New Employee Safety by Christopher D. B. Burt

New Employee Safety by Christopher D. B. Burt

Author:Christopher D. B. Burt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham


6.4 Prestart Training

Prestart training should include components of both safety training and job-specific training, and must occur before the new employee begins their job. On-the-job training may also occur and may cover similar topics, but the extremely high accident rate associated with new employees needs to be addressed by prestart training. It is tempting to think that every new employee will receive some sort of prestart training. However, and despite the existence of a legal obligation to do so in many countries, the evidence suggests this is far from the case. For example, a Canadian study of 28,639 workers found that only one in five employees (21.4 %) received safety training in their first year of employment, and there was no evidence that training was being targeted at high-risk groups such as younger workers (Smith and Mustard 2007). Given the analysis considered the first year of employment, the proportion receiving training before they started work was undoubtedly much smaller than 1 in 5.

From both a safety, and a performance perspective, having training is better than not having training, and a lack of training has been noted as a contributing factor in studies of accidents (e.g., Burke et al. 2011; Wagenaar and Groeneweg 1987). In contrast, studies have shown that training can improve safety attitudes (e.g., DeJoy et al. 2000; Harvey et al. 2001) and decrease lost-time accidents (e.g., Harshbarger and Rose 1991; Vredenburgh 2002). However, training is not always effective (Clemes et al. 2010; Bell and Grushecky 2006; Laberge et al. 2014), learning from training is not always applied in the work environment (Clemes et al. 2010), and inadequate or inappropriate safety training has been identified as a cause of accidents (Crowe 1985; Holman et al. 1987; MacFarlane 1979). Furthermore, while ineffective training may not directly cause an accident, the research discussed above on employees’ perceptions of training (e.g., Burt et al. 2009; Burt and Stevenson 2009; Burt and Hislop 2013) suggests that ineffective training may decrease workplace safety through a series of flawed associations. Therefore, it is vital that every attempt is made to ensure that training is effective.

To be effective, a safety training program needs to be characterized by a number of features. First, a needs assessment or analysis should be undertaken to identify the content of the training program. Content should be both specific to the new employee’s job and guided by research findings in the safety literature. The presentation of the content should follow a systematic training model and adopt best practice methods, which should also allow for a consideration of new employee individual differences. New employees that complete prestart training should be required to meet an assessment standard before they begin work. Extensive evaluation of the training’s effectiveness and post-training transfer evaluations should be undertaken. Finally, the training program’s ability to deliver new employees that meet the required standards should be clearly communicated to employees. Each of these components of an effective training program is expanded on in the following sections.



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