Why It's Time to Take Your Safety Enrollments and Orientations Online

OSHA has placed a heavy burden on construction operations to adhere to stringent safety regulations. All workplaces must conform to the agencies guidelines and standards. Proper tool usage, safety equipment, training, and hazard notices all seem like common sense practices. But many worker duties can evolve quickly and pulling a safety trainer to update each crew member about specific job-related risks is grossly inefficient and ineffective. More often than not, the following construction safety gaps occur.   

Language Gaps

Experienced workers develop specific safety vocabulary that relates to the tasks at hand. When multicultural workforces come together, relating these and other terminology in a primary language can become challenging. By utilizing mobile safety technology in each worker’s primary language, communication gaps can be avoided.

Workplace Gaps

It's a common practice to pull workers off one team when another group needs help to meet timelines. For example, asking a carpenter's apprentice to support a masonry crew changes the safety landscape. Worksite dangers that seem like common sense to supervisors with years of experience are not clear to relatively new hires. That’s one reason why one-on-one safety training may result in gaps about the risks in different settings.

Gear Usage Gaps

Running new hires through the steps of how to use safety gear such as breathing masks, hard hats, and protective wear seems, again, common sense. But the single run-through is often part of a broader introduction to the employee's new job. 

Many are overwhelmed but nod their heads "yes" when asked if they "get it." In only a few hours, new hires cannot remember half of what they learned.

By outfitting new workers with mobile construction safety software, supervisors can task them with ongoing online orientations. These can be scheduled after lunch breaks, before starting work the next day, and any time a team leader believes re-education is needed.

Environmental Gaps

Employees that work in tight quarters must be acutely aware of risks such as air quality. Knowing how to adequately ventilate spaces while using gas-powered tools is in no way common sense. Workers need to be repeatedly reminded to seek out an experienced supervisor to check the safety methods they are utilizing. 

Reinforcing the message to have experienced team leaders evaluate safety protocols before starting tends to resonate when workers are able to go back to said protocols or training held within a mobile safety platform.

Benefits of Online Enrollment for Construction Safety

It may seem counterintuitive to people who have worked in the sector for many years, but reducing the human factor in construction safety can be a positive step. When outfits take on the full weight of OSHA mandates, they are burdened with excessive paperwork, designating specialists or supervisors to educate new hires, and persuading subcontractors to engage in high-level safety training. The data concerning workplace injury and fatalities demonstrates this model is ineffective. The question is: How can online enrollment into construction safety prove beneficial? These are some of the answers.

• Reduces Costs Associated with Safety Training
• Supervisors Can Spend More Time on Goal Achievement
• Reduces Cumbersome Paperwork
• Provides Proof and Transparency that Employees have Undergone Required Training

Online enrollment into construction safety platform technology delivers a cost-effective method to educate, train, update workers, and ensure everyone on your job site understands how to conduct themselves in a safe fashion. Industry leaders can anticipate their bids will be supported by proven efforts to promote workplace safety and make insurance carriers aware you are lowering the risk of injury. These potential financial benefits can be enjoyed above the primary goal of keeping your hard-working team as safe as possible.

Online Orientation Improves Construction Safety               

Requiring that all team members and subcontractors utilize an online platform safety technology ensures that everyone on the job site has received the necessary safety training. People who work in construction understand that is not necessarily the injured worker who created the hazard. It’s not uncommon for an experienced, safety-conscious employee to suffer a significant loss due to someone else's negligence. Among the many benefits of online orientation is knowing even new hires have the knowledge to follow through with appropriate safety protocols. That fact will make everyone breathe easier. These are common hazards that team members will be educated about through an online orientation.

• Fall Protection Protocols
• Scaffolding and Ladder Safety
• Respiration Protection
• Face and Eye Guard Protection
• Effective Hazard Communication
• Power Tool and Machinery Safety
• Chemical and Environmental Hazards

What stands as, perhaps, the single most significant benefit of utilizing this type of construction technology is that it delivers employers the ability to educate and monitor workers about job site safety measures remotely. Nothing falls through the cracks, and there are no longer gaps in communication because online orientations are thorough, standardized, cost-effective, and offered in each employee’s primary language. Safety is job one, and mobile construction safety technology takes it to the next level.

Written by HammerTech for Construction Dive

Trenton H. Cotney

Florida Bar Certified Construction Lawyer

Cotney Construction Law, LLP

3110 Cherry Palm Dr., Ste. 290

Tampa, FL 33619

www.cotneycl.com