• Shayla McCormick
    1
    Hi All,

    I am looking for a base level introduction to health and safety course for new starters in a manufacturing business.
    Am struggling to find a one-day/part day base level for people who have had little experience or knowledge in health and safety in the workplace.

    Not looking for NZQA or HSR I don't want to overwhelm but would like to provide a starting point for our people to be able to grow from.

    Any recommendations or providers please?

    Many thanks
    Shayla
  • KeithH
    167
    Hey @Shayla McCormick,
    Some suggestions of why and how before you get inundated with information about what.

    Consider what the outcomes for the learners will be, so you can work out what they need to learn. You can then work out methods to assist them to learn.
    Decide on how the learning will occur - teacher centered or learner led. This relates to delivery methods, learning outcomes, content and assessments.
    Keep in mind that adult learners learn for reasons known to them - they are not taught like children.

    ShopCare may be of assistance.


    Just my 2 cents worth.
  • Robb
    54
    Hi @Shayla McCormick
    Off-the-shelf training courses have their place, but the information taught is generic and sometimes not relevant to a particular business or process.
    There is the possibility you could do something in-house - tailored to your business.
    This is a good base document that you could use to develop the training.
    https://www.worksafe.govt.nz/dmsdocument/200-the-absolutely-essential-health-and-safety-toolkit
    The training could be broken into sections, using the guide as a reference point, and you create a Q&A at the end to evaluate the level of comprehension.
  • KeithH
    167
    I had a brief read of the booklet @Robb linked to.
    While it contains information that could be used to develop learning sessions, I don't see how it can assist developing a learning session. I'll briefly expand on my earlier post.

    Learning outcomes are many and will include what the organisation expects following training sessions, what the learners expect to know, and what the facilitator expects the learners to know. All three are different as they are for three different stakeholders who while they heading in a similar direction, have different interpretations of what success looks like.

    Management may be looking at increased productivity, workers could be looking at new techniques and the facilitator looking at improving delivery techniques. To achieve them all, the three groups need to end up in the same final location.

    In order to get to that location means planning. So in an education situation, planning is usually done by a person skilled to design a course, program etc.

    Teaching children is like filling an empty vessel. Pour the information and later (in life) the child will work out what is relevant and discard what is not.

    Adults are different. They are already fill with knowledge from their earlier childhood education plus all they have accumulated from their multitude of life experiences. So there is not enough space to just pour in more knowledge like when we were kids.
    Also, adults have been through the phase of discarding irrelevant information and learned how to apply that. (Every watched adults switch off at training sessions because of the method of delivery or content is not interesting?). They know what's good and what's not.

    So coming back to planning, start with the idea and then talk with the people who the idea will affect (management and workers). If they are not interested, it's a dead duck in the water. If they are interested, what are they interested in and why. This contributes to learning outcomes, assessment design, content, context and delivery methods. Incidentally as this is part of WEPR, the network should already be established (if not, a good time to start).

    Without educational training, (I can recommend SIT for this), my observations are that inhouse delivery of H&S knowledge by untrained people either becomes a tick-box exercise, a one-shot wonder, boring, or is outsourced and becomes generic.

    You don't need to be a subject matter expert to be an inhouse educator. It helps but is not necessary. But to encourage workers to learn, you do need to know what you are doing when you are in front of adults. They are as wise, if not wiser than you, and know all the tricks of the trade.

    I guess that's worth 20 cents today.
    Cheers.


    PS
    Attached is part of a proposal I'll be taking to a company engaged in the construction industry. I’ve had verbal discussions with management who have approved the submission of a proposal. Once I have feedback from company stakeholders I'll create a draft program with learning outcomes, assessments, lesson plans, content, learning and assessment locations, refine existing elements in the outline, and send to learners, management, peers and subject matter experts for moderation and feedback.
    Attachment
    Proposal Outline (717K)
  • Joe Boyle
    10
    Hello Shayla, We have a very good eLearn course called Work laceHealth and Safety Fundamentals for Employees, which would fit the bill nicely. Some of our members use it as a standard HS induction for new employers so they understand their responsibilities under the Act.
    https://learn.ema.co.nz/w/events/221-workplace-health-and-safety-fundamentals-for-employees
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