NIOSH emphasizes that inadequate training is a significant cause of construction injuries. To mitigate risks, KPA recommends moving some training online, ensuring new hires are trained before starting on-site, and using toolbox talks.
Article content provided by KPA.
In its 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鈥檛 fix it by yourself. But you can do something. Stop thinking of it as an 鈥渁dministration鈥 problem and start thinking of it as a 鈥渞isk-mitigation鈥 problem.
Three Steps to Take Right Now
Face-to-face training鈥攐r even training someone has to drive to the office to take on a computer鈥攄oesn鈥檛 work in some circumstances. It鈥檚 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鈥檚 job-specific and site-specific is still valuable but consider how much more training an employee could get if it were online.
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.
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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a KPA representative.
KPA provides Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) , , and for hazardous industries. KPA is dedicated to helping organizations minimize risk so they can focus on what鈥檚 important鈥攖heir core business.
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