Are you considering introducing online safety inductions to your site?

For many businesses online safety inductions save time and money and lower risks. Every employer is responsible for providing appropriate training and inductions to their employees. Effective health and safety instructions, especially in the construction industry, are vital. That’s why all new starters and contractors will always be required to complete site specific inductions before commencing work. They will of course come with their own training and safety knowledge, however getting them to understand the specific safety risks of your site is equally as important.

Safety training must be carried out thoroughly and consistently in order to keep workers and visitors safe on site. One of the major challenges to safety training is that it is time-sensitive – as no one can start work on site without the appropriate inductions. This can often lead people to skim through safety procedures, or incorrectly get people signed off. This is of course not compliant or safe, and companies need to educate their people to understand the importance of inductions. 

In this article we’re looking at how online inductions can solve a lot of the problems that arise with training and inductions, and enable businesses to remain compliant.

Online Inductions Help Make The Induction Process Seamless

Creating and delivering online inductions using Learning Management Systems is a sure-fire way nail the process. By operating your safety inductions online, construction firms can train staff quickly and cost-effectively. This means that staff will begin on site with fully up-to-date knowledge of how best to ensure their safety, and the safety of others. 

However, this does not necessarily rule out the need for face-to-face inductions of site-specific dangers. The nature of the construction industry means that there will always be a degree of spontaneous hazards that need to be relayed on site, in person.  

The Benefits Of Online Inductions

1. Reduced risk 

By highlighting the safety precautions of, say, heavy machinery before coming on site, no one will be using the machinery without being informed of its risks. This is also true with less obvious risks to site security. For example, you might choose to only provide employee log ins once they have successfully negotiated the induction. 

Beakon’s Learning Management System is totally customisable to fit the needs of any business’ training program. 

2. Accessibility

Because online training systems operate online, they are accessible at any time of the day or night. This provides a heightened level of convenience and means that employees can begin to learn at a time that suits them. There is no point running through safety instructions to an employee that is not fully concentrating. 

3. Decreased operation costs

In person inductions, often held in classrooms spaces, can actually seem repetitive to everyone involved. By taking safety training online, the productivity of employees increases. This, in addition to the cost of resources like room space and printed information, can really decrease the operation costs of safety inductions. 

4. Content control

Learning Management Systems, such as Beakon’s, have customisable dashboards, live tracking, and online grading. All of these methods of controlling the training content make it easy to deliver training and monitor success. Because the system is flexible and fully customisable, data can be reused and updated when information changes. Moreover, as  the needs of your safety inductions change, your content, materials, and scenarios can be customised and re-purposed to target different audiences and different learning outcomes.

Take Your Site Safety Inductions Online

There are multiple benefits to taking your site safety inductions online. It can help save time and money, as well as increase the efficiency of on-boarding new staff. Learning Management Systems facilitate creation of flexible and accessible induction content and will drastically speed up the delivery of the induction training. 

Historically, there has been a link between the construction industry and migration. This has been because construction projects often need really large numbers of workers, and these can’t always be supplied by local workforces. As such, construction workers tended to move where the work was and this created a diverse workforce where lots of languages were spoken.

 Today, construction still benefits considerably from influxes of workers from outside of the local area, and knowing how to communicate effectively with workers from different backgrounds is essential. In this article, we’re looking at how you can break down language barriers on your site and ensure that projects run smoothly.

How To Stop Language Barriers Causing Problems On Your Site

When people speak multiple languages, this can lead to miscommunications between employees that speak different languages. It’s no surprise that language barriers account for a large proportion of inefficiencies in the workplace. 

It is still commonplace for construction firms to simply assume translation services from co-worker to co-worker, but this is far from ideal. In fact, it can lead to stress and interpersonal problems that make employees unhappy. Or worse, employees might quickly explain something in a language that isn’t native to the other person. This can result in the missing out of details, or misunderstandings that cause huge problems.

Often, in order to get their colleagues up and working as quickly as possible, employees can relay information quickly. However, when you’re working with people who speak many different languages, a quick explanation can be insufficient. You should not rely on employees to deliver training, as they do not always know how to be as thorough as possible (especially if they’re not speaking their colleagues native language!).

Orientations In Multiple Languages

This issue of language barriers is even more significant when it comes to orientation and safety inductions – as well as the carrying out of day to day activities. If communication is not clear and understood, contracted workers might be operating without full understanding of the necessary information. Uncertainty of communication will lead to on-site accidents. With regards to health and safety, this is obviously an important issue. 

