Translating health and safety topics for your team can be a challenging part of any safety trainer’s job.
Part of your success depends on choosing the right issues and information to share with your team, and then being able to make these topics relevant and interesting to others.
We’re sharing some of our favorite health and safety topics that can create valuable, engaging talking points to help your team see EHS as something they want to learn about.
Regardless of your industry, everyone can benefit from learning how to prevent injury to themselves and others. This is arguably one of the most relevant safety and health topics for safety trainers to share with teams because it applies to everyone.
But if you want to make your talk successful, you’ll need to move away from the obvious injury prevention techniques. Your workers face potential disaster on a daily basis, and they need to realize how easy it can be to become injured on the job. If you have any, share stories of uncommon injuries that have happened in the past that others might not realize could happen to them.
Also, make sure they realize the impact of a single injury on other areas of operation, what it really costs, and how it affects the people they work with. The more you can put injury prevention into perspective, the more aware of their actions they can become.
Another highly applicable topic to every person in your organization, workplace stress can have a lot to do with your health and safety program.
Working in stressful environments can affect even the most astute worker. When talking about stress with your team, help them identify signs of overstressing and techniques they can use on the job to reduce any negative feelings.
This is also a helpful topic that your team can apply to their lives outside of work. If you really want to get creative, start or end your session with a little meditation, yoga, or another stress relieving activity that will create good vibes and get everyone’s participation.
Some threats only happen at certain times of the year, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less impactful. Weather-related safety issues, holiday safety, and water and fire safety are important for your team both inside and outside the workplace and should be addressed.
Remember, if your employee is involved in a safety-related accident outside of work, such as having a car wreck due to wintery weather, it can still impact the overall function of the workplace. Investing in their personal safety can help others to create safer practices in all aspects of their lives, plus it shows you care about their well-being, not just production quotas.
It’s not something most people want to think about, but active shooter situations, and other unwanted infiltrations can happen almost anywhere. Though the chances of these things might seem slim, it’s important you give your team a briefing on what to do in the event that something major were to occur.
It’s important to have a safety plan in place so that others know where to find solace, where and how to seek help, and when and how they should vacate the premises. Logic can evaporate during stressful events like this, but a little training can give everyone their best chance of survival.
As a safety trainer, you have one of the most important jobs of the company: protect your people and assets so that business can continue without interruption. It’s not a position to take lightly.
It’s in your best interest to connect with your people to get their participation in creating a safe work environment. To find out more about how you can use training tracking software to manage safety and health training, feel free to reach out to us – we’re always happy to help.
Further reading: Health and Safety Topics to Engage and Inform Your Team
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