How to improve safety training in the workplace

Over the past 200 years, occupational safety and health procedures have saved countless lives. Remember that whenever your office teams complain about completing more safety training. 

However, the importance of health and safety is no excuse for bad training interventions. Unfortunately, safety training is too often boring, repetitive, or simply irrelevant. Training facilitators should work twice as hard to create effective training material when there are many barriers to organizational learning. 

In this article, we’ll explain how to create safety training courses that make a difference. We will: 

• Define safety training 
• Introduce the major methods of safety training 
• Examine how safety training is important in office work, lab-based professions, and manufacturing.  

Employee training in today’s businesses should cover a wide range of areas. Don’t let safety training get left behind.    

What is safety training? 

Safety training educates employees about how to prevent accidents, injuries, and hazards in the workplace. It helps employees identify risks and shows them what steps to take to ensure their safety. 

The makeup of safety training is different for every workplace. Some of the topics that might appear include: 

• Legal and regulatory requirements
• Hazard recognition
• Emergency procedures 
• Personal protective equipment (PPE)
• Electrical Safety
• Hazardous materials handling and storage
• Chemical safety
• Hazard reporting and communication
• Slips, trips, and falls prevention
• Workplace violence prevention

With the right choice of topics, participants will have the knowledge, skills, and awareness necessary to identify and mitigate risks, adhere to safety regulations, and promote a safety culture within an organization.

As 2023 statistics from the UK’s HSE show, even in today’s safety-conscious workplaces, people die at work every single year—and many more suffer injuries. Not only is this disastrous for workers, but businesses are harmed through lost working days, compensation, and reputational damage. Safety training is not a cure-all solution, but it can make a huge difference to your business stability. 

What are the different types of safety training?

In this article, we will look at several key safety training methods. They are: 

• Video training 
• In-person demonstrations 
• In-person classroom training 
• eLearning  
• Soft skills training 

Together, these methods can deliver important safety knowledge to your employees. 

But as we’ve already suggested, these methods can be delivered badly. Whatever method you choose to deliver safety training, you should make sure that: 

• It explains the relative importance of different aspects of work 
• The trainer is attentive to the needs of their audience 
• It does not repeat irrelevant material. 

Too many managers, trainers, and participants treat safety training as a “box-ticking” exercise. Staff sit through the training session just to say they’ve done it. You must use these methods thoughtfully to push for a culture of compliance and safety. 

Video training 

For years, many aspects of safety training have been delivered through videos. However, whether created internally or from third-party sources, videos can have many shortcomings. They can be potentially outdated, repetitive, and unresponsive. 

However, video tutorials have some key strengths. Those include:  

• Consistency: It ensures uniformity, maintaining compliance throughout learning sessions.
• Availability on-demand: Training is accessible regardless of the trainer’s presence, catering to staff needing immediate support.
• Flexibility: Courses can be self-paced or synchronous, accommodating various learning preferences, whether participants are guided through content or provided materials in advance.

There are plenty of ways to create training videos that employees learn from. Follow the best practices in the field, and your training should improve quickly. 

In-person demonstration  

In-person demonstrations are highly effective for safety training. They provide hands-on, real-time instruction that allows participants to witness and practice safety procedures firsthand. By engaging multiple senses and offering immediate feedback, these demonstrations reinforce learning, clarify concepts, and promote safer behaviors in the workplace. 

In-person demonstrations can take forms such as: 

• Tour of the facilities 
• Mock-up activities of unsafe situations 
• PPE demonstrations 
• Fall protection 
• Chemical spill response 

If these areas of safety procedures are relevant in your workplace, an in-person demonstration is likely to be effective. 

In-person presentations 

In-person presentations are effective for delivering safety training because they provide direct interaction between trainers and participants, fostering engagement, clarification of concepts, and immediate feedback. 

Through face-to-face communication, trainers can tailor their delivery to the audience’s specific needs and learning styles, effectively demonstrating safety procedures, answering questions, and addressing concerns in real-time. This personal connection enhances the relevance and impact of the training, promoting better understanding, retention, and application of safety principles in the workplace.

In-person training can be negative and unhelpful if the facilitators are ineffective. Rigorous training evaluation helps every facilitator understand how they can do their jobs better. 

eLearning 

eLearning covers a wide range of modern learning methods. Some of its key features for safety training are: 

• Accessibility: eLearning is often asynchronous, self-paced, and available on demand. As such, the same materials can be used at different sites, for any working patterns, or even accessed remotely. 

• Flexibility: eLearning is easy to tailor to workers in different situations. If you’re conducting onboarding training with new employees, office workers need a safety training package that is very different from warehouse-based employees. eLearning techniques ensure that employees get everything and nothing they don’t need.  
• Integrated multimedia: eLearning can use video, text, images, and assessment tools like quizzes. By combining all these training formats, you can ensure regulatory compliance.  
• Scalability: eLearning is easily scalable. Whether that’s across an organization, different sites, or even different countries. 

To implement eLearning principles, you might use learning management, workplace safety, and adaptive learning platforms to ensure your staff consistently do the right thing. 

Soft skills training 

Finally, we must put in a word for soft skills training methods. Soft skills do not seem like an obvious tool for safety training. 

But a 2019 commentary from McKinsey points out that mindset is one of the major obstacles in the way of excellent workplace safety. Safety is an inevitable part of technical training – but if staff can’t discuss their safety needs openly, it will be very difficult to process all kinds of things. 

