Using an LMS to Onboard New Hires More Effectively, Efficiently

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
LMS for Onboarding New Employees Image

Onboarding new employees can be time consuming, difficult, and inefficient. And, for a number of reasons–it’s often ineffective. If you’ve done it before, you already know this.

You can onboard new employees more quickly, efficiently, and effectively by using a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is a software application that companies can use to import, create, assign, deliver, and track training. You can use an LMS to deliver all sorts of training. This can include training specific to various job roles, HR training, and safety training. And–yes–you can also use an LMS when onboarding new employees.

(more…)

Read More

Chunking Mining Safety Training Materials: Improve Your Mine Safety Training

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment
Chunking Mining Safety Training Image

We just wrote an extended blog post that explains the benefits of “chunking” your training materials and gives tips for how to do it.

Click here to read the extended article on chunking.

Otherwise, if you’d like a high-level overview of chunking and then would like to see how you can use chunking to make your mining safety training program more effective, read on.

The Bird’s Eye View on Chunking Training Materials

  1. Chunking refers to taking training material (during the design phase), breaking the training materials up into little “bite-sized” parts, and then organizing them in a way that makes the material easier for your employees to learn.
  2. Chunking is helpful because of how our brains work when we learn-in particular, the limits on our working memory to hold only about four bits of information at a time.
  3. Although learners who are novices or experts in a given topic can each only remember about four chunks at a time, experts can remember bigger chunks.
  4. You should arrange chunks within training materials in a way that makes it easier for your employees to understand and remember them. Some organizational methods include job sequence, dependent learning, cause and effect, and whole to parts, but there are more.
  5. Chunking training materials begins at a high level–the entire curriculum, for example–and then works its way down through modules, lessons, courses, and screens (or similar sub-divisions of your training materials).

A quick head’s-up for ya here: We’ve included a free Guide to MSHA Training Requirements at the bottom of this article.

(more…)

Read More

How to Deliver EHS Training: (Based on ANSI Z490.1, Section 5)

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

delivering EHS training image (Note: This article is based on the newly revised, 2016 version of ANSI Z490.1.)

Hello. We’re back with our continuing look at effective EHS training. The series takes its cues from and expands on the ANSI Z490.1 standard on EHS training.

In this post, we’re going to take an in-depth look at Section 5, which is all about delivering EHS training.

The strong focus is on the EHS trainer in this one, plus there’s some stuff about training delivery and training materials.

If you want to download our free 42-page Guide to Effective EHS Training just click that link you just whizzed past. Or you’ll get another chance at the bottom of this article.

So with that said, let’s learn more about effective EHS training delivery, including trainers, training delivery, and training materials, right?

(more…)

Read More

5S + Safety = Lean 6S Safety

Jeffrey Dalto 3 Comments
5S Safety 6S Lean Image

You’ve probably heard of 5S. If so, you know it’s a method for organizing a work area to increase efficiency and productivity while reducing waste. And it’s one of the first steps that many companies make while trying to become “lean.”

If you didn’t know that before, now you do.

5S can help make a company lean, but it also can improve safety and health at the company. It makes sense, because a more organized, tidier workplace is going to have fewer hazards. For example, if your housekeeping is better, you’ll have fewer tripping hazards. And if you’ve organized the workplace so tools and machines are placed more appropriately, your workers will have fewer ergonomic risks.

Even though 5S comes with “built-in” safety benefits, that’s not the end of the story. Over time, people have modified 5S by adding a new “S” to create 6S systems. One of the most common of the 6S systems results from adding Safety to 5S. This is sometimes called 5S+, 6S, lean 6S, 6S safety, or lean 6S safety.

In this article, we’ll learn more about 5S and/or 6S and how you can use it to create a more organized, efficient, productive, and safe workplace. To learn even more, check out our series of 5S online training courses and lean manufacturing training courses.

And at the very bottom of this article, you can download a free 5S infographic–nice! 

(more…)

Read More

How to Identify and Close Skill Gaps at Work

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

identifying-and-closing-the-skill-gap-blogConsider this scenario, if you will.

You’re a training manager. Or maybe you’re someone else who is involved in training–the head of operations, or in HR, or the safety manager.

You or someone else at work determines there’s a performance problem. More specifically, you think your employees may have a skill gap.

What’s the answer? Create and lead some training? Well, maybe. But maybe not.

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that training’s the answer for everything. But there’s nothing worse than creating a training program for a problem that the training can’t solve. You’ve now spent a bunch of money and time creating and delivering the training, and you’ve still got the problem to boot.

The best way to avoid this scenario is to take a step back and analyze the performance problem first. If you learn more about the problem, you can then figure out what the best solution for it is. Maybe it WILL be training, but maybe it will be something else.

(more…)

Read More

What Is the Hierarchy of Controls?

Jeffrey Dalto 11 Comments
What is the Hierarchy of Controls image

What’s the best way to protect your workers from hazards at the workplace?

One common and effective method is to use the hierarchy of controls. To which you may ask-but what is the hierarchy of controls? That’s the focus on this article, and we’ll explain it in full detail.

