However, it is rightly regarded by responsible business leaders as more than a tick-box issue. Organisations understand that teams who feel well and stay safe generally perform better and provide higher protection for workplace assets. To help organisations promote a healthy and safe working culture, there are three major challenges for learning designers in this crucial area:

1. Apathy. For time-poor workers, health and safety training can (perhaps understandably) be viewed as a distraction from their ‘real’ work. Many learners will have done some form of health and safety training before, so they may have an over-confident assumption that they already know it all. Disinterest might otherwise be linked to a misconception that ordinary employees should not be made responsible for workplace wellbeing.

Poorly designed health and safety training might explain procedures and practices, but it will not overcome negative attitudes that can stop learners from engaging with the information.

2. Confusion. Much of an organisation’s health and safety policy needs to be understood and carried out by individuals who can vary widely in their role and seniority levels. Some health and safety procedures require application of common sense, while others involve assessment and identification of hazard, risk and contextual factors. If health and safety guidance is either patronising or difficult to follow, diverse teams will struggle to carry it out with regularity and consistency.

Badly presented health and safety training can risk confusing and frustrating learners through making safety explanations wordy, jargon-heavy or over-complicated.

3. Irrelevance. Health and safety courses are often required to teach information that must be remembered ‘just in time’ – such as how to avoid a risk becoming a safety issue, how to prevent an incident from escalating, or how to respond safely in an emergency. However, learners will glaze over if training does not seem relevant to their own working context and they will remember little about how to apply course content after it finishes.

Ineffective health and safety training fails to connect principles and theory with the day-to-day working context of its learners, leaving them unable to apply safety-critical tools when they most need to.

High-quality e-learning development meets these challenges head on. Walkgrove’s generic e-learning modules use best practice from adult learning theory to create health and safety training that is:

• Motivating: Using a clear understanding of the learning audience, their workplace, roles and preferences, our off the shelf modules use emotionally impactful techniques that grab and sustain learner attention and generate motivation to engage with training materials
• Clear: Presenting a tool or technique in the simplest and most memorable way is an art form. Walkgrove’s e-learning development team designs health and safety content that is highly visual, non-patronising, clear and easy to understand for all levels of learners.
• Applicable: There is always a sense of real life in our e-learning. By using practical examples, storytelling, case studies and scenarios, Walkgrove’s ready to go modules help individuals in all types of workforce relate to health and safety training and give them the necessary context to carry out safe working practices in everyday work.

Do you want high-quality health and safety e-learning solutions? Get in touch! Email Walkgrove at info@walkgrove.co.uk or call +44(0)1773 864640

Download our full range of health and safety modules here or browse our generic courses here.