Safety Training is Essential for Keeping Your Staff Safe

As a facility owner, it’s your responsibility to ensure your staff are well-prepared to handle emergencies effectively. Being compliant with AS 3745-2010, the Australian Standard for workplace emergency planning and procedures means developing, implementing, and enforcing comprehensive emergency protocols.

Safety training is a critical part of this compliance, encompassing fire safety, evacuation drills, risk assessment, emergency response, and hazard identification. Proper training equips your staff with the knowledge and skills to protect themselves and those around them in the event of an emergency. It also ensures compliance with WHS regulations, fostering a safer work environment for everyone.

When employees are trained and confident in their ability to respond to emergencies, they are better prepared to act quickly and decisively, potentially saving lives and minimising harm. Safety training is one of the most effective ways to ensure your staff retains this essential knowledge.

Let’s delve into the key benefits of conducting regular and thorough safety training sessions for your team.

Teaches evacuation routes and situational awareness

Running evacuation drills regularly 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 to put lives at risk by not performing adequate training beforehand. Even the most basic emergency response training can provide significant life-saving help in dire situations.

The staff becomes 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.

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.