Tackling Insufficient Training in the Construction Industry

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In its educational booklet on how to prevent the top three most common construction injuries, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health stated that worker inexperience and lack of training are at or near the top of the list of causes.

Lack of proper training and education is an industry-wide problem, and you can’t fix it by yourself. But you can do something. Stop thinking of it as an “administration” problem and start thinking of it as a “risk-mitigation” problem.

Three Steps to Take Right Now

Move some training online.
Face-to-face training—or even training someone has to drive to the office to take on a computer—doesn’t work in some circumstances. It’s clunky, time-consuming, and expensive. For many topics, employees should have access from their mobile devices so they can train from home or the job site on their phones or tablets. Online training offers videos and possibly more interactive training than face-to-face training. It can also solve the language barrier problem by offering the same training in different languages. Face-to-face training that’s job-specific and site-specific is still valuable but consider how much more training an employee could get if it were online.

Train new hires before they go to the job site.
Require new hires to complete orientation before setting foot on the job for the first time. Make that training count. Make it specific to their type of contracting work. Electricians, for example, should have different training for scaffolding work than plumbers.

Use toolbox talks as training opportunities.
Though there is no OSHA-required interval for safety meetings, you should schedule them as warranted by the risks associated with that job, job site, change in conditions or hazards, and level of worker experience. Use the job hazard analysis as the basis for your content.

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KPA provides Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) software, EHS consulting services, and award-winning training content for hazardous industries. KPA is dedicated to helping organizations minimize risk so they can focus on what’s important—their core business.