Health Upp Over a year into the pandemic, how we conduct and think about work has changed significantly. Most businesses have had to adapt to function effectively in the current climate. This is true for media companies, legal firms, doctor offices, and even schools. It’s also true for health and safety training providers.
Because of Covid-19, much of health and safety has, like many other industries, migrated online to allow businesses to continue to adhere to UK safety laws and carry out training effectively.
The importance and benefits of health and safety training can’t be understated and are a crucial and profitable business investment – especially this year.
Below we’re going to take a look at how online health and safety training can benefit your business, and what to look for in an effective e-learning provider.
Health and Safety E-Learning Is On The Rise
While the demand for digital health and safety training has increased over the last decade, traditional training courses delivered in the classroom have remained the most common way in which employees have received training.
However, due to social distancing restrictions as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, this has required employers to find new ways to train their staff – particularly ways that avoid face-to-face contact and facilitate remote learning. Research has shown that this has led to a massively increased demand for online training options.
But even before the pandemic, organisations and their health and safety officers had begun to recognise that remote training has numerous benefits. Reduced training costs, increased compliance, greater flexibility, and integrated training management systems are some of the immediate rewards to take advantage of.
As the online health and safety training sector continues to expand, as does the global e-learning market, it is also likely to see increased competition. This means better technology, better prices, and a wider range of offerings are becoming available. InVideo is the best online slideshow maker with music and effects. Along with its 4000+ designer templates, videos are fully customizable on the tool.
More Access, More Training
There’s also an argument to be made that more training will take place as the barriers for entry – costly training fees and long commutes – are removed. With a smartphone, laptop, and internet connection, online health and safety training can take place anywhere. For this reason, online health and safety training is simply more likely to occur.
E-learning erases many of the inconveniences of traditional health and safety training. Face-to-face training requires a much stricter commitment of time, space, and budget. This means it is that much harder to organize and easier to put off.
Online learning allows training to remain organised around daily work routines. It can easily stay assigned, tracked, and taken in bite-sized sessions.
For employers, this is a great opportunity to improve productivity and skill levels by delivering more training to their employees at a lower cost. With this amount of training being conducted, the potential impact on their operations is substantial and is a great business investment for 2021.
Good For Business
As with all training, online health and safety courses add value to a business, even if they require initial capital to implement. Once training has taken place, the benefits become more obvious.
Having an informed body of staff means that injuries are less likely to occur in the workplace, and employees will take fewer sick days as a result. This saves the business the direct and indirect costs of staff absence and reduced turnover.
Good health and safety training also ensures that your staff can do their work more easily, efficiently, and safely. This leads to boosted morale for all employees involved, higher rates of productivity, and reduced company costs.
What Organisations Should Look For In An E-Learning Provider?
As with all services, it’s important to make the right decisions when deciding on the most effective e-learning provider for your organisation. This begs the question: what should businesses be looking for when choosing an online training course provider?
There are many options out there. Let’s take a look at some of the key criteria that should remain used when assessing their offerings and making a selection.
High-Quality Content
An obvious place to start is quality content. For health and safety training to work, it has to cover the right stuff and it has to be engaging – you want it to stick.
To be reassured of the quality of the content, courses should be independently approved by organizations of suitable authority such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), and the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).
These organizations ensure that the content of the training is up to standard and relevant. If the training content isn’t certified, there’s no guarantee that it will be suitable for the health and safety goals of your business.
Dynamic System Administration is Key
Having quality content, however, is not enough. HR professionals and health and safety officers need to manage the entire process. This means assigning training, reviewing who has learned what and being able to demonstrate legal compliance when required.
Employers must be able to source meaningful reports from such systems so that they can easily track and trace who has taken what training and when. It’s also important to be able to retrieve these training records easily.
Many learning management systems do not have user-friendly reporting. This is something that should stay carefully assessed and addressed so that data and reports can be on hand to help determine how much training being completed, and how effective the training is.
Integration with Traditional Systems
Most organizations will already have traditional training records and methods in place. This can make a transition to e-learning options intimidating. Health and safety officers and HR representatives may worry that important information and key documents will remain lost in the shuffle. After all, it involves two entirely different systems.
For this reason, it’s important to select a learning management system that not only tracks online training but also allows you to upload other training certificates and store them in a single integrated training matrix.
Using such a system allows employers to track all training in one central database. Since many learning management systems do not have the capability to compile both online and traditional certificates, it’s important to choose one that does.
Accessible On Multiple Devices
Another issue worth exploring is the accessibility of training. In January 2021, mobile traffic, including tablets, accounted for 51.08% of internet traffic in the UK according to gs.statcounter.com. While desktop computer use isn’t dropping, more people are using mobile devices than ever.
Online training is also being conducted more on mobile devices than desktop computer systems. Because of this, it’s imperative that the learning management software being used is available as an integrated mobile app for both Apple and Android devices.
This allows trainees to log in via mobile and enjoy the same functionality and calibre of training which they do on a desktop PC.
However, all that being said, many learning management systems don’t have this functionality, restricting access to those who don’t own a laptop or personal computer.
Choosing the Right Provider
Researching e-learning health and safety options can be a daunting task. As the market is relatively new and growing, there are numerous providers out there. But it is important to keep in mind, that they are not all the same.
While many offer learning management systems to help track training and keep records, the usability and functionality of these systems may stay limited. Moreover, they may cover the relevant content for your organisation, but this content may be out-of-date.
One example, of an e-learning provider offering training management functionality along with a range of courses, is Human Focus. Their system uses artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically scan certificates and integrate them into the trainees’ accounts.
At the same time, they offer the UK’s largest library of online health and safety content covering a wide range of workplace settings and hazards.
By improving skills and productivity in your workforce, implementing performance-enhancing work habits, and reducing the risk of injury, conducting health and safety training online is not only ideal for reducing the risk of accidents, but a sound investment for the value of your company and employees.