Workplace safety training is an essential part of every factory’s culture as they provide workers with the essential level of knowledge and practice needed to make them capable of protecting themselves in the face of hazardous tasks and dangerous work requirements. Every organization needs to provide this training to their employees to ensure they’re properly aware of how they can keep themselves safe from injuries.
But when Covid-19 hit, it made every physical activity nearly impossible with lockdowns placed across every industry. This made it hard for factory employers to provide workplace safety training to their employees. Putting every employee in a single room, or not following SOPs, wasn’t an option in the wake of the pandemic. Given all of these factors, it was easy for employers to shrug away the importance of workplace safety training, saying it’s just not important enough in the face of a worldwide pandemic.
But the risk of workplace-related injuries didn’t get eliminated only because a larger threat was in place. If anything, it became even more essential to teach workers about the importance of proper protective equipment. And with OSHA taking quick steps to guide factories into action mode, this became easier to do for every worker.
In this blog, we’ll discuss what guidelines got introduced for workplace safety training during the pandemic, and look into what that could mean for the future of workplace training.
OSHA Pandemic Guidelines
With the pandemic, OSHA changed its usual workplace safety training guidelines to focus more on the pandemic, urging organizations to provide training about Covid-19. The focus being on the following topics:
- The basics on how the virus causing Covid-19, SARS CoV-2, spreads.
- What should employees do if they’re sick, including working from home or informing their supervisor about signs and symptoms.
- Measures taking to protect workers from exposure including handwashing, social distancing, use of proper protective equipment, and any other necessary workplace controls.
Apart from this, all other necessary training could vary depending on an employee’s job, risk of exposure, and the kind of controls being placed on-site to protect workers. Adding to all of this, OSHA also stated that every employer is required to provide face masks, and other preventive equipment along with the usual workplace PPEs, in order to ensure reasonable accommodation for every worker’s safety without compromises.
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These were all the basic guidelines introduced in organizations to survive the pandemic. With these introductions, the health and safety administration also stated that organizations could hold webinars with experts of the industry that could provide training to employees regarding common workplace health and safety hazards.
Since crowded gatherings became obsolete during Covid-19, organizations had the option to hold training programs either on the web or if their work requires physical presence. This introduced a new method of providing training to workers, that can come in handy even in the future when certain employees aren’t available physically. And it can also help train new employees from the beginning even when they’re just in the initial phases of getting hired.
All these new advances in organizational functioning became more common due to the pandemic, which showed different employers how they can conduct their operations on a remote basis. And these advancements are sure to bring digital developments to factories. For more information on workplace safety training and other topics, visit ELC.