Fact Sheet

Designing Workplace-safety Training

Why Train?

It is important to educate all personnel about safety rules, workers' compensation and their duties and responsibilities in the workplace. The more education and training you give employees and volunteers, the more you will find that problems are reduced with injured workers.

Supervisors should be counseled on helping injured workers fill out the necessary workers' compensation forms along with keeping track of injured workers and their return to work.

While the insurance companies are required to provide certain information to injured workers explaining their rights and benefits, explanations and a little bit of nurturing from you will go a long way in having a satisfied employee rather than a disgruntled and insecure employee who worries about losing his or her job, not getting benefits, or wanting to "beat the system."

Components

Workplace safety training needs to address general safety topics and safety topics specific to a particular work area or department.

General topics include:
Why workplace safety is essential'statistics on accidents/deaths on the job.

Description of the most common types of workplace injuries and how these injuries might have been prevented

A "Top Ten" or "Top Five" list of the most important things to remember about workplace safety?tailor these to fit the type of workplace safety injuries most common at your place of work.

Specific topics would affect:

Work Area

Campsite
Kitchen
Swimming pool
Athletic field
Arts and crafts
Playground
Other

Department

Finance
Human resources
Engineering
Security
Transportation
Other

Staff Demographics

Language(s) spoken
Literacy level
Age (senior, youth)
Mental or physical challenges

Plan for Everyone to Be Trained

Ensure that everyone in the workplace is properly trained, including: managers; supervisors; full-time, part-time and temporary employees; and volunteers.

Training schedules need to accommodate the nonprofit's program and staffing schedules. Sessions need to target new paid and volunteer staff and those who need refresher courses. They need to be flexible to accommodate new equipment or program safety considerations.

Guidelines for Training

Allow only properly authorized and instructed employees or volunteers to do any job — provide detailed safety training customized for a specific job area.
Make sure no employees do any job that appears unsafe — describe the factors that would make a job unsafe and provide guidelines for reporting the condition to the supervisor or management.
Hold emergency preparedness drills for employees and volunteers — the training should include the nature of the drill and expectations for employee and volunteers during a drill
Pay particular attention to employees or volunteers learning new operations to make sure they have the proper job skills and awareness of hazards — provide guidelines to for learning new tasks and describe expectations.
Train supervisors and managers to recognize hazards and understand their responsibilities — provide guidelines for reporting and correcting hazards.