t doesn’t matter what kind of workplace you’re a part of - whether everyone works from home, or is operating heavy machinery every day - your business needs safety training.

Why? Because everyone has a right to be physically and psychologically safe at their place of work. 

That means your workplace has a responsibility to ensure that your workers aren’t going to be physically injured by their workspace, or psychologically injured by interactions with the people around them. Businesses that ignore this responsibility don’t just risk financial losses, they also risk losses to productivity, team satisfaction and trust.

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For many businesses, it can be hard to know where to start, or what’s possible with the time and budget you have on hand. You could be a large business with an established safety training program and a budget to improve it, or you could be a small business, with little-to-no budget and time to think about it.

Whatever your situation, it’s possible to deliver quality safety training and prevent unnecessary injuries to your team with simple yet creative approaches.

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No budget, little time

It’s a situation that’s all too common. Many small businesses don’t have dedicated finances and time for creating safety training.

Fortunately, there are a lot of free resources available on the internet to help you start delivering quality safety training now. A great place to start for Australian businesses is the Safe Work Australia website, which has state-specific resources such as checklists, posters and guidelines to work with.

The downside of these materials is that they are generic, and often can’t be adapted to the unique needs of your specific business, but they can be a good quick fix.

Small budget, some time

If your business has decided to put some money towards improving or automating your safety training, congratulations! Even a small budget can go a long way towards improving your training.

The perfect place to start with a small budget is investing in an all-in-one training platform, such as HowToo Growth. Platforms like HowToo Growth are highly affordable and allow you to create training courses online that are tailored to your business and can be branded with your business’s logo, colours and more. They can then be sent to your workers, and you can track their progress from the platform to see when they’ve finished.

HowToo Growth also comes with over 20 ready-to-go courses that are pre-built with learning activities and assessments. Ready-to-go courses are an incredibly fast and effective way to deliver high-quality safety training to your team.

Online courses are excellent for laying a groundwork of knowledge about safety practices that can be followed up with elements of on-the-ground, face-to-face training to practice and embed those practices.

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Medium Budget, dedicated time

If you have a growing budget, dedicated time to work on training programs and/or a large number of learners, chances are you’re looking to improve on your existing training.

All-in-one platforms can still be highly useful for these situations, but if you have a very large number of learners, or you’re looking for greater reporting capabilities, you may be looking for a course creation tool like HowToo Creator that can be matched with an LMS.

If you’ve been working with ready-to-go courses, this is a great time to start creating your own customised courses. One of the first steps is to begin developing learning outcomes specific to your business and workers. This process allows you to identify what courses and content you need to deliver.

With a mid-size budget, you can also begin to design and incorporate multimedia elements such as audio snippets, videos and animations. Audio and videos are brilliant ways to grab attention, engage multiple senses and increase learning retention.

Audio and videos are also an easy way to incorporate more storytelling elements in your courses. There are many reasons to use storytelling in training that are particularly important for safety training, such as greatly boosting learner engagement and behaviour change.

Depending on your budget, you could use equipment as simple as an iPhone and a tripod, right up to commissioning pieces from freelancers or agencies.

Big budget, team time

With a big budget and a dedicated eLearning team, the possibilities for safety training are close to endless. Many large teams choose to work with eLearning agencies such as Savv-e to create top-quality, highly customised training suites.

With a big budget and the right team or agency, you can experiment with creative, boundary-pushing ideas, such as branching, animated and gamified learning solutions.

Using the right eLearning course authoring tool to create these learning experiences can also ensure that your business retains internal capabilities to modify and update courses without needing to pay extra to an external provider. 

Quality safety training can be delivered on any budget

Every business has different capabilities for delivering safety training, but everyone can provide quality training for their business. With a touch of creativity and the right approach, your business can instil a culture of safe working and manage risks with confidence.

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