We’re excited to announce that we have several courses related to material handling safety being researched.

Convergence Training recognizes the need for computer-based training to teach the importance of safe material handling, proper lifting techniques, and back injury prevention awareness.

Back injuries are one of the most common, disabling, and costly of all workplace injuries. Proper lifting and material handling training can lead to a reduced risk of injury as well as a decrease in revenue lost to product damage.

Our new courses will include the following titles and topics:

Material Handling

• Manual material handling
• Material storage
• Material disposal
• Demolition
• Material handling with slings
• Material handling with mobile equipment, such as cranes, forklifts, powered industrial trucks (PITs), and earth-moving equipment

Safe Lifting Training

• Lifting things that are too heavy
• Lifting improperly
• Lifting objects that are too big or awkward to carry safely
• Lifting and then dropping objects

Back Injury Prevention

• The anatomy of the spine, and specifics about the vertebrae, discs, spinal cord, and nerves
• Causes of back injuries, including lifting, twisting, repetitive motions, and ergonomic issues
• Ways to avoid back injuries
• Back injury symptoms
• Safe lifting techniques
• and more…

While we’re in the research phase, we’d really appreciate any comments from our customers. Are there any special topics related to material handling you’d like to see addressed? If so, we’d really appreciate your comments. Just leave a note here and we’ll check it out here. We really value customer input and make every effort to include your thoughts in our safety training materials.

Over time, we’ll post updates here to let you know how we’re progressing during the production of these courses, and again when they’re ready for sale.

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Our customers trust Convergence to help train their employees. They recognize the effectiveness of our custom and retail training materials, which incorporate audio, 3D animations, 2D graphics, photos, video, text on screen, and interactive assessments to create training that makes a difference. And they appreciate the power and flexibility that our Convergence Server Enterprise Learning Management System (LMS) provides for training their employees: content import and creation, training delivery, tracking, reporting, and more.

But in addition to all this, many of our customers need a separate solution for providing online orientations to contractors or for other training needs. And that’s why we’ve developed Convergence Server Express, a simple, easy-to-use, flexible LMS that still packs all the power you’ll need for delivering, tracking, and reporting.

Some features of Convergence Server Express include:

• Hosted on our servers (this reduces your liability issues)
• Simple, self-guided registration process for contractors
• Automatic training assignments after registration
• Simple administrative security role for basic administration needs
• Streamlined “report viewer” security role to run reports and see who’s completed training
• Low costs that don’t get billed back to your company by contractors/outside workers

If you provide orientations to contractors before they can work at your site, the Convergence Server Express LMS may be just what you need to make your job easier.

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Although it’s the dead of winter, summer heat is coming sooner than you think. You’ll be sweating like a pig and sticking to your car’s leather seats before you know it.

We know our customers face special challenges in the summer time trying to keep their work forces safe while working in high temperatures and humidity.

With that in mind, we’re working now to produce two training modules related to heat stress:

• Heat Stress Causes
• Heat Stress Symptoms and Prevention

The Heat Stress Causes training module will explain:

• What heat stress is
• What causes it (including the relationship between heat and humidity)
• Factors that affect individual tolerances to heat

The Heat Stress Symptoms and Prevention training module will address:

• The different types of heat stress, including heat rash, heat cramps, heat syncope (fainting), heat exhaustion, and heat stroke
• Factors that contribute to heat stress
• Ways to reduce the risk of heat stress, including ventilation, air cooling, shielding, insulation, hydration, and proper clothing

We’re sure these Heat Stress training courses will be selling like hot cakes once they’re on the shelf and that you’re probably burning to get your hands on them. We’ll keep you updated, posting some previews as production continues and then letting you know when the two modules are ready.

Be sure to come back and add these to your collection before the dog days of summer are on. And know that we’re also working on a Cold Stress training module to cover the rest of the year.

Until then, treat yourself to a listen of this scorching classic.

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One of the first things companies want to know about a learning management system (LMS) is: Can I use it for management of change and document management, and how will it work with my existing management of change and document management systems?

First, let’s define our terms.

Management of Change (MOC) is a process in which key company documents, such as standard operating procedures (SOPs), are created by some people, reviewed and edited by others, and then saved in a final format.

A Document Management System is a system that stores documents and gives some people the right to edit them and others the right only to view and read them. Microsoft SharePoint is a commonly used document management system.

Got that? Now that our terms are straight, let’s see how the Convergence Server Enterprise LMS works with these systems.

The good news is we designed our LMS to give you unlimited flexibility for working alongside existing MOC processes and document management systems. Or, if you’d prefer, you can use the LMS itself for management of change and document management.

Let’s look at each scenario in more detail.

Management of Change

First, let’s take a look at management of change processes. You can always continue to use your MOC process, and then store your final version of key documents on your network, in a document management system, or within the Convergence LMS. That’s easy enough. (We’ll explain how to have key documents saved on your network or in a document management system and in your LMS shortly).

On the other hand, you can use our LMS to implement a MOC process too. When training content is created in our LMS, you must first save a file and then publish the activity. The file includes all the content that will eventually be assigned, but it cannot be assigned until it is published to create an activity. By assigning some employees to security roles that allow them to create files but not publish activities, and assigning other employees to security roles that allow them to take a saved file and publish it as an activity, you can effectively create an MOC process incorporating content creation and content review phases all inside your LMS.