First, though, we’ll set the scene, by explaining what a hazard is, how to identify hazards, how to assess and prioritize hazards for controls–using the hierarchy of controls, of course.
(more…)

Read More

How to Do a Job Hazard Analysis: 4 Essential Steps

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

job hazard analysis (JHA) imageNot that long ago, we wrote a blog post titled What Is a JHA? That post was such a big hit we’ve created this second post. It walks you though the steps of performing a JHA, and  even includes a free downloadable guide to performing JHAs at the bottom.

This guide for performing a JHA incorporates suggestions made in OSHA’s Job Hazard Analysis booklet (OSHA 3071, revised in 2002). We think you’ll find it useful when you perform JHAs at your worksite.

Performing JHAs at work will improve your safety record and general EHS compliance. So let’s get started with our tips on how to do a job hazard analysis.

Of course, we’ve prepared a free guide to conducting a JHA for you too–you can download it at the bottom of this article or here.

(more…)

Read More

Aerial Work Platform Safety Course Gets Reboot

Convergence Training Leave a comment

Our aerial work platform safety course has been a perennial best-seller since its release in 2009. It was among the first courses we produced, and though it offered great information and provided effective training content, we decided that after 6 years, the popular course could benefit from an overhaul. Many of our courses get this treatment as they age, receiving new looks and updates to the original training content.

Today we present the new and improved Aerial Work Platform Safety course from Convergence Training. The first thing you’ll probably notice are the updated 3D models and high-resolution sets, but this was no mere facelift; 5 minutes of totally new content have been added to the course, and some existing sections have been updated to reflect current regulatory standards. We’ve also updated the built-in progress review quizzes and aligned all the content more closely with the clearly stated learning objectives. Check out a sample below:
(more…)

Read More

Convergence Mobile Wins Brandon Hall Award for “Best Advance in Performance Support Technology”

Convergence Training Leave a comment

brandon-hall-award2

Convergence Mobile has won a silver medal for “Best Advance in Performance Support Technology” in Brandon Hall’s annual Excellence Awards. Our Convergence Mobile solution debuted in 2012 and has seen continued development of new features designed to arm employees with the knowledge they need to make smart operating decisions quickly.

Winning this award validates the hard work our team has put into developing a performance support solution that meets the needs of our industrial and manufacturing clients. All Excellence Award entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts. Brandon Hall senior analysts and executives evaluated the series based on innovation, value proposition, and measurable results.

(more…)

Read More

How to Develop EHS Training (ANSI Z490.1 Section 4)

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

How to Develop Effective EHS Training Image

(Note: This article is based on the newly revised, 2016 version of ANSI Z490.1.)

Let’s continue our series of articles about ANSI Z490.1, the US national standard that lays out “Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health, and Environmental Training.”

In this post, we’ll look at Section 4 of the standard, which focuses on how to develop effective EHS training.
(more…)

Read More

Chunking Manufacturing Training: How to Help Your Employees Learn

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

Chunking Manufacturing Training Image
We just wrote an extended blog post that explains the benefits of “chunking” your training materials and gives tips of how to do it. Click hereto read the extended article on chunking for training.

Otherwise, if you’d like a high-level overview and then would like to see an example of chunking applied to manufacturing training, read on.

The Bird’s Eye View on Chunking Training Materials

  1. Chunking refers to taking training material (during the design phase), breaking them up into little “bite-sized” parts, and then organizing them in a way that makes the material easier for your employees to learn.
  2. Chunking is helpful because of how our brains work-in particular, the limits on our working memory to hold only about four bits of information at a time.
  3. Although learners who are novices or experts in a given topic can each only remember about four chunks at a time, experts can remember bigger chunks.
  4. You should arrange chunks within training materials in a way that makes it easier for your employees to understand and remember them. Some organizational methods include job sequence, dependent learning, cause and effect, and whole to parts, but there are more.
  5. Chunking training materials begins at a high level–the entire curriculum, for example–and then works its way down through modules, lessons, courses, and screens (or similar sub-divisions of your training materials).

(more…)

Read More

Goal Analysis: How to Analyze Goals (So You Can Meet Them)

Jeffrey Dalto Leave a comment

goal-analysis-postPeople like you and I have goals: “I want to be a good parent” or “I want to be healthier.” Businesses have goals: “We want to be an industry thought leader” or “We want to be cutting edge” or “we want to be lean.” And trainers have training goals for their employee learners: “I want them to be motivated” or “I want them to want to do their jobs well.”

Of course, the point of having goals is that we want to meet them. But it can be hard to meet a goal if you don’t really know what that goal means. Consider our examples above. How does a person know if she’s a good parent or healthier? How does a business know when it’s an industry thought leader, cutting edge, or lean? And how do trainers know if employees are motivated or want to do their jobs well? These goals are abstractions instead of being concrete.

In this post, we’ll show you a method that will help you develop goals that are clearly stated, concrete performances. The reason for doing that is that it makes it easy to tell you’ve reached the goal. And that’s the goal of goals, right?
(more…)

Read More