Organizing and controlling a companies health & safety training and certification is a difficult thing to do. Especially since most companies don't have a full-time position for this role. Sometimes it's the Human Resources manager, warehouse supervisor, receptionist, or even the owner. Some companies don't even have any tools to help them keep track of recertification or new hires. They use Excel or Word to keep track of one of the most important aspects of their business, keeping people safe.

Workplace safety is a funny thing. Everyone unanimously agrees how important the health & safety of their workers are, but safety often gets pushed aside or delayed when people get busy. They try to find cheap options that can put their workers at risk. If H&S wasn't mandated, would your company even do it?

If you are reading this, maybe you are looking after your company's H&S. If so, here are 5 things you must know if you are in charge of your companies health & safety programs. 

1. Time

Taking on a task such as your companies health & safety (H&S) is not simple. Most people looking after their company's health & safety have another job on top of it. If you are looking after your companies H&S, you could be a warehouse manager, HR manager, receptionist, or even the owner of the company. It requires a lot of time and organization and is one of the most important jobs  Employees will require certification at different times, as some expire at different times. New employees also require training and focus to get them certified to keep their environment safe. Depending on the size of your organization and turnover, onboarding new employees might be a full-time job alone if you are doing everything manually. 
To help with this, Learning Management Systems (LMS) is a great way to keep track of this and allow you to assign employees with several courses with just a few clicks. LMS systems like Train The Trainer Plus can really help organize your employees for 'who needs what' training and also keep track of recertification's and can give you detailed reporting. It can also organize your employees into specific departments to help you keep track of unlimited branches or departments. 

2. Operator Training

Operators for equipment such as lift trucks, scissor lifts, boom lifts, or any other piece of equipment your company has are single-handedly a company's biggest liability. An accident, especially a serious one can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in product or warehouse damage, lawsuits, or even worse, fatalities. Most people would agree that almost all of these "accidents" can be avoided by training and training regularly. But so often, operators are trained too quickly or not trained at all. This is due to the people that are in charge of H&S and the people who make the financial decisions. Some people that are in charge of their company's H&S frankly don't know any better. They were thrown into this role and will trust any certificate that walks through their door.

They choose a training provider with the lowest price who doesn't train their employees but hands them a certificate and leaves quickly. I couldn't tell you how many times we got to the client's site and the manager of the site says "Can you speed up the training so we can be finished early, I need these guys back to work"

I have also heard that companies will tell their staff to go get themselves certified and they will reimburse them. Clearly not knowing that these places are certificate mills they people go to and will get their certificate without even hopping on the equipment.

See, if you let the operators go somewhere to get certified, you have no proof of training if an accident does indeed happen. Also, because there really was no "training" you have a much higher chance of an accident occurring, putting your company at risk.

What a lot of people don't know is that when it comes to Lift Trucks or equipment training In North America, there is no such thing as a lift truck License or even Certificate. I will repeat this, there is no such thing as a lift truck License or even Certificate.

What? What do you mean, there must be? 

You would think so. But because no governing body that monitors training companies, or the training that they complete, they hold the employer at fault, not the provider. Training providers do not submit anything to a government office for record-keeping or approval. Training providers can help drastically to reduce your risk at fault because if you choose a good provider, they will make sure all documents and material that your staff learn are up to date and correct. 

Equipment training is nothing similar to getting your driver's license which is monitored and documented. When you get certified by a training provider, they do not have to send your information anywhere. If its a really bad training provider, they might not even have a record of your "certificate" at all because it was paid by cash. 

The proof of training in a form of a license or certificate was created many years ago to let the employer know who attended the training program, who didn't, and when the operator required re-training. Today, there are many people who think they just need their "Ticket" and they are good to go. Unfortunately, they miss the point of what that certificate stands for. 

The document they carry should prove that they have taken a comprehensive training program and they are deemed a COMPETENT PERSON to operate that piece of equipment safely. 

To further that, if an accident occurs, your company must provide the governing body in your area with PROOF of training. The proof of training is made up of two parts. Theoretical and practical assessments/evaluations. You need to prove what your employee learned. This is always the responsibility of the EMPLOYER. 

When you look at training operators at your company, ensure you are dealing with a reputable company. A provider that will help your company customize the training requirements to your company needs and will provide you with all the documentation you need and not just a laminated card. 

There are two types of companies. One that believes in keeping their employees safe and trains them regularly, and the other that trains their staff because they are forced to. Which category does your company fall into?

3. Document storage

How well does your company organize your training documents? Do you keep them in a drawer? Have you moved to an online storage system? Or maybe you are like most companies now that are using a Learning Management System (LMS). 

Health & Safety is only as good as what you can prove as I mentioned above. Document storage is just as important as training your employees correctly. 

It's not just about the proof of training, but everything that comes around the documents you may need daily. Such as pre-operational inspections or maintenance on the equipment. When an accident happens, the governing body will ask to see those, especially pre-operational inspections. Does your staff complete this properly? Every time? Most of the time this is a big NO. Something we help companies with every day.

