Safety Training – An Essential Investment for any Software outsourcing company - Part 2

Case Study for an Efficient Safety Training Program:

Efficient safety training is a phrase that is unofficially developed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA is the government labor organization of United States. OSHA has played a major role in bringing out many standards and regulations which have played a major role in affecting the lives of employees of organization such as software outsourcing companies. As per OSHA, an effective safety training program must include areas such as: 

• Preventing accidents and promoting safety within an organization

• Compliance with safety standards

• Response at time of emergency

• Protecting personal equipment

• Following safety practices

• Demonstrating use of equipment and machinery

• Workplace hazards

• Employee engagement

OSHA follows a safety model with certain guidelines:

• Examining the need to training

• Analysing Training Needs

• Identification of Goals and Objectives

• Developing learning activities

• Conducting the training

• Evaluating program effectiveness

• Improving the program

• Aligning training with job tasks.

Why is safety training so important?

Everybody agrees to the fact that attaining 100% safety is unachievable and there remains a certain amount of risk. To mitigate this, providing the employees of an outsourcing company with the right information on health and safety courses can significantly reduce the chances of an accident or incident.

Let alone the moral reasons for providing a safe place of work, one also needs to look at the legal and financial issues associated with health and safety. It is evident from the fact that virtually every country in the world has health and safety legislation in place which is designed to protect people at work. A software outsourcing company needs to understand this legislation and comply with it or else the company might run itself into risk of being fined. In event of a grieve situation, those in charge of the company could also face criminal charges for failing to comply with the legislation which could play a huge spoilsport making the customers loose trust with the company. Looking at this from a financial point of view, not only can the company be fined, but a worker who is injured at work may also sue for compensation. For such reasons the price of health and safety training can be just a fraction of this cost, making them a sound investment.

With frequent injuries occurring employees might report off work due to illness or injury which will cause a drop in output, impacting the firm's profitability. The employees meanwhile will receive sick pay when they are off work, but an organization might need to get temporary workers to provide cover, which would incur additional recruitment costs.

Benefits of safety training:

• Reduces accidents and protects employees from injuries and illness saving the company’s time lose and diminished productivity.

• Increases employee job satisfaction, motivation and morale.

• Less turnover

How to calculate ROI?

Calculating ROI of worker safety training is a complex task. It is important to know this part as you know various aspects such as:

• Whether or not your employee training is effective?

• Are employees well trained to act at time of emergency?

• If you don’t invest in the training, will one employee unknowingly put himself and potentially others at risk? 

There are an infinite number of ways to calculate how the money being invested in safety is being put to work. Whether you’re using an employee learning management system, investing in company-specific online course development, or investing in expensive off-site classroom training for important theory courses, the formulas that help you calculate your safety training return on investment remains the same. The formula for calculating ROI is:

ROI (per cent) = (Monetary Savings / Training Costs) x 100

Assume that as a result of a new safety training program, an organization's accident rate declines 10 percent, yielding a total annual savings of $200,000 in terms of lost workdays, material and equipment damage, and workers' compensation costs. If the training program costs $50,000 to implement, the ROI would be 300 percent.

ROI = ((200,000 – 50,000) ÷ 50,000) x 100 = 300%

So in this example, for every $1 spent on training, the organization gained a net benefit of $3.

To get the figures for ROI analysis, keep track of training costs, including the cost of design and development, promotion and administration, delivery (staff or technology), materials and training facilities, trainee wages, and training evaluation for an organization like an outsourcing company. And after training, keep track of monetary benefits, including labor savings, reduction in lost workdays and workers' compensation costs, productivity increases, and lower turnover costs.

Summarizing this, having your employees receive regular health and safety training will give them the knowledge and awareness to be safe in the workplace whilst they go about their duties. This article describes how safety training reaps benefits if invested in a right way for an organization such as a software outsourcing company in India.

Effective employee safety programs provide a means for businesses to comply with state and federal regulatory requirements, reducing the concern over exposure to fines and legal sanctions. The benefits can be listed as: increased profitability, productivity and savings, potential costs and intangible returns. A software outsourcing company in India should think of its business and must evaluate the need of safety and match the training to that business need by thorough process of discovery, design, development, implementation, and execution for results.

Courtesy: Bhavesh Bulchandani