Document Management

Now, let’s consider document management systems. In their simplest form, they are used to store key documents in a final form, give a small number of people the ability to edit a document, and give a larger number of people the ability to read the document. More robust systems can include multiple versions of a document, allowing a company to complete the management of change process within the document management system.

If your company current uses a document management system, there’s no need to stop. Your final version of key documents can be stored in your document management system and then imported into the Convergence LMS by creating a link between the LMS and the file in the document management system. When you assign the activity to an employee, and he or she launches the activity, the linked document opens within the LMS just as if the employee had opened the document directly from the document management system, and when the employee completes the document, he or she is given a completion record. Employees always see only the most recent version of the linked document, ensuring that only the most up-to-date information is presented. There’s even a way to notify employees if a document they have already completed has been updated so they can review the changed material.

On the other hand, maybe you don’t have a document management system at your work. That’s OK, too—you can use the Convergence LMS for your document management needs.

In the most basic sense, you can store your key documents inside the LMS and assign only certain personnel the ability to edit different documents (while allowing any assigned employee the right to view the document, of course).

But, you can use the Convergence LMS as a more robust document management system as well. Over time, you’ll probably revised and update your key documents and training materials. Our LMS always presents only the most recent version of an activity to employees, but it keeps a copy of every historical version of every activity. This way you can always see the materials you were using to train 5 years ago; you can even open an earlier version of an activity, edit it, and make it the most recent version.

At Convergence, we know that management of change and document management are key needs at many companies. And we also know that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cut it. That’s why we’ve created a system that will work in so many different ways for you: you just choose the one that’s right for you and let us help you get your training program working optimally.

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As part of our process of updating our existing training materials, we’ve turned our attention to our Bloodborne Pathogens training course.

Our Bloodborne Pathogens course is popular with our customers—it’s our best-selling health and safety course, and has been for years. Still, we found some things we could add, and wanted to make sure our training didn’t just meet expectations, but exceeded them.

Here are some of the new things to look for:

• Materials on hepatitis C virus (HCV) to accompany existing materials on hepatitis B (HBV) and HIV/AIDS
• Information about the hepatitis B vaccination sequence and an employer’s responsibility to offer the vaccination to employees
• New assessments
• 3D animations that match our current production capabilities (even though we’ve been creating 3D animated safety training for more than 10 years, we get better every year)

We’ll post updates here during the revision process and again when the revised module is complete.

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Recently we began work on a series of 3D animated training modules covering the industrial uses of valves. If you’ve been reading our blog closely, you know we posted on our blog asking for input from our customers and blog readers.

We’re happy to report that we did get feedback during that phase of production and that lead to the inclusion of several topics that we might not have included otherwise. So, thanks to a certain training manager at a large paper mill located in the Pacific Northwest for the help!

We mention this all now for two reasons:

1. To let you know we value our customer feedback.
2. Because we’re beginning the research phase of new training materials on the industrial uses of pumps and are looking for feedback again.

So, if you’ve always wanted quality training materials on pumps that’s well researched, well-written, and presented in multimedia with 3D animations, audio, and assessments, this is good news for you. Feel free to drop us a line or comment here on the blog to let us know what topics you think we should cover.

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Welcome to our 2nd edition of the Convergence Training Celebrity Minute. Today we ask “why.”

Why did Alec Baldwin fail to respond to flight attendant requests? Simple. He hasn’t taken our Hearing Conservation course, which suggests wearing hearing protection only in high noise areas, not all the time. And by his continued comments and his apparent deafness to the high-volume feedback from the plain old regular people, looks like he’s still got his ear buds in.

Why is Kris Humphries a prime candidate for our Pedestrian Safety video? Simple. Since Kim Kardashian kicked him to the curb abruptly ending their celebrity nuptials, we want to ensure that in the event that happens to him again, his walk home is as safe as possible.

Why is Tom Cruise more awesome than all the rest of us? Simple. Because the self-professed “expert of the mind” performs his own stunts, dangling (possibly hovering) effortlessly from the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. An unconfirmed report indicates that when asked if he had taken our Fall Prevention and Protection training, his response was, “No, but I held the DVD in my hands and absorbed all the necessary information… with my mind.”

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With temperatures plummeting and the mercury dropping, and with the ice, snow, and high winds of winter upon us, it seemed like a great time to expand our training course library to include a new module on Cold Stress.

The training module will cover these chilly topics:

• The three types of cold stress—frostbite, trench foot (also called immersion foot), and hypothermia
• The cause of cold stress, including the three members of the “cold stress equation” (cold, wind, and wetness)
• Factors that affect an individual’s ability to tolerate cold weather
• Signs, symptoms, and treatments for all three types of cold stress
• Prevention of cold stress

Be sure to check back for the cool low-down on this module. We’ll post updates during production to show some of our fancy 3D sets and again when the course is completed. Also, keep your eyes out for our two new Heat Stress modules, which are also in production.

Until then, maybe you’d like to check out this cool video?

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