Training Management Software and Its Impact on EHS Departments

Your company’s safety program is only as good as the training you provide to your team. How else can you hold them accountable for upholding policies and procedures that are meant to protect them at work?

The truth is, only about 31% of workers in the US receive formal job training. If companies can’t put a better emphasis on training for core job functions, what does this imply for the focus on safety training?

The learning opportunities you provide to your employees are critical to your company’s success. But given the often complex nature of environmental, health and safety, ensuring each employee is up-to-date on training requirements can be a full-time job in itself, even for small companies.

Let’s explore three key benefits of using training management software in your EHS department to promote a safer work environment.

Track Skills and Competencies

Simply teaching your employees about a safety subject isn’t always enough to know they understand the material. Until you see them respond to a situation (which hopefully you never have to), you can only assume they understand what’s expected of them.

But what happens when a safety issue arises and you have team members who aren’t as prepared for the event as you thought?

Training management software helps to remove the guesswork from employee readiness by showing you the type of training each employee has completed and how they performed on their training requirements.

This visibility into competencies is crucial because it doesn’t allow for employees to simply go through the motions of safety training. You may have employees who don’t take it seriously and are completing training activities to be done with them, rather than learn from them.

As a result, you get better insight into what each team member has truly learned and where they could use additional training.

Create Powerful Reports

How are you using all the training data you amass?

Training data does more than simply tell you who completes their requirements. You can tap into it to:

• Compare safety-related incidents with training completion
• Gauging the financial impact of safety training on the organization
• Calculate training costs
• Identify potential candidates for job openings or promotions
• Establish key metrics to measure the training’s effectiveness
• Improve training processes or other parts of your safety program

Using a centralized training management program gives you the ability to collect this data in a single source. You can then turn this data into powerful insights and reports and use it to make better-informed decisions regarding your safety training program.

Understand Your Training’s Organizational Impact

Some safety training may seem so straightforward and “common sense” that you may have employees wondering if it’s even necessary. You may have other employees asking why they have to take safety training that seemingly doesn’t apply to them.

“Occupational health and safety is a living, breathing organism that constantly is evolving out of necessity,” writes Rick Taft, EHS manager for Pitney Bowes Presort Services. “People responsible for the safety and health of (others) have an obligation to stay current and continue their education in the field.”

Workplace safety training exists for several reasons, but those reasons aren’t always as understood as actual proof that the training is, in fact, necessary.

Using reports and other data derived from training management software and other sources can help to put training’s necessity into perspective. For example, showing a correlation between an increase in hazard training and a decrease in workplace safety incidents could help others to see the impact training has on the organization.

How Will Better Training Management Benefit Your Business?

When you have well-trained employees, you have productive employees. Safety training is far too important to simply assume employees have taken away the right information and insights. You can use training management software to gauge their skills, competencies, and completion rates to feel confident about their work abilities. Safety training has a lot of moving parts that are just too much to handle without some sort of organized system. When you’re able to rely on a single source to facilitate your training, you’re better able to scale your training efforts and keep your system running smoothly and effectively.

Request a free trial of EHS Insight to see how training management software can benefit your workforce.