Why Safety Training is Essential for Keeping Your Staff Safe

When you are the owner of a facility, you have an obligation to ensure that your staff are sufficiently prepared to handle emergencies.

AS 3745-2010 is an Australian Standard that all workplaces must comply with, and it includes the development and enforcement of emergency planning and procedures.

Training your staff in all things safety, including fire training, evacuation drills, risk assessment, emergency response and hazard identification, is also part of being compliant with WHS.

When your staff know what to do in an emergency, they will be able to keep themselves and those around them safe if disaster strikes.

Safety training is one of the most effective ways to make sure employees really understand and retain the knowledge that could save their lives.

Let’s explore the other benefits of providing regular and comprehensive safety training to your staff:

Teaches evacuation routes and situational awareness

Running evacuation drills as part of your workplace emergency management procedures helps teach staff where the exit points are throughout the building.

Even if a staff member is in a different area of the facility than usual, this training ensures that they still know where their nearest exit is, and where others are if the first exit isn’t safe.

When an emergency occurs, time is critical, and you do not want lives put at risk by not performing adequate training beforehand.

Staff become familiar with the ECO members

Employees should be able to quickly identify the members of their facility’s ECO when necessary.

This makes incident reporting a faster process and ensures that staff know who to listen to in an emergency.

Knowing who the safety and fire wardens are, and who the chief warden is, prevents confusion and saves valuable time when an emergency occurs.

Every staff member knows what to do in an emergency

Another way that safety training (including fire safety training) is incredibly beneficial is because it eliminates confusion about what any given member of staff should do if an emergency arises.

Each employee knowing their role in an emergency is crucial to keeping them safe, and can prevent an incident from becoming worse.

Demonstrates the effectiveness of your workplace’s emergency procedures

Being in the midst of an emergency is too late to discover that your emergency procedures aren’t sufficient.

This unnecessarily puts everyone in your facility in danger, leaves you open to fines and legal issues, and means your facility could be shut down.

By carrying out safety training, you get the opportunity to test your procedures and see whether they work in practice, without risking harm to any staff.

It’s important to get your emergency management procedures correct, so that you minimise the risks to those in your facility.

Safety training is an excellent way to determine if your plans and procedures are satisfactory, as well as ensuring your employees know what to do, where to go and who to listen to in an emergency.

For peace of mind that your workplace emergency management procedures and plans are more than sufficient, and that safety training is carried out in the most effective way possible, contact our friendly team today.