren’t being tricked. Instead, use this time to confirm your processes are strongly in place, or, if employees are working a different way, understand why. Maybe the different — but “incorrect” — way is actually what you should be doing.

An Online Training Partner Can Help

Whether you are needing to start getting serious about your safety compliance or are just looking at ways to expand and improve your organization’s ability to manage your safety program, choosing an experienced online partner can help in many ways.

Conduct a job hazard analysis

OSHA makes it clear that employers are required to “provide a workplace free from serious recognized hazards” for all employees. Therefore, it is vital you understand what these potential hazards are in your workplace. Depending on your industry and your specific jobsite, there could be any number of different hazards present, including electrical equipment, dangerous goods or heavy machinery. 

Conducting a job hazard analysis (JHA) will help you understand the most hazardous jobs in your workplace, what those specific hazards entail, and corrective and preventive measures you can take to reduce or completely eliminate the likelihood of accidents, injuries and illnesses. The right online partner makes it easy to conduct these crucial assessments so you can focus on safely moving forward.

Have proper incident documentation

While so much of the occupational health and safety industry is about being proactive and recognizing — and then hopefully eliminating — hazards before they can even become an issue, accidents do still happen. And when they do, everyone needs to be prepared. This means understanding what needs to be reported, how, and to whom. Complete and accurate reporting ensures the incident is resolved properly. It also helps to show where additional training or safety precautions may be needed.

Unfortunately, not all companies have clear and consistent incident management procedures. There are certain steps that must be taken and all employees should receive training in this area. Having correct and complete incident forms available for any employee to fill out means no matter who was involved, you can trust that you will have proper documentation for your own review as well as for official submission.

Be aware of the modern learner

Traditionally, safety programs were an in-person, classroom function. Employees would spend one or many days in safety training, documentation was kept in folders in the office and safety records were always in physical form. These days, with nearly 90% of Americans owning smartphones and more employees than ever finding themselves doing remote work, safety programs have adapted and must continue doing so.

Taking your training online allows for increased access for all employees, makes managing the full safety program easier for members of a safety department or HR and allows for quicker and more effective adjustments as organizational needs — or governing regulations — change.

Stay on top of OSHA reporting

Since enforcement is part of OSHA’s mission, they regularly conduct workplace inspections, often following a worker complaint, and during these reviews they may request to see various records of injuries and illnesses. Because OSHA inspections can result in potentially serious fines, it is wise for all employers to make sure their recordkeeping is thorough and accurate, and aligns with what OSHA would expect to see.

Ensuring you are doing everything fully by the book and up to OSHA standards can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Working with an expert in safety training can help you get up to speed and make sure your records are prepared for an inspection or for OSHA submission.

Let SafetySkills Help You Simplify Compliance

While it should go without saying, training serves as the foundation for helping your entire workforce minimize safety risks, making your organization less likely to fall out of compliance and your workers less likely to have an on-the-job incident that needs to be recorded.

Taking online safety training is convenient as each of your employees can receive training on a wide range of topics, from the uses of various PPE to understanding industry- or job-specific OSHA regulations..

Another benefit to taking training online is how easy it is to repeat training as often as is needed — or as often as you’d like. Some OSHA regulations require training to be conducted at least annually.

It’s never a wrong time to evaluate your current safety program, or implement a new one, to protect your employees and ensure you are adhering to OSHA standards. Contact SafetySkills today to see how we can help you get a head start on improving your safety program and keeping you in compliance.

Ready to start your online safety training program with SafetySkills?

Over the last five years, Hispanic and Latino workers have seen the highest increasing rate of workplace fatalities of any ethic group, rising from 16% of all workplace fatalities in 2016 to more than 22% of all such deaths in 2020. 

Similar trends can be seen in other populations with high numbers of limited English proficient (LEP) workers, including immigrant populations, and are largely attributed to language barriers when it comes to employee training. This is a major concern for industries that employ large numbers of LEP workers, such as construction, agriculture and service industries.

It is hard to identify exactly what role English-language proficiency has in these statistics, but common sense and the worker’s own experiences tell us that LEP employees will face many additional challenges when it comes to workplace safety, particularly when they work in environments that are not set up to accommodate them.

Reports Highlight Trouble Understanding Safety Training

It is likely you have heard the old phrase that the United States is a melting pot of different cultures. The latest U.S. Census shows more than 21% of U.S. households speak a language other than English, with nearly 1 in 7 Americans speaking Spanish. In fact, only Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Spain have more Spanish speakers.

Additional Census data reported that roughly 68 million people — more than 8% of the population — speak English “less than very well” regardless of what language is primarily spoken in their homes. This group would also be considered as limited English proficient.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, “language differences between immigrant workers and their supervisors and coworkers are one of the most frequently cited challenges companies face in promoting safety among immigrant workers.” The reasons are fairly obvious. 

