Getting the most out of your employees means continually helping them advance their careers through educational opportunities to ensure that they are up-to-date on the latest industry knowledge and best practices. 

Providing on-site training is a great way to do that. Having a subject matter expert at your facility, providing their insights into how you can improve your operation through occupational safety and health principles, can help optimize both your employees’ time and your organization’s safety performance.

Here are the top three benefits of on-site training.

1.  Time and convenience

Time is a precious commodity for any business, and the more time that employees can spend at their facility, the more productive the organization can be. With any training, employers want their team to expand its knowledge and gain insights into best practices. They also ideally want them to spend the least amount of time away from the office possible.

If, for instance, employees attend a three-day off-site training, employers must calculate an additional two days for travel, which adds up to a full work week spent away from the office and unable to fully attend to their normal responsibilities. 

If such training were conducted on-site, the employees gain back two full days of work time, which can then be spent on regular duties, improving both the employee’s productivity and that of the organization as a whole. 

On-site training can be scheduled during a downtime in the organization’s workflow or coincide with another internal meeting to make the best use of trainees’ time. It also provides employees with the convenience of being at the facility where they work every day and can visually demonstrate to the instructor the safety challenges that they face.

2.  Customizable

As a safety manager, you want to know that the knowledge provided in training will be applicable to your business and will address specific challenges that employees encounter. On-site training provides this by tailoring the learning experience to your team’s unique needs.

On-site training allows the instructor to walk your facility, familiarize themselves with your operation and gather further insights into how they can apply the training to the scenarios that employees deal with on a daily basis. While other training methods are certainly beneficial, they may speak in more general terms about concepts and techniques, leaving trainees with questions about how they can implement what they’ve learned.

The scenarios presented during on-site training will not be generic examples that could be applicable to any business, but rather situations that apply specifically to your workplace. With tangible examples of how to apply different concepts to your business, you will be able to optimize your safety management systems, productivity and your bottom line.

In addition, customizing the training experience to your organization’s specific needs shows employees that you are invested in their safety and well-being and recognize the importance of integrating safety into the organizational culture.

3.  Cost-effective

With any training, you want to provide the best educational experience at the greatest value. The ability to train potentially dozens of employees in your facility at one time is a tremendous benefit of on-site training from a cost perspective. Rather than having to fly your employees off-site for training, you can instead bring in one instructor for the whole group, saving you both time and money. 

The average cost of a one-night hotel stay in 2016 was $177.36. The average cost of domestic airfare in the first quarter of 2017 was $352. These statistics alone demonstrate the cost savings of on-site training. Depending on the number of employees attending an off-site training course, you could potentially be paying tens of thousands of dollars for travel and accommodations. This is in addition to any hosting costs you incur from paying for the use of an off-site facility.

Furthermore, having many employees attend a single training can be a cost savings in itself, given that many programs offer group rates, which can be less expensive than sending them to individual seminars.

ASSP offers on-site training in the form of certification preparation workshops, certificate programs and safety management seminars. Our trainers are subject matter experts who possess more than 20 years’ experience in their respective fields and are also excellent educators and facilitators for the training process. These programs, including our ISO 45001 and Z359 certification programs, provide your employees with the knowledge and best practices they need to perform at the highest possible level. 

Learn more about ASSP’s wide variety of on-site courses.