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Can your business afford to lose $41,353 per worker due to injury? If it can, then you may skip reading this article.
(We didn’t think so.)
Health and safety compliance are huge issues for large industries like construction, manufacturing, and healthcare. And yet, with so many responsibilities and things to take care of when running a large corporation, it’s easy to overlook this particular type of training unless it’s government mandated.
But here’s the thing: health and safety are such an integral part of your business operations that neglecting training can put your employees, customers, and even your entire organization at risk!
By investing in health and safety compliance training, you can reduce the risk of accidents, injuries, and legal penalties. That’s why in this article, we’ll explore how you can make health and safety training work for your business.
Not all health and safety training programs are created equal. Standardized, one-size-fits-all training may not meet the unique needs of your organization.
That’s where flexibility comes in. By tailoring your training programs to your business’s specific requirements, you can ensure they’re relevant and engaging for your employees.
So, especially if you’re in manufacturing, construction, or healthcare (but not only!), this article is for you.
We’ll explore how to make health and safety compliance training work for your business, no matter your industry. Let’s unlock the power of flexibility to create a safer, more productive workplace for everyone.
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Understanding Health and Safety Compliance
What exactly is health and safety compliance? How can you stay compliant, and what happens if you don’t? Let’s understand health and compliance better!
What is health and safety compliance?
Health and safety compliance is a set of standards and regulations that companies in certain industries and their employees must adhere to in order to protect the well-being of their employees, customers, and the general public.
Depending on the industry a business operates in, health and safety compliance may look different.
For example:
However, while health and safety are traditionally linked to construction, manufacturing, and healthcare, industries like hospitality, banking & finance, oil & gas, logistics, recycling, and many more need to adhere to some type of safety regulations.
Health and safety compliance also involves workplace ergonomics, emergency preparedness, and employee & office security (for instance, how to act in case of attempted robbery), among others.
It’s easy to see that hardly any workplace remains unaffected and needs to provide – even if to a lesser extent – relevant training.
How to ensure health and safety compliance
Ensuring you’re up to par with health and safety regulations is an ongoing struggle. Not only because relevant regulations change often but also because health and safety processes are part of your daily routine.
Some ways to ensure health and safety compliance are:
Consequences of non-compliance
The risks of non-compliance are not worth taking. By failing to comply, you risk the health and life of your employees, customers, and people in your community, as well as damaging the environment.
Every year, businesses face fines, legal action, and reputational damage for failing to comply with health and safety regulations.
In fact, in 2022, the average cost for organizations that faced non-compliance issues rose to approximately $14.82 million, indicating a 45% increase from 2011!
These consequences can have a devastating impact on your business, affecting your bottom line and shaking the trust of your customers.
Challenges in Health and Safety Training, and How an LMS Can Help
If health and safety training is so important, then why do statistics imply that companies don’t take the proper measures to ensure it – including offering relevant training? Would deploying an LMS make things easier?
Limited resources
Health and safety training is multi-faceted and concerns small and large businesses alike. Small businesses, though, especially at their outset, often need to prioritize expenses and leave out training as it’s not considered to be a priority for the survival of the business.
Money is not the only resource that small companies may struggle with. Time is also a serious limitation as these companies may not afford to hire an external team to develop training. But developing a training program while trying to manage a business is a tall order.
🦸 How an LMS can help:
→ With an LMS, you can build a training course on your own by repurposing content or by putting together ready-made learning content and some new material. This is a huge time- and money-saver.
→ Get access to off-the-shelf content either from the LMS’s built-in library or third platforms and store it on the LMS. With a SCORM-compliant LMS, you can easily integrate content built on other SCORM-compliant platforms, in bulk.
→ Not all LMSs are expensive. In fact, most LMSs offer customized pricing depending on your company size and users. If you’re a small company, you don’t have to pay the same price as a large one.
Disperse & diverse workforce
From a small business problem, let’s go to a large business problem. You have several branches, and employees are scattered throughout the country or continent. They may have different cultural backgrounds and speak different languages. How do you tackle training? How can you ensure that everyone is trained to the same standards and that all your branches will perform as expected?
🦸 How an LMS can help:
→ An LMS is highly scalable. It can accommodate unlimited users and courses. No matter how big or small your company is, an LMS will manage to meet your needs as you grow.
→ Most LMSs support multiple languages. You’re most likely to find yours among the options available.
→ No matter where your employees are located, your training will always be in one place – the cloud. Everyone has access to the training material as long as they have access to a laptop or similar device and an internet connection. Never worry about booking a location, paying for transportation, or creating a training schedule again!
→ An LMS is the best way to streamline training. Your online courses are the same for everyone, yet they offer diverse content to facilitate every employee to learn the way they learn best. From detailed instructional videos to quick infographics, there’s a piece of content for every preference and need.
