Best Practices for New Employee Safety Onboarding

With summer comes hiring temporary or summer help. While it can certainly be time-consuming to train new employees, the safety payout makes the time and investment well worth it. Starting new employees with an intentional onboarding process is key to preventing unnecessary injuries.

Why do you need an intentional onboarding process?

New employees are often less experienced than more tenured workers.
New employees often lack the training necessary to perform all job tasks safely and efficiently in new work areas.
Your company’s safety culture is rarely fully understood by new employees.
Sometimes employees who are not seasoned are responsible for training new employees.
New employees trying to prove themselves may take unnecessary risks.

What are some best practices for employee safety onboarding?

Set specific safety goals, responsibilities and expectations. Without specific objectives, a new employee can easily overlook safety performance and miss the direction and focus of the safety culture of your company. Document for consistency and use checklists.
Use employee experience. Provide a mentor to the new employee who can provide one-on-one training to make sure standard practices and procedures, acceptable methods of operation, and the overall safety culture are conveyed in a positive and correct manner.
Review training and performance. Send someone other than the mentor to make sure that the new employee’s training is complete and that it is understood and being applied.
Don’t assume anything! Allow time for the new employees to demonstrate the skills that have been trained. Don’t expect one-time training and demonstration to be good enough. Videos can be an excellent supplement, but are not a substitute for effective training.

Need more summer safety training? Contact your Strategic Comp Loss Prevention Consultant for information about our Streamery library, offering access to more than 800 training programs covering a wide variety of hazard-specific and industry-specific topics.

Let's make this work!

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