Conduct occupational safety and health training easily online

Occupational safety and health is an important topic for all workplaces from construction sites to offices. Do not compromise when it comes to the safety and health of your employees. As an employer, it is your duty to provide your employees with regular occupational safety and health training on and to take all necessary precautions to prevent accidents. And the health and safety of your employees will of course also be important to you, not least to ensure the success of your company and the satisfaction of your employees. It is therefore important that your employees are always up to date on occupational safety and health. Preventive measures protect your employees from potential hazards and raise their awareness of risks. Occupational safety and health training is a powerful tool that will prevent accidents at work.

Online occupational safety and health courses enable you to provide your employees with first-rate training without the need to run a time-consuming face-to-face event. You give your employees the opportunity to read all relevant information about occupational safety and health whenever suits them. At the same time, you enable them to check the knowledge they have acquired through appropriate test questions. So everyone is on the safe side: Your employees are aware of the hazards and able to avoid accidents. And you provide auditable proof that as an employer, you are complying with your obligations under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

The Occupational Health and Safety Act does not require you to provide your occupational safety and health training in any specific form. Most companies organize their occupational safety and health training as annual face-to-face events. Employees who do not participate due to illness or being on vacation are given follow-up training. However, this approach poses several risks to occupational safety:

1. Section 12 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act states that “The training must take place before workers take up employment […]”. In other words, each new employee must be given immediate training when they start work. The same applies when employees switch departments, take on a new role, or use new technology. Depending on the size of the business, this can quickly become a mammoth task.
    
2. Organizationally, it is almost impossible to gather all employees in one place at the same time. Working from home, illness and off-site activities make it difficult to meet the needs of every individual.
    
3. Occupational safety provisions are not the same for every employee. Electricians on construction sites face different hazards than those faced by administrative staff. If you want to address all topics in a single occupational safety and health training session, your employees will have a long day ahead of them!
    
4. Face-to-face occupational health and safety training is expensive. Organizing a face-to-face occupational safety and health training event costs time and money. Your employees spend valuable working time staring at dreary PowerPoint slides and you will have to pay your speaker for his or her services. Room rental, snacks, and drinks all add to the costs.

The answer is “Yes”! The DGUV allows the “delivery of training using electronic media”, provided that the following three requirements are met.

Previously, web meeting tools were not recognized as a substitute for discussion, so training, or at least part of it, had to be delivered in analog form. Now—not least as a result of the pandemic—the DGUV has adapted the interpretation of its rules and regulations to enable web meeting tools to be used to fully digitalize the training process. Comprehension tests can also be integrated into courses. When choosing your eLearning software, make sure that it offers the option to integrate different question types and final tests. Ideally, it should also offer the option to create variants of each online course in order to address the specifics of each individual workplace. The DGUV continues to have reservations regarding the lack of individualization in eLearning, but these can be overcome by professional software, which uses adaptive learning to make digital learning far more individual than face-to-face events can usually manage to be. However, it is true that some training—especially in the field of production, trades, and the handling of hazardous substances—should at least use a blended learning format, with eLearning delivering theory and being supplemented by face-to-face sessions to adequately demonstrate the requisite practical skills.