Deskless workers
Training is traditionally viewed as a “seated” activity. Besides, it’s almost irrational to expect someone to watch a video or complete an assessment while they’re on the move. Deskless workers are the busiest bees, often working in shifts, performing manual tasks, or occupying client-facing positions that leave them no chance to allocate some time for training while on the job. Coordinating on-site training to get everyone together is almost impossible when your workforce works under these circumstances.
🦸 How an LMS can help:
→ Employees don’t need to be bound to a computer screen. Most LMSs are mobile-friendly, so content displays well on mobile devices, and some even offer a mobile app.
→ An LMS eliminates the need to create on-site training events and offers employees 24/7 access to learning resources. This enables employees to learn when it’s more convenient for them, at their own pace and in their preferred location.
→ Choose among different learning delivery methods depending on your unique training needs and the occasion. You might be better off deploying an entirely self-paced training program, or you may prefer to offer a synchronous online training program.
Even if you have to conduct the training on-site, you can still use an LMS to offer additional training resources that will enrich the learning experience and reinforce learning. This type of training delivery is called blended learning, and it’s often the best option for demanding training courses.
Complex topic
Compliance regulations are intricate and involve meticulous processes that need to be followed to the letter. That sounds easy…
🦸 How an LMS can help:
→ An LMS gives you access to engaging and effective training material that covers different learning preferences and training needs. Apart from video, audio, and text learning activities, learners can also join live sessions and online discussions for in-depth learning.
→ Encourage spaced repetition to enhance knowledge retention with assessments and microlearning resources.
→ With an LMS, you can be sure that every single employee has access to the same learning material and is trained to the highest standards. No mismatches between branches or locations.
Regularly updated regulations
Another characteristic of health & safety regulations is that they’re frequently updated, so they can be even more efficient in protecting human beings and the environment alike. Ensuring your training programs align with legal requirements can be a pickle, especially for businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions.
🦸 How an LMS can help:
→ While it’s your job to stay up to date with regional compliance requirements, the LMS may well take on the task of reminding employees to sign up for mandatory training, pick up a course they haven’t logged in in a while, or retake a training when their certificate is expiring.
→ Easily update your courses as needed. The content is already there – it just needs enrichment.
→ LMSs generate reports to help you oversee the compliance status in your company at any given moment. Check completion rates, how many certificates have been issued, and who is falling behind.
High turnover
The industries that are in most need of health and safety regulations are those with the highest employee turnover rates. In 2022, construction had a shocking 53% turnover rate, followed by manufacturing with 39%. (Turnover rates in leisure and hospitality flew over the roof with 82%!) .
This means that you’ll need to deploy training all over again for every new employee that joins the company, which sounds extremely counterproductive and costly.
🦸 How an LMS can help:
→ An LMS makes it much easier to offer employee training – and this can do wonders for decreasing retention rates. Providing employees with the tools and knowledge they need to work safely boosts their productivity and job satisfaction. According to the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index, investing $1 in workplace safety yields a return on investment of $4.
Training evaluation
With your company’s financial well-being and reputation at stake, it goes without saying that you need to have a system in place to measure the effectiveness of safety training. This is easier said than done when high-risk manual activities are involved.
🦸 How an LMS can help:
→ Your first knowledge checkpoint is learner assessments that you can build within your LMS. These will enable you to confirm employees have reached learning objectives and reinforce learning throughout the course.
→ Using an LMS with robust certificate management, you can create expirable certificates and send automatic email reminders to those who need to retake the training or an exam to renew their certificate.
→ Many LMSs offer a built-in survey builder to help you gauge learner satisfaction with your training program. While this may not offer practical proof that training is effective or that employees have reached the learning objectives, surveys give employees the chance to share their thoughts about the program.
→ LMS reports analyze the compliance status in the company and individual learner behavior and progress. You should also be able to customize your reports to access the data that matters the most to you and schedule the reports for specific intervals.
How LearnWorlds LMS Helps You Deliver Health & Safety Training
LearnWorlds helps you deliver effective health & safety training. Our platform has all the tools you need to engage learners and teach them everything they need to know without disrupting their work day.
Diverse learning delivery methods
Our platform supports multiple learning delivery methods, enabling you to shift from one to another as your needs change or use more than one method concurrently. More specifically, LearnWorlds supports:
✅ Virtual Instructor-Led Training – VILT ( real-time sessions)
✅ Blended learning (a mix of online and offline)
✅ Hybrid learning (some can be attending on-site and others joining online)
✅ Self-paced (entirely asynchronous)
✅ Mobile learning (delivered on mobile devices or even via your own branded mobile app)
Multiple learning activities
Nothing like a good mix of content to engage learners and help them learn more effectively. It’s not just that everyone has their preferred learning content – in some cases, it’s necessary to choose a particular type of content depending on what you want to achieve.
