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Most Occupational Health & Safety training programs
require two types of training:
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(1) General
training, and |
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(2) Site-specific
training |
General Training
General
training is just what it sounds like - everything
general about the regulations. It teaches your
employees about the regulations, the responsibilities of
various parties and so on.
This
training is necessary so that the employee can apply the
regulations to any applicable product, workplace,
scenario or task. As we all know, work conditions
can change rapidly and general training teaches your
employees how to apply the regulations to any scenario.
With WHMIS,
for example, general training covers the WHMIS
Regulations, how to read labels and MSDSs, how to
identify controlled products and symbols, who's
responsible for providing them etc.
Site-Specific Training
As the employer,
it's your responsibility to ensure that your employees
know how to apply the general training to their work
environment. This is called
site-specific training.
This
training outlines how the employee's actual work is
affected by the general training. It teaches
employees how to apply the general training to their
particular workplace or task. In most cases, this
type of training is done in-house, by the employer.
With WHMIS,
for example, site-specific training should include
things like
how to work safely with the controlled products used in
YOUR workplace, where you keep the personal protective
equipment and MSDSs and first aid procedures for the
most common products used at work.
But, as an employer, how do you put together an adequate
site-specific training program?
How To Develop Your Site-Specific Program
Step 1: Identify the hazards
The goal with site-specific training is to outline how
the general training is applicable to your employee's
work environment. So, logically the first step would be
to identify the relevant hazards that your employees
work with.
One of the easiest ways to
do this is to walk around your office or work-site and
write down the hazards you see or take pictures of them.
That way, you can use the visuals in your training.
If you're having a hard time identifying those hazards,
you may want to consider hiring a Health & Safety
Consultant who will do a "workplace audit" for you.
If you're putting together a
WHMIS site-specific training program, your first step
would be to identify the most common controlled products
used in the workplace.
Step 2: Provide the training
Site-specific training can be done in many ways.
Larger companies may want to put together an online or
intranet-based program. Others can do this
training in a classroom presentation or by doing a
walk-around of the worksite. You have to choose
what works best for your workplace and your employees.
The bottom line is to let
your employees know how the regulations apply to them
and their work environment. How you do that is up
to you.
With WHMIS, for example, you
may want to review a specific product. Go over how
to read that product's label and what the first aid
procedures are, where you keep the up-to-date MSDS or
the Personal Protective Equipment.
Step 3: Evaluate the
knowledge level
Now that you've done the site-specific training, you
have to evaluate it's success. The simplest way to
do this is by testing your employees.
You can offer practical or written tests and assess workers through job
observation. For Fall Protection, have them
demonstrate putting on a harness and other applicable
PPE. For WHMIS, ask them to find the product's
MSDS and tell you what the first aid and disposal
procedures are.
For example, you can ensure
that your employees have met the WHMIS education standard if they
can answer the following four questions related to the
controlled products they work with or near:
| (1) What
are the hazards of the controlled product? |
| (2) How
are you protected from those hazards? |
| (3) What
do you do in case of an emergency? |
| (4)
Where can you get additional hazard information? |
That doesn't
mean that they need to memorize each one for each
product, but they need to know where to find the
information and how to apply it.
Step 4:
Re-train, if
necessary
A site-specific program is
considered effective when workers can apply the
information they were taught to protect their own health
and safety on the job. As we all know, when time
passes, we tend to forget things or get lazy. For
that reason, you need to ensure that your employees are
always adequately trained.
Do random testing to see if
they still meet the requirements. If not, re-train
and re-test.
Good luck!
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