Using Technology to Improve Workplace Safety Training
Companies often turn to technology to ensure they’re providing accessible and continuous safety training.
- By Clare Epstein
- Aug 08, 2023
Any accidental or preventable loss of life, whether it’s on the job or at home, is nothing short of a tragedy. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were over 5,000 fatal work injuries in the United States in 2021, an 8.9 percent increase from the year before. This increase in workplace fatalities illustrates a growing need for robust safety training in professional and commercial settings.
A lack of time, resources and availability of training are major drivers of insufficient safety education. Issues with communication, engagement and employee turnover also contribute. Companies therefore often turn to technology solutions to fill in the gaps and ensure they’re providing accessible and continuous safety training to diverse groups of employees completing a wide range of safety-critical activities.
Here are six important trends regarding the use of technology to improve workplace safety training:
Leveraging Learning Management Systems
Online safety training and the learning management systems designed to deliver digital safety content are essential across multiple verticals and within different types of organizations. Customers continue to purchase a wide variety of online safety training courses focusing on OSHA compliance topics, including:
- Hazardous Communication
- Bloodborne Pathogens
- Hearing Conservation
- PPE
These courses correspond directly with OSHA’s focus areas and regulations. Their utilization occurs primarily across organizations subject to OSHA regulations and compliance, such as manufacturing, industrial, facilities maintenance and construction and engineering companies.
The pandemic and OSHA’s continued recognition of online safety have contributed to the increased reliance on online safety training. As OSHA requires organizations to maintain records of their safety training for a significant amount of time, learning management systems that deliver and track this training are just as important as the training content itself. Businesses have thus come to the realization that using technology to maintain and update their employees’ training safety records is essential to achieving safety compliance.
The Power of Microlearning
Humans forget 70 percent of new information within 24 hours of ingesting it. As employers continue to embrace learning management technology as a means to deliver vital safety education to their staff, it has become clear that lengthy, monotonous training sessions are not as resonant or effective with employees long term. As such, microlearning—or the method of providing employees with short, 2- to 3-minute bursts of refresher training—is growing in popularity.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2023 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.