For example, if you want to offer quick job aids to your employees, you’ll need to create easily digestible material, like a step-by-step infographic. But let’s see all the options you’ve got with LearnWorlds LMS:
✅ Interactive video
✅ eBooks
✅ PDF infographics
✅ Assessments & self-reflection activities
✅ SoundCloud tracks
✅ YouTube
✅ Live sessions (via Zoom or Webex)
✅ Slideshare presentations
✅ SCORM/HTML5 packages
✅ Surveys
✅ Embedded content & external links
Native, branded mobile apps
LearnWorlds enables you to build your own branded mobile app for iOS and Android. Enable deskless employees to access training at their own leisure and when they need it the most – all while reinforcing your brand via a mobile app that is entirely yours!
Learner assessments
LearnWorlds has one of the most impressive assessment builders in the LMS market with advanced feedback mechanisms and settings.
Create from a simple multiple-choice quiz to video and audio assignments, and set advanced exam options like a timer, attempts allowed, or individual scoring per question (and many more!).
To facilitate self-evaluation, you can create non-graded assessments and reflection journals. Offer automated or personalized feedback through file uploads or video/audio recordings.
Certificate builder
Create a final exam to validate learning with a customizable Certificate of Knowledge that employees can share on their social media profiles. Add unique identifiers and, using our tag system, group expiring certificates under a special tag and create email reminders.
Gradebook
Our improved gradebook offers you the chance to monitor overall learner progress with one glance and drill down to specifics, like individual performance in specific courses and even assessment questions.
Rigorous reporting
Combined with the gradebook, our robust report center enables you to monitor learner performance and course performance alike. Gain insights into employee progress and overall completion rates, and dive deep into how learners interact with each piece of content, how popular your courses are and how this evolves over time, and many more to identify problem areas that need your attention.
Form builder (surveys)
One more way to gauge the popularity of your courses and uncover areas for improvement is through surveys. Using our Form builder, you can create Form learning activities and NPS surveys to get an accurate idea of what your learners think of your course and let them chime in with feedback and their own suggestions for future courses.
Multi-tenancy
We understand that health & safety training might be just about one specific aspect of your business. LearnWorlds enables you to create multiple academies for different purposes – you may want to offer external partner training or customer education. You may even want to break down training within different departments in your company.
User roles
The back end of an online academy can get quite crowded if different people are working on or have access to the same course – manage permissions using our pre built user roles or create custom roles that better reflect your team’s structure to protect data privacy and avoid mistakes that could mess with work already done.
Scalability
LearnWorlds grows with you. We support an unlimited number of users and courses. We speak 10 languages. We’re fully eCommerce-ready and integrate with top payment gateways and BN/PL services. And even enable you to build an entirely separate website to sell your courses if you like. (if not, you can sell them directly through your company website)
Security
We’ve been talking in this entire post about safety, so we can’t leave data safety out of the conversation. Our platform has strict security measures, including data encryption and isolated databases.
Integrations & APIs
Last but not least, two more tools for absolute flexibility to custom-tailor your academy to your needs. Our extensive list of integrations and APIs enables you to connect the tools you’re already using to your LW academy.
4 Successful Health & Safety Training Programs Built With LearnWorlds LMS
The Online Safety Academy
The Online Safety Academy offers accredited health and safety courses for individuals and companies. This academy offers an impressive array of courses ranging from emergency drills, risk assessments, and incident investigations to everyday topics like working at heights, dangerous goods handling, and safe stacking & storage.
FreighTrax
FreighTrax is an online academy offering safety training for truck drivers. FreighTrax offers training for drivers in the sand hauling and drayage industries.
The courses are self-paced and vary in difficulty levels.
Care Training Services
The Care Training Services offers training addressed to healthcare and social care professionals.
Their courses meet the standards set by CQC and Ofsted and cover a wide range of topics like fire safety, dementia awareness, infection prevention and control, and health and safety awareness, among others.
Safer Training
Safer Training offers affordable safety training courses in diverse topics like driver training (theory), ladder safety, and stormwater pollution.
Health and Safety Starts Today
Don’t put health and safety training on hold anymore. The price to pay for not staying compliant is literally and figuratively very high to risk.
With an LMS like LearnWorlds, you can easily deploy training at a scale, no matter how small or big your company is. Offer flexible training to your busy workers that will effectively teach them how to stay safe on the job.
9000+ brands trust LearnWorlds to train their people, partners & customers.
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Androniki Koumadoraki
Androniki is a Content Writer at LearnWorlds sharing Instructional Design and marketing tips. With solid experience in B2B writing and technical translation, she is passionate about learning and spreading knowledge. She is also an aspiring yogi, a book nerd, and a talented transponster.
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