In this context, soft skills training can be a vital tool because: 

• Staff know how to have difficult conversations with their managers 
• Managers understand how safety is a part of their duty of care  
• Self-awareness of workplace safety practices makes everyone reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. 

Soft skills could significantly affect how safety issues are observed, reported, and resolved in this situation.

What are the practical applications of safety training? 

In this section, we’ll introduce three types of workplaces in which HR staff must think carefully about health and safety training. They are: 

• Office work 
• Lab-based workplaces 
• Manufacturing companies 

Labs and factories are hazardous places. Offices are less immediately dangerous, and as a result, they need more care and attention when it comes to implementing safety training. 

Offices 

In offices, trainers have got a challenge on their hands. There are very few immediate risks – but plenty of risks could be very dangerous in the wrong situation. For example: 

• Preventing falls 
• Emergency procedures 
• Manual handling 
• Electrical safety 
• Fire containment 

Training office staff in these areas is essential, but it is important not to catastrophize. After all, in most offices, these problems are unlikely to happen in any given week or month. And even if they do occur, they might be solved through common sense, good leadership, and informal cross-training. 

Safety training for today’s workers should emphasize other issues that will be pivotal for workers daily. These include: 

• Ergonomics and posture – sedentary workers are terrible for this  
• Health and wellbeing – mental health safety is important 
• Sexual harassment 
• Basic first aid. 

They will use these tools every single day. 

How to implement it

Many training methods can address these office-based safety training needs. For example: 

• Videos can cover emergency procedures, manual handling techniques, and electrical safety, providing visual demonstrations and clear instructions that resonate with office staff. Moreover, employees can easily distribute and access videos at their convenience, facilitating widespread training and knowledge retention.

• 1-on-1 consultations can be an excellent tool for improving safety awareness. These sessions allow for personalized attention and tailored guidance on specific safety concerns or ergonomic issues. Trainers can assess individual workstations, address ergonomic challenges, and offer customized solutions to improve posture and reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders. 

• eLearning platforms can deliver interactive modules on ergonomics, mental health awareness, sexual harassment prevention, and basic first aid, allowing employees to learn at their own pace and on their preferred devices. Additionally, eLearning modules can be easily updated, tracked, and assessed, providing valuable insights into training effectiveness and learner progress.

Lab-based work 

Lab-based workers need a lot of safety training. 

There are inherent risks in pharmaceutical plants, hospitals, clinical research centers, and chemical manufacturing plants. These environments often handle highly hazardous chemicals, so safety protocols are extremely serious. Health and safety training is crucial in ensuring the well-being of personnel and the surrounding environment. 

Some of the safety hazards you might encounter in a lab environment include: 

• Chemical and biological hazards 
• Fire and explosion 
• Hazardous waste 
• Occupational health risks 
• Major emergencies 

Furthermore, when laboratories employ temporary contractors, these risks are exacerbated if the company does not have a coherent safety training program. You can’t rely on informal training methods to bring everyone up to speed daily. 

How to implement it 

For great lab-based safety training, think about the following methods and techniques: 

• High-quality videos are invaluable for safety training in lab-based activities. They provide visual demonstrations of safety procedures, equipment usage, and hazard mitigation techniques. By simulating realistic scenarios and offering clear examples, videos enhance learners’ comprehension and retention of key safety concepts.

• Investigate the best types of certification for your workers. If you require workers to repeat training every time they go into the lab, they’ll waste a lot of valuable time and get very frustrated. 

• An eLearning platform can ensure that incoming workers complete relevant training modules before entering the lab. It can save time and effort and is easy to repeat whenever necessary. 

Manufacturing  

Due to industrial processes and operations risks, safety training is crucial for manufacturing businesses. Manufacturing environments involve many potential hazards, including machinery accidents, chemical exposures, electrical incidents, falls from heights, and ergonomic strains. Effective safety training equips workers with the knowledge, skills, and awareness to identify, assess, and mitigate these risks. 

In safety training programs, employees learn proper equipment operation, safe handling of hazardous materials, adherence to lockout/tagout procedures, utilization of personal protective equipment (PPE), and emergency response protocols. 

By instilling a safety culture and empowering employees with the tools to address risks proactively, good safety training reduces the likelihood of workplace accidents and injuries, protects personnel and property, ensures regulatory compliance, and enhances overall productivity and efficiency within manufacturing businesses.

How to implement it 

To improve your manufacturing safety training, think about the following interventions: 

• Make short training videos compulsory before staff even enter a facility. Just like an in-flight safety information briefing, there’s no harm in being reminded of the basics.  

• In-person demonstrations are highly effective in a manufacturing context. In a factory, there are all sorts of unpredictable machinery: demonstrations provide hands-on, real-time instruction that allows participants to witness and practice safety procedures directly. 

• There’s a valuable place for eLearning, too. Online platforms can deliver targeted compliance training to the right employees. 

Think big for excellent safety training 

Don’t let workplace safety training get you down. Sure, staff may resist training that doesn’t seem relevant to them. But there are many ways to make this training relevant, engaging, interesting, and enjoyable. 

We’ve outlined a few ways you can improve your safety training work. 
Don’t forget, though, that this sector has a lot of room for innovation and originality. This was acknowledged in 2023 by the UK government, which launched a major fund to grow new ideas.