Part 1:
Introduction
"People should be competent for the work they undertake.
Training, along with knowledge, experience and skill, helps develop such competence."
Most of us have experienced starting a new job and being thrown into the deep end. Whatever the job or location, the first few days tend to follow a pattern:
- Meet your colleagues (try to remember their names),
- Get to know the layout,
- Fix any admin or payroll issues with HR (why is there always a form missing?),
- Go over your duties with your manager or supervisor,
- Complete your assigned training
This ‘Training’ can cover a multitude of things. In an office, this might mean IT security training or training in customer service, sales or marketing software. Safety training may just extend to pointing out the fire exits or the assembly point in the parking lot. If it’s a remote job, there may be no safety training at all!
But if this job was in a warehouse or retail outlet, new employee safety training would cover safety aspects of manual handling – how many of us have been subjected to the same 15-minute video that’s at least a decade old using toddlers to demonstrate how to effectively lift with your knees?
Then the on-the-job training usually involves shadowing a long-term employee who was asked to facilitate this at the last minute. Too often this employee is unprepared, under pressure to complete their own work, and have their own ingrained work habits when completing tasks.
It’s no problem, right? You can always pick back up where you left off later...
Weeks go by and there has been no follow up. The new employee learns mostly by observing other employees.
During a particularly busy period, they are asked to place a ladder against the racking system in the warehouse and climb it to retrieve some stock. The training video didn’t cover working from height, and the employee has not had to use the ladder before.
During the task, the ladder detaches from the rack and the employee suffers a serious fall.
In the subsequent investigation, the employer can provide no proof that adequate training was provided. There was no training management system in place, beyond a tick-box that the employee watched a video.
There is no documentation of the ‘on-the-job’ training, and the safety video was not relevant to the duties that the new employee was asked to perform.
This worst-case scenario happens way too often. Don’t wait until your employees become another statistic, keep reading to take the proactive approach to safety training and learning.