In a study conducted by the Center to Protect Workers’ Rights (CPWR), in conjunction with OSHA, Spanish-speaking construction workers were polled about their experiences with health and safety on the job. They were also provided with a 10-hour training course conducted in Spanish, with Spanish-speaking trainers and Spanish-language versions of OSHA handouts and brochures. 

Most workers stated that “when they took other training in English, they did not understand a substantial amount of course content. They added that, even when they understood what was being said, they did not have the English language skills to ask questions or participate in discussions.”

The workers all felt that receiving training in their native language was helpful, and nearly all reported they wanted more (and more effective) safety and health training delivered by Spanish-speaking trainers. 

They noted that supervisors and coworkers who did not speak Spanish were less willing to explain things to workers with limited English, and as a result they often told the workers to simply skip safety procedures.

Many of the workers were also able to point to examples of past onsite incidents they experienced which they felt were directly related to either not receiving proper training, or to not understanding the English-language training they did receive. Many incidents involved workers who simply did not know the proper procedures or what PPE they needed. Others involved workers ignoring instructions because they did not understand what they were being told.

Not surprisingly, many companies find the more abstract safety and environmental hazards are some of the hardest to convey to LEP workers. Hazards such as fires or falls are easy to understand and easy to demonstrate using simple imagery. 

Invisible chemical hazards or complex safe work procedures can be much harder to explain without a shared vocabulary. Technical jargon also may not translate well, and workers with a low level of education may have difficulty understanding more complex or technical topics, even with proper translation.

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Training in the Workers’ Native Language Is More Effective

Very little research has been done into the efficacy of teaching safety in the learner’s native language versus a second language. Most of the research is focused on young LEP students in grade school, where teaching English proficiency is considered just as important as subject matter proficiency. 

These studies all seem to agree that students learn the subject being presented more quickly and effectively if they are taught in their native language, so they instead focus primarily on how various techniques impact English language acquisition. Perhaps this is because the first point seems so obvious as to not merit study. Of course students will understand the content better if it is delivered in a language they can understand.

The few studies that have been conducted regarding occupational training for adults agree with that common assumption. The CPWR study found that after receiving the 10-hour OSHA training in Spanish, the construction workers “reported substantial changes in awareness and work practices.” They reported significant increases in the use of fall protection and personal protective equipment, said they were more aware of workplace hazards and were more comfortable asking their supervisors to address them.

Before the training, only 2% of the study group had ever read a safety data sheet. After training, that number jumped to 93%. Perhaps most importantly, all of the workers reported they now discussed health and safety with their coworkers and were aware of hazards they had not been aware of before, even with English-language training. 

One participant, a 60-year-old electrician who had been working in the U.S. for 23 years, said, “After the training, I am more responsible and careful. I make sure that workers with not much experience know how to deal with dangers. I make them use PPE.”

Studies done in the agriculture and hospitality industries showed similar results. Not only did workers who received training in their mother tongue report better understanding of and adherence to safety protocols, their employers also reported a decrease in injury incidents and a general improvement in efficiency and employee morale. 

The most dramatic impacts were found at companies that fully embraced their LEP workers and provided bilingual training and educational materials along with other tactics such as language training for supervisors and employees, bilingual hazard communication programs, and cultural outreach.

Employee Understanding Is Required by Law

In addition to being more effective, in many situations native-language training may be required by law. While OSHA regulations do not explicitly state that training must be provided in alternate languages at any particular time, OSHA has issued policy statements and letters of interpretation that make it clear that OSHA requires training to be provided in a manner that the employee can understand. According to a policy statement memo:

“It is the Agency’s position that, regardless of the precise regulatory language, the terms ‘train’ and ‘instruct,’ as well as other synonyms, mean to present information in a manner that employees receiving it are capable of understanding…In practical terms, this means that an employer must instruct its employees using both a language and vocabulary that employees can understand. For example, if an employee does not speak or comprehend English, instruction must be provided in a language the employee can understand. Similarly, if the employee’s vocabulary is limited, the training must account for that limitation. By the same token, if employees are not literate, telling them to read training materials will not satisfy the employer’s training obligation. As a general matter, employers are expected to realize that if they customarily need to communicate work instructions or other workplace information to employees at a certain vocabulary level or in language other than English, they will also need to provide safety and health training to employees in the same manner.”

Additionally, some OSHA training provisions include specific requirements that the employer ensure and verify actual comprehension of the material, not just completion of a training program. 

The lockout/tagout standard, for example, requires the employer to “ensure that the purpose and function of the energy control program are understood by employees and that the knowledge and skills required for the safe application, usage, and removal of the energy controls are acquired by employees.” Failure to establish employee competency could leave an employer vulnerable to OSHA fines, not to mention possible employee injuries. 

Other standards such as bloodborne pathogens require that employees be given opportunities to ask questions during training. This is another indication that comprehension is essential to fulfilling the training requirement.

