An Unexpected Surprise

A Large Wastewater District Meets Their Compliance Goals – and More!

After careful evaluation of a number of online training vendors, a municipality chose TargetSafety to deliver their employee training for the years 2003-2004.

Getting Started

Based on their prior experiences, getting employees to attend their safety training sessions was simply ineffective. Many times, employees were legitimately unavailable, however, there was a real sense by management that many employees were finding other activities to perform instead of attending the scheduled courses.

The results were common:

• A water agency completely out of compliance,
• Mandated employee training goals and objectives under 50% completed, and
• A growing level of frustration by management and training department personnel.

Their intention was to roll-out the web-based training initiative and follow the results, hoping for a 25% utilization.

Program Implementation and Early Results

Adoption was immediate and constant during the initial period. Not only did their employees login and take their scheduled courses, but their evaluation statistics indicated a 94% approval rating.

In addition, each employee continued to take at least one course per month for the remainder of the first year.

What they were most pleased to discover was that, over time, their safety record improved – dramatically!

The end results are as follows:

• A 74% reduction of workplace injuries,
• A 66% reduction in lost work days, and
• A 33% reduction in first aid cases.

Lessons Learned About Changing Employee Behavior

• Web-based employee training is by far the most cost-effective, efficient, and consistent method of training multiple employees in multiple locations.

• Without management support and leadership, both short-term adoption and long-term compliance would be difficult, if not impossible.

• Effective employee training that educates employees on proper behavior works!

• Training is the critical element to change unsafe employee behavior. Training content should not only provide proper instruction, but also shock employees out of their complacency.