4 Steps to Build a Successful Safety Training Program

Why is a Safety Training Program So Important?

When one of your employees is involved in an accident, your company should immediately question what caused the accident and what you can do for the future to ensure it doesn’t happen again. A good place to start is to ask yourself “what could have been done differently with our safety training program in the weeks or months before the accident that could have prevented it?”

By analyzing accidents within your company, you will notice trends. The most important trend you will see is, employee behavior is at the root of most accidents that occur.

That means safety is not something you can delegate to one person. Safety must be at the root of every decision made by employees within your company.

4 Steps to Improve Your Training Program

To maintain a good safety record, or improve poor safety performance, you need to implement a safety training program that will inspire behavioral change throughout your organization. Using tools such as online training gives you a method to make training easy for employees.

You want your program to provide easy participation and engagement in training and communication around safety related messages. You want to put processes in place that will help you analyze and improve safety and accident prevention throughout your company. A successful training program starts with 4 steps.

Step 1: Identify Trends

The best indicator of future performance is past performance. You should evaluate your loss ratios and look for negative trends that could result in major accidents or safety violations you need to address with your safety training. Ask yourself two questions:

What’s the number one cause of my losses?
How are we training our employees to improve this?

If you find it difficult to identify these trends, your insurance company can help you analyze accidents to look at frequency and severity. Even if the accidents are minor, you still want to address the trends that led to these accidents.

The severity of an accident is mostly a matter of luck. You want to get ahead of the trends that lead to accidents and stop them to keep your employees and your company safe.

Step 2: Create Strategy to Target Challenges

Once you have identified your trends, you need to create a strategy to develop your safety training program. Keep in mind, training leads to awareness, and awareness reduces losses.

One question companies often ask is. “How much training is enough?” The short answer is, it’s never enough.

In the trucking industry, drivers should be trained during onboarding on

Defensive driving skills
FMCSA rules and regulations
Maintenance
Hours of Service

Starting with training on these topics during orientation has been shown to have a positive impact on trending violations.

Ongoing awareness training throughout the year on safety sensitive issues is important to build a strong culture of safety. This ongoing training is simple with online training systems that allow you to assign short videos that can be completed in less than 10 minutes.

This ongoing training should also include any changes to rules and regulations. Use tools that will help you track employee comprehension and that will help you maintain all training documentation. Infinit-I Workforce Solutions can provide the tools you need that will save you time and money while ensuring safety best practices stay top of mind.

Step 3: Measure Results

As you implement your safety training program strategy, you will want to monitor how your training efforts are impacting company needs and goals. A good place to start is evaluating safety scores and loss ratios to see if there are any improvements in your target problem areas.

If you see trends moving in the right direction, continue your ongoing awareness training in these areas until you reach your goals. If there are continued or new negative trends, figure out what training or other safety initiatives you can include to get on track.

Step 4: Repeat the Process

Safety is a continuous process that all employees should participate in. Accidents can happen even in the safest companies, but you can always look for the trends that lead to these accidents so you can reduce them.

Identify trends regularly, then develop a strategy to improve on these trends. Continue to measure your safety training program results and look for ways to improve.

There is no last step in this process. Training and accountability are the only ways to affect change in your organization. If your company has a high frequency of accidents and you are not training to prevent them, your frequency and severity of accidents will continue to rise.

Infinit-I Workforce Solutions Has the Tools You Need to Track Training Progress

Infinit-I Workforce Solutions is an online learning management system that makes training easy and affordable. Keep your safety message in front of your employees regularly with our training videos that help you develop orientation, ongoing, and corrective action training to deal with negative trends.

Track employee participation and progress so you know employees are getting the training they need. The reporting features available with Infinit-I will help you continue the process of improving your safety training program so you can reduce your risk.