Raising safety awareness

There are a few reasons why eLearning is becoming more and more important for large organisations – and it’s not only lower cost. A more flexible and demanding labour market has increased the number of people working from home or as part of a temporary workforce. This change in workplace demographics has forced management to find a way to make sure all employees go through relevant training. With eLearning it doesn’t matter where they are located or what language they speak. All employees can complete an eLearning training course at their own pace and their own time. They can also go through the required assessments and all the feedback is saved and forwarded to a manager responsible. At the same time a whole training trail is safely stored and can be accessed by managers any time from basically any place in the world. Automated processes to enrol and remind an employee about necessary eLearning courses help HS and HR managers to manage Health and Safety procedures within their organisations.

The other reason for an increase in eLearning is a greater awareness of problems an employee can encounter in a workplace. Highest management realises that a modern workforce requires a bigger number of necessary trainings. For example ergonomics, lone working, sexual harassment are just some of the areas that need to be addressed to keep a workplace healthy and efficient. If management wants to address a problem fast and to the whole organisation without eLearning all that would be next to impossible (or at least very very expensive). Also all the trainings need to be repeated at least every year to make sure all procedures are understood.

Of course not all organisations are ready for the shift – in some it might be connected to a very specific and complicated training process that requires a human-to-human approach. In others there may be a requirement for a very specific certification process. But in some HS departments it’s also a fear that technology will replace a human and decrease the quality of training. The truth is Health and Safety eLearning has to be run and maintained by an experienced HS Manager. Only he can make sure the quality of courses matches the needs and legal requirements of an organisation.. If not, he’s the person that can adjust the content and assure the highest standards of training. Also eLearning helps managers to control the whole training process in a much bigger scale than it’s possible with any other type of training programmes. With the help of an LMS system, HS Managers can focus on content and it’s quality by decreasing (or rather automating) the administrative part of the work.

4 main advantages of introducing Health and Safety eLearning (based on system and content from EssentialSkillz)

1. Cost - when compared to traditional training methods e-learning is far more cost effective, reduces downtime, can be done at the users own pace, and compliance can be recorded via the Management system

2. Legal Requirements - No training method is guaranteed to cover 100% again legal action however e-learning and more importantly the fact that training is recorded in the Management system will mitigate against legislative action

3. Uptake - The system is designed for high compliance levels if staff have not completed in a certain time frame customisable reminder e-mails can be sent to increase compliance levels

4. Maintaining content and company specific content - The courses are fully customisable therefore content is easy to kept up to date and maintained easily added to this you can add in your own company specifics. We also provide free course upgrades to reflect changes in legislation.

For further information go to www.essentialskillz.com/