What does health and safety training success look like for you?

This is a question that I routinely ask my clients, and I get a wide range of answers. You spend a lot of time undertaking health and safety training – so what exactly is it you want to get from it?

There are lots of variants to the answers I get, but the common theme is this - ‘We want our training to keep people safe on the job’.

Easy to say, but why is this so hard to do?

There are proven training techniques for developing skilled behaviour and habits on the job. Unfortunately, the reality is that implementing adult learning principles manually is often too expensive and time-consuming.

The good news is that over recent years there’s been an explosion in the development of online learning technologies, or e-Learning, that have overcome many of the practical difficulties of developing and health safety competence on the job. 

The bad news is that the effective use of e-Learning is still not commonplace. The issue is not just about the technology, although you certainly do need to use the right tool for the right job, it’s also how the technology is used.

For example, this is not a simple choice between online or classroom training. Both are needed. It’s how these two work together that’s one key to success. 

Another is that there needs to be follow-through from the initial theory sessions into daily work practices. There’s often a disconnect between the classroom, whether online or face-to-face, and what trainees do when they get back on the job. Here again, technology offers huge opportunities to help reinforce learning that supports on-the-job performance.

The use of digital learning technologies needs to sit within a broader competency development framework – on its own e-Learning won’t fix your problems. But, if used intelligently it can deliver success faster and at lower cost.

If you would like to explore how you can do more to keep your people safe on the job as a result of your training initiatives then join me at my next professional development webinar titled Achieving Health and Safety e-Learning Success on the 19th of May.

This event is going to re-frame how you think about health and safety e-Learning – it’s a perhaps a much bigger picture than might you imagine.

The webinar is free to attend, but, places are limited, so register today.