The fact that foreign-born, or non-Anglophone, employees are more at risk of workplace accidents is due to the significant barrier that language plays. Health and safety material cannot afford any ambiguity. It saves lives. It is a significant issue – and one that many businesses have struggled to solve. If your organisation operates over several different sites or offices, you might need multiple translation teams – which in turn could generate slightly different translations. This often results in inconsistent content. Inconsistency is not acceptable when it comes to training programs. 

How Can Technology Bridge The Language Gap?

The construction industry, as well as having ties to migration, has also traditionally been linked with progress in technology. In the 21st century, digital technology has risen to the forefront of enterprise. With regards to language barriers in the industry, there are more and more effective digital solutions available. 

Management software, made by companies like Beakon, have proven really effective ways of solving communication issues. Safety management, task management and incident management software systems are now accessible to workers via a mobile phone or other digital device.

On top of this, Beakon products are available in multiple languages, time zones and currencies. All of which means that employees can consistently absorb the correct information and adhere to the correct procedures throughout the business – no matter what language is their first tongue. 

Technology is driving forward the construction industry, but it is also building bridges between people who don’t share the same language.

Do you want to improve your safety practices without making drastic changes or breaking the bank with new safety measures? Making your workplace safer shouldn’t be a huge, stressful process. Rather, businesses should be taking small, daily steps to ensure that the workplace is compliant and safe.

These kinds of small changes are quick and easy to implement, but can have huge knock on effects. We’re sharing with you the best ways to improve your safety practices little by little, so that your organisation becomes safer overall.

• Educate Your Team

Okay, so we promised that these steps would be easy and ‘educating your team’ sounds pretty drastic right?! Wrong.

It’s true that training your team can be a huge job, but with an LMS system that empowers your team members to take the lead on their own education, it isn’t a huge task. Encouraging workers to take on daily bite size chunks of training will ensure that everyone keeps on top of their ongoing education.

LMS systems save time and money when educating employees and contractors, and ensure that there is a digital trace of all training completed. This allows both the employer and employee to keep track of what learning has been completed and ensures that they are qualified to take on certain tasks.

By making learning an imperative, you ensure that no one gets left behind or complacent in the workplace.

• Be Aware Of Existing Injuries 

Whenever someone starts working for your business, it is important that you become aware of their existing injuries. Why? Because you need to ensure that they are not aggravating any pre-existing conditions on your site.

Often, we ask workers to do repetitive movements like lifting, bending or moving in ways that cause stress on the body (and particularly back). If someone has an injury, it will not be appropriate for them to do repetitive tasks on that particular weak spot. It’s important that this is noted and documented to avoid any injuries occurring in the future.

• Offer A Digital Incident Reporting Solution

One of the biggest issues with incident reporting is that it simply doesn’t get done. Often, if there is a lot of paperwork to fill in and the injury is perceived as ‘not that bad’, then incident management goes out the window.

This is where digital incident management systems come in very handy. They allow people to access the forms they need to fill in from anywhere, and make the process much more simple and appealing. 

• Make Visitor Management Sign In A Priority 

Visitor Management is crucial to safety on site. Why? Because visitors are probably less aware of the risks and precautions on site so need to be supported. Without effective visitor sign in practices anyone could just walk onto site, injury themselves and hold you accountable.

It is crucial that your business has a system to track visitors at buildings, work sites, and facilities by recording key data and ensuring you are in control of who has access to your premises. 

Visitor management systems give you the benefit of:

• Automating access permissions and providing self-service inductions.
• Logging who has visited your sites, when they have visited your sites, and what areas they have accessed.
• Synchronising with Staff ID and Card machines, including those with security coding.
• Providing all necessary data for performance, compliance and OHS audits.

• Have A Strategy To Alert People Of Tripping Hazards

This one sounds so simple, however it is often the forgotten safety hazard that causes the most damages. In fact, a huge majority of accidents on construction sites are caused by slips, trips or falls on the same level – that is, people tripping on things on the ground.

This may seem trivial, however 27% of reported injuries on sites are caused by tripping hazards like cables, rubble, holes etc. There are so many tripping hazards on construction sites that are often just left as part of the environment. However, implementing a solid system to label these hazards and alert people to them is key to reducing risk.

Safety Management Made Simple 

Safety Management really needn’t be difficult. It is one of the pillars of running a successful business, and can be made easier with professional software systems from Beakon that support some of the world’s biggest businesses.

Ready to learn more? Book your free trial today.