Safety Officers Managing Required Employee Training
Sustainability & Risk/ Health & Safety / Objectives
Safety Officers Managing Required Employee Training
Objective
Regardless of the type of industry, it is likely that employees must undergo training on how to safely perform their tasks. Safety-related training can include a wide range of topics, covering many types of jobs; for example, handling toxic chemicals, lifting heavy objects, properly wearing PPE, working with manufacturing equipment, properly using cleaning solutions, safely evacuating the building in the event of an emergency, administering first aid and CPR.
In order to provide a safe working environment, it is vital that employees be trained in these areas, as well as periodically take refresher courses. Companies need to manage these training courses not only for their own internal safety practices, but also to meet regulations set by OSHA or other governing agencies. Failure to properly train employees on safety-related issues can result in penalties, fines, and overall lost productivity. For example, if an employee's certification to handle a particular substance has not been renewed because he failed to take a refresher training course, he may be prohibited by law from performing his regularly scheduled tasks, thereby causing disruption to the workflow and lost productivity.
Solution
The Health & Safety application provides safety officers with an automated system to manage the many details of assigning both basic training programs , as well as refresher training courses.
First, the safety officer enters the details of the training courses required at the site, and can upload into the Archibus document library the training course outlines, course exams, and any other supporting materials. Safety officers can establish separate entries for complete one-time training courses and related follow-up refresher courses which may need to be taken on a periodic basis.
For a particular type of work (a work category), safety managers can use the Archibus system to define the required training courses and schedule these requirements for all employees who perform this job. Additionally, if circumstances call for specialized training, that does not fall within the general requirements for the job, the safety officer can schedule these classes for individual employees.
Once the training class occurs, the safety manager can enter notes about the employee's participation and can enter into the system documents such as the employee's exam results, attendance record, or certification. This type of training documentation can be vital for proving compliance with government regulations, providing an audit trail for industry investigations, or settling disability claims.
From the employees' point of view, the Health & Safety system helps them stay abreast of scheduled classes and plan their work around these classes by providing:
- a notification system that notifies employees of upcoming classes. See Notifying Employees of Safety Program Requirements
- a self-service report for checking their past and upcoming training. See Employees Checking on their Safety Program Requirements, Work Restrictions, and Workplace Accidents
Procedures
Define Training Requirements for an Employee and Schedule the Training
- Define the type of safety-related training classes attended by your site's employees, and the required validating tables. See Defining Training Program Requirements .
- In order to assign training by job type (work category), the safety officer must first:
- define employee work categories using the Background Data / Define Work Categories task .
- assign training to work categories. See Define the Training Requirements for a Work Category.
- assign employees to work categories using the Work Categories / Track Employee Work Categories task .
- With work category information established, the safety officer can schedule training classes for an employee via their work categories.
- Employees may need to take training classes particular to a particular task or situation. These training requirements are not part of the employee's work categories. For these cases, you must assign an employee to a training program.
Document the Completion of a Training Program
When the employee has completed the training course, you can record this in the system. See Enter the Details of a Completed Training Program.
Assign Additional Training as a Response to a Workplace Accident
As a follow-up response to a workplace accident, a safety officer may determine that in order to prevent accidents such as this in the future, additional training is required for this employee. See Entering Employee-Specific Response to an Incident .