Finally, OSHA’s General Duty clause provides an umbrella requirement that employers provide employment “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.” If language barriers are preventing an employer from meeting this general duty through proper training and hazard communication, that is a clear violation of the law.

Most Jobs Require Training

Some employers are inclined to think that simple jobs are not necessarily hazardous, and have a tendency to place LEP employees into these roles in part because they feel less training is required. However, nearly all job tasks will require at least some level of training. 

Every role and task should undergo a job hazard analysis, which will often uncover everyday hazards such as ergonomic risks from lifting, reaching or repetitive motions, and fall hazards related to the use of ladders or maintenance of walking and working surfaces. The need for safety training over these everyday hazards should not be overlooked.

Even employees who experience very few hazards in their direct job duties will need at least some training over emergency procedures and how to respond to fires, spills and other incidents in their work areas. In some cases, an LEP worker may actually require more training over these basics, because they may not be able to read or understand warning signs, labels and other workplace instructions.

It’s imperative that all employees know how to identify hazardous areas, equipment and chemicals in the workplace, even if they don’t work with them directly, and that they understand the reporting procedures if they witness a safety incident. Finally, all employees need to understand their rights and responsibilities on the job.

Training Needs To Be More Than a Simple Translation

Many employers and training content providers are happy to simply translate the text of their English-language training into Spanish and provide that translation alongside or instead of the English text or narration. This bare minimum approach, however, reduces training efficacy and does not go far enough to enhance learner understanding. 

According to NIOSH, to be effective, training efforts “must go beyond simple translations of existing English-language materials; the format, content and messages should be customized for the target audience.”

Inclusion of multimedia elements such as sound, imagery and interactivity are all proven to impact the overall learning experience. If these elements are not also translated, their impact is often lost. 

Workers involved in the CPWR study were asked how OSHA training courses and materials could be improved, and overwhelmingly they asked for Spanish-language videos, graphics and other supporting materials. Hands-on exercises, interactive training scenarios and supplied reference documents should all also be provided in the learner’s native language, and in a vocabulary that can be understood.

Language Skills Training Is Also Valuable

The CPWR study participants also requested qualified, Spanish-speaking trainers, not just translators who know the language but may not be familiar with the safety concepts involved, and may have trouble answering learner questions. In situations where textbooks or computer-based training is used, the training materials should be translated by experts, and employees should be provided opportunities to ask questions of skilled trainers who also speak their native language, just like their English-speaking counterparts.

Teaching all workers to understand basic English concepts, such as the meaning of warning signs and common safety phrases, is also incredibly important. Similarly, it is beneficial to teach supervisors some basic occupation-related phrases in the employees’ native language, so they can better communicate with all of their workers. Having even one supervisor who is fluently bilingual can have a major impact on the health, safety and efficiency of LEP workers.

Companies that have a consistent commitment to bridging communication divides and growing the language abilities of all employees have, on the whole, significantly better health and safety records, and notably higher customer and employee satisfaction rates, than companies that have no plan in place to accommodate LEP employees.

Finally, corporate safety culture is a major part of the equation. All employees, including those with LEP, need to feel comfortable reporting hazards or asking questions. Bilingual policy and procedure documents should be available, and when possible signs and labels should have bilingual information as well. 

The corporate culture should also be sensitive to the cultural differences among their workers, particularly cultural beliefs that might discourage workers from discussing hazard concerns with their supervisors, either because general safety concepts are not emphasized in their home country or because their native culture discourages employee complaints.

Online Training Can Be an Effective Part of the Solution

Online training courses have been shown to have significant advantages in many areas, particularly when it comes to occupational health and safety training. This remains true when it comes to providing training in languages other than English, as long as the training provider understands the needs of LEP learners and is equipped to rise to the challenge. 

Online training can make it easy to have the exact same training available in multiple languages, and the self-paced nature of most online training can be very beneficial for learners who are struggling with language and educational barriers.

When done correctly, online training can also provide learners access to subject matter experts who can answer their questions, and can be more easily kept up to date as regulations and industry recommendations change. The challenge is finding the high-quality options among a sea of lower-quality competitors. 

Always look for all of the same features you look for in quality English-language training, such as interactive elements and robust support options, and check to ensure the alternative language options are fully translated and contain all of the same elements. Avoid “bilingual” training that is little more than an English-language course with closed captioning in another language, as this is proven to be not nearly as effective as a fully-immersive experience.

The rising availability of training materials in languages other than English is providing training managers with a bevy of new tools, but it is still important for EHS departments to evaluate the efficacy of these training materials and to consider them only one part of a larger approach to providing effective training and supervision for all workers.

Contact SafetySkills today to see how our 30+ years of training knowledge — which includes training in multiple languages around the world — can help your safety program take the next step toward ensuring the safety of all your employees, no matter their background.

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