OSHA has published nearly 1,000 standards, and many of those include safety training requirements to ensure workers are prepared with the skills and knowledge to safely perform their work.

As an employer or employee training provider, it can be difficult and time consuming to identify all the possible topics you need to cover to satisfy OSHA safety training requirements. It can be useful to complete an OSHA Safety Training Assessment to determine which requirements apply to your specific situation.

Employers are responsible for providing their employees with a workplace free from known hazards. Training is an essential part of this responsibility and helps to protect workers from injuries and illnesses. Employee safety training results in fewer injuries and illnesses, better employee morale, lower insurance premiums, and more.

Employee training gives workers the tools necessary to recognize, avoid, and fix hazards they may encounter as they go about their daily work. Knowledge is power; the more your workers understand the risks and how to protect themselves, the better off they will be.

You already know employee training of any kind costs money. Strictly speaking, the cost of online safety training is number of courses + number of employees + LMS hosting. However, a better way to think about employee safety training might be, what does it cost to not train your employees?

OSHA can issue fines of up to $16,000 for a single safety violation. The average workers’ compensation settlement is around $41,000. The median number of days away from work per incident is 10, resulting in productivity losses.

It is easy to see why the upfront costs of employee safety training far outweigh the potential costs of not having fully trained employees. Employee safety training is an investment that will pay back repeatedly in fewer injuries and illnesses, lower insurance premiums, and more.

For workplace safety training to be effective, employees must be motivated to complete the courses. The modern workforce does not want to sit through PowerPoint safety presentations or watch outdated DVDs. And with more workers than ever in remote or hybrid roles, you should not still be relying on these physical forms of training.

Safety training courses need to be just as modern as the employees taking them. Here are just a few features to look for in online safety training for employees:

• Engaging content with relevant, real-world scenarios.
• Accessibility so employees can train any time, anywhere.
• Regular refreshes to keep the content – including the visuals – from getting stale and outdated.
• Consistent messaging, meaning every employee receives the same training.

The goal of any safety training should be to give workers the knowledge they need to protect themselves. OSHA — and other federal, state, and industry-specific regulatory bodies — outline many specific training topics or hazards that must be covered.

And while much of a workplace safety training program should be specific to the hazards of that workplace, there are many generic topics that most employees could benefit from.

HSI courses that cover topics found in most workplaces, regardless of industry, include:

1. Hazard Communication
2. Bloodborne Pathogens (BBP)
3. Slips, Trips, and Falls
4. Emergency and Fire Preparedness
5. Fire Extinguisher Safety
6. Electrical Safety: General Awareness
7. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
8. Back Safety and Injury Prevention
9. Ladder Safety
10. Driver Safety

Trick question! There is no such thing as “OSHA-approved safety training.” In reality, employers are responsible for ensuring their employee safety training meets OSHA’s requirements as far as content and frequency are concerned.

In many cases, “OSHA-approved training” is used to refer to OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 training. Employees interested in completing OSHA 10/30 training and obtaining an OSHA card, must find an OSHA-authorized trainer, which is where the confusion of terms often comes from. HSI is an OSHA-approved provider of OSHA 10 and 30 training in English and Spanish for General Industry and Construction, learn more.