Keeping a safe and healthy workplace environment is important in order to protect your workers from illness and accidental injury. It is also important for the beneficial impact that safety protocols exert on salient key performance indicators (KPIs): the reduction in costs and employee turnover, and in the increase in employee morale and productivity. You may think that you understand the need for employee safety training sessions, however, ask yourself to name the benefits of online safety training that differ from other kinds of available training methods. The following paragraphs can clarify that issue by helping you understand how online safety training may help you manage risk and grow your business all while giving your employees the safety training that they need.
Reduce Training Costs
When you hire a professional training company to teach safety protocols to your employees, they generally provide their proprietary set of training materials as part of the package. This is a nice perk since it means you do not have to prepare any materials yourself but the "free" materials also increase the price of the training package.
To avoid paying the fee for a professional trainer, some businesses undertake preparation of the safety materials, or handouts, themselves. At first blush, the idea may seem like a win-win for your company, too. Your staff has the expertise in your chosen field. That expertise ensures that your staff will train your employees in safety measures that apply to your industry as well as indoctrinate your employees in your particular approach to safety concerns.
Unfortunately, there's a significant downside to this approach. Diverting management level staff from the jobs they do best adds up to additional costs in terms of lost productivity and a consequential halt in their contribution to business growth. In addition, staff now has to prepare the study materials with appropriate handouts without economies of scale. All of those considerations add to the cost of the in-house training sessions.
In the end, training by management staff instead of professional trainers results in increased overhead. This is the result of employees poorly trained in safety measures because their in-house trainers are masters of their field but not masters of professional development or professional trainers of safety measures.
The following example illustrates the issues with absorbing safety training in-house:
- Manager Tom and Engineer Sue each earn an annual salary of $100,000 for a total payroll outlay of $200,000 annually. Suppose you select these two professionals to develop the safety training materials for your company. Suppose further that it takes them six months of full-time concentration to complete the project. That means the cost of developing those training materials is now $100,000. In addition, there is an additional financial impact on the company's productivity as the safety training assignment wrenches these two important professionals from their actual vital positions in management.
- Consider also whether the quality of materials Tom and Sue create are of the same quality as those developed by professional course designers. For example, professional materials include lesson objectives, course objectives, enticing graphics, learning assessments, gamification, not to mention excellent writing, editorial and formatting skills.
Common Challenges to Instructor (Classroom) Safety Training
You may have noticed that other business leaders provide safety training using live in-classroom sessions led by an instructor. There are downsides to this training avenue, such as travel, lodging and per diem expenses.
There are also extra expenses involved in paying employees for their after-work or before-work training time, dinners brought in, not to mention the effort needed to organize and schedule such extended sessions.
E-learning and EHS compliance software can cut training expenses, manage safety compliance, and provide timely reporting on safety training. Online compliance software training often improves the way your employees work and their attitudes toward safety compliance.
Take a closer look at our E Learning software solutions.
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