Five reasons your employees need safety training
It’s no mystery
organizations that invest in safety training see rewards. From reduction in incidents to workplace efficiency and improvements in morale, the benefits are endless and the pitfalls can be downright deadly. If you’re on the fence about getting your employees the training they need, take a look at this list of reasons to start training today.
Employees are more than just a line in a ledger
Your employees are people. While investments in safety training help reduce costs, everyone -customers included -will experience the value added when workers are treated with respect and humanity, not just as automatons that optimize “workflow output.” Workplace safety training has not only been shown to decrease injuries and fatal incidents, but also incidents of sexual harassment, workplace violence, and discrimination. Your employees have families, children, and lives outside of the workplace that can be affected by workplace incidents like these, and they’ll thank you for the extra training even if they resist at first.
Training increases productivity and cuts costs
Safety training saves money. It saves hours lost to illness and injury, reduces fines associated with health and safety violations, and saves money on insurance premiums. But the system only works if team members work every day to identify and eliminate workplace hazards.
By properly training your staff in safety compliance, every team member becomes part of a hazard mitigation system that will reduce lost hours and the potential inflation of insurance costs.
Improvements in morale mean improvement in workplace reputation
Employees who feel comfortable and safe at work care more about their employer and workplace. They will infuse that positivity into every facet of your business, including customer service. This principle is one of the foundations of corporate culture and reputation management. Changes in your workplace that increase employee morale, satisfaction, and efficiency while reducing incidents, conflict, and absenteeism tend to tangibly improve the reputation of your business, on and off payroll. Reputation is affected by your company’s internal culture, the way your customers are treated, and the way your employees carry themselves, speak, and interact with vendors. Employee training affects all of these factors, and training starts with Occupational Health and Safety.
Efficiency creates opportunity
Growing your business takes time and resources. By harnessing margins and reducing costs, you can allocate newly available employees and time towards innovating your business delivery, exploring new technologies, and entering new markets.
Training keeps you and your business current and fosters an atmosphere of education and self-improvement that will, over time, permeate your business. When your employees embrace continuous learning at work, it’s only a matter of time before that mindset infiltrates the rest of your business.
It’s easy
Learning management systems are making employee training more cost effective and easier to use than ever before. By making information accessible to employees through existing data networks, intranets, and cloud-based systems, training programs are now retrievable through most Internet-capable devices with little to no setup time. This provides theory training at your employees’ convenience with an automated and consistent quality of delivery.