Most companies have a difficult time with this, again this is where an LMS can come in. 

Why is it always the case that the paper that you need is the one you can't find? Trust a training provider that will also keep good records!

4. In-House Training Programs

A lot of companies with a lot of staff or a high volume of turnover will use an internal training program. This could be one they bought off a training provider or one they created themselves. Most of the time, the H&S person comes into the company where this was already created and they have been using it for quite some time. But most of the time, the H&S person is not an instructor, so they trust their internal instructors that they are doing the right job and saying the correct things. 95% of the time, the person who oversees the company's H&S has no idea what their internal instructors are teaching and if it's even correct. After we have completed Audits upon the companies request, we found that their instructors were saying completely incorrect things to their staff. I have even heard the in-house trainer talking about his dog and his upcoming camping trip for an hour. 

Another big issue of why the in-house instructor doesn't do a great job with teaching theory is because when a company decides to make someone an internal trainer, they send them to a Train The Trainer course. This ranges anywhere from 1 to 3 days. I don't know how anyone could become a great trainer in just one day of learning about topics like stability, capacity, fuel sources, never mind learning the legislation. But even three days, it's almost impossible to teach someone this for them to learn it enough to teach others. 

To give you a comparison, before one of our instructors is able to teach what they learned to another person, they go through 600 hours of training before they are deemed a professional instructor, and that's just for lift trucks.

Because of the lack of time people get in the Train the Trainer Programs, the best option is to get these in-house trainers to focus on just the Practical Evaluation, rather than the theory. The theory is the hardest part and the most inconsistent across companies. From one trainer to another, the theory changes which puts the organization at risk.

The best option is to use eLearning to teach this theory which guarantees its taught the right way, each time and also saves the company a lot of money because it frees up the instructor. Most of the time the instructor has another role, like a warehouse supervisor or line manager. Putting them in Theory for 4 hours a day is a massive internal cost. 

eLearning fixes both those problems. 

For those who never tried eLearning or believe it isn't effective, you should read these eLearning statistics from thinkimpact.com - Some people don't want to believe it or won't implement it from biases or fear of losing their job. Don't knock it before you try a good one. 

Corporate eLearning Statistics

It isn’t just schools that have adopted eLearning – a number of corporations have also utilized this technology to help employees remain up-to-date. And, as the technology becomes more sophisticated an increasing number of novel tactics are being added as well.

• Employees state that they learn 5 times more material via eLearning.

• 77% of US companies provide online learning opportunities.

• This number was supposed to rise to 98% by 2020.

• 67% of companies offered learning opportunities via mobile devices.

• 99% of mobile users state their mobile learning enhances their experiences.

• On average, students can retain 25% to 60% more information when learning online compared to 8% to 10% when in the classroom.

• eLearning requires 40% to 60% less time learning than traditional classrooms.

Lift Certified makes all courses interactive, mobile-friendly, engaging, and animated with Micro-learning tools to make learning easy and exciting which will be a great chance for those employees who have taken the same boring course over and over again. Most warehouse workers do not want to go back to school so remove the classroom element. 

By taking away the theory and allowing your instructors to focus on the practical evaluations along with maximizing the LMS, your trainers will feel supported and your employees will be happier.  

We have been teaching health & safety for over 25 years and we see the difference it makes and the money it saves our clients.

5. How to Take Control & Make a Difference

When H&S managers want to change something, I see a lot of times they ask the long-term employee who may be their internal instructor on their opinion on whether they should change or stay the same. Now, this may come as a surprise to some of you but people hate change, especially long-term employees. As a manager yourself, you need to stop asking "should we" and start figuring out exactly why they might not want to change. Maybe stop asking at all, and do what is best for the organization. To get better at something means you must change the current way of doing something or you should expect the same results. 

I also see the person that looks over the H&S get bullied around by their in-house trainer or long-term employees because those employees may know more about the subject at hand than they do. So they feel obligated to ask what is the best thing to do. But leaving this decision up to employees is not only a bad business decision, but it's lazy and could end up costing the company a lot of money or worse an injury. Again, you need to dive into what your trainers are teaching.

Remember the 80 / 20 / 3 rule. (it's not supposed to equal 100 for all the math people out there)

80% of people in the company treat it as a job. 
20% of people in the company treat it as a career.
3% of people in the company treat it as their life.

When you ask for advice, who are you asking? Just because someone has been there for 20+ years, doesn't mean they are thinking about what is best for the company. Ask the right people, and you will get the right answers.

If you are ever stuck and want help, join our LinkedIn Community of Health & Safety Professionals where you can find answers and ask as many questions as you want. It is a group of H&S pros that group together to make a safer workplace! Click here to get accepted into the group.

- LinkedIn Group - Health & Safety Professionals

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