OSHA Training

OSHA stands for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA puts legal standards and procedures in place for employers and employees to ensure safety from hazardous materials and actions.

OSHA requires some workers (depending on the industry) to obtain certification for operating machinery, handling medical equipment, and overseeing general practices all in an effort to protect the employees of a workforce.

OSHA Code of Federal Regulations and OSHA Standards

Construction, Agriculture, Maritime, and General industries are closely monitored by OSHA. The OSHA workplace safety standards and code of regulations require companies to strictly follow methods to ensure the safety of workers from hazards. Each industry has specific standards to comply with OSHA, but overall, the industry must make efforts to protect employees from danger.

OSHA was established in 1970. OSHA rules are stemmed from extreme lengths of research and public engagement. For instance, OSHA won’t issue a standard unless there are documented and verbal instances that show significant risk to workers. Luckily, with over 45 years of industrial history since OSHA’s beginning, we’re fortunate to live in a day and age where the most diabolical health and labor risks have well-thought-out solutions. Within an industry, facilities are inspected by OSHA compliance officers and OSHA certification can be obtained by individuals within a company to further ensure the safety of a facility and its employees.

Here are a few examples of OSHA standards:

preventive fall safety
ensure that any structure employees reside in, especially confined spaces, cannot cave-in
take all necessary precaution to prevent exposure to disease
prevent exposure to such harmful substances as asbestos and lead
put necessary guards on equipment
provide workers with safety equipment such as respirators and goggles
provide extensive and ongoing training for positions that require potential high risk

OSHA Inspections

OSHA inspections are not scheduled and happen unannounced. They can be initiated by anyone within a company if they believe there is a negligence of standards or a hazardous situation has arisen that has yet to be resolved. Priority and prominence of immediate inspection range between imminent danger and companies randomly targeted within an industry with rising hazard or injury rates. Upon inspection, if an inspector finds an unresolved issue, OSHA can issue fines and violations and will follow up with further inspections to make sure the issue is resolved permanently.

Employers can debate a complaint in its entirety or any part of the complaint issued to OSHA, but the person who filed the complaint can only contest to the date in which the complaint can be resolved.

OSHA Regulations and Rights

Employers must follow a set of regulations to comply with OSHA standards. The regulations consist of following OSHA health and safety standards, correcting and hazards that have been found, informing and properly training employees and others you can find on OSHA’s website.

Employees have the right to work in certifiably safe areas. This includes an overview of the areas to the employees that work in the area and with equipment in the areas. Safety training must be available to all workers, in any language necessary for comprehension. Along with training, employees must be given information on OSHA and their work facility to review and reference. Employees are allowed to file complaints (with or without identifying themselves), review past work-related illness and injury accounts, obtain copies of tests done to measure hazards, and exercise and of these rights without retaliation from the employer.

OSHA Training Online

OSHA training, whether its for simple OSHA 10 certification or greater, is extremely important within industries that must follow OSHA standards and regulations. OSHA training requirements can consist of 10, 30, or 40 hours of training offered by the OSHA Outreach Training program. The shorter course is for entry-level employees, whereas the latter length certification programs are for employees with a level of safety responsibility overseeing others. Employees can also become OSHA Certified Trainers but require a few years of experience or other certifications to qualify for OSHA employment.

Having an OSHA certified trainer within a company is an asset. This person can provide OSHA training to onboarded and current employees. Though, as an employer, the first step is to hire someone who is already certified, or better yet, promote someone internally who has a knack for observation. This way, instead of searching for an OSHA authorized trainer, the company has one in-house who can easily accommodate to learning styles of employees.

Regardless of the length of training, before an employee takes OSHA certification online, it would expedite the certification of all employees to inform employees of safety essentials and basics through elearning prior to certification. That way, elearning for OSHA certification can be measured, tracked, and improved upon to assure a 100% pass rate. Those who pass the programs are given an OSHA card (e.g., and OSHA 10 hour card or an OSHA 30 hour card) stating so. OSHA training online is available through vendors of certain industries, but when searching for programs online, be sure the programs are legitimate.

What is covered in OSHA training?

Depending on the courses, content can vary between avoiding hazards to recognizing and implementing measures to prevent exposure to hazards. Entry-level employees that complete an OSHA 10 hour training online program learn their OSHA rights, recognition of hazards, and proper avoidance measures. The OSHA 30 hour training and OSHA 40 hour training courses go into detail about industry specifics; regarding the industry, a learner can learn the specifics about dangerous hazards and in-depth ways to protect the masses.

Perfect examples of industries where OSHA training and compliance is necessary are the construction industry and restaurant industry. In construction, equipment and machinery can be heavy, sharp, complicated to maneuver, and an overall risk to the safety of those surrounding it. OSHA forklift training is an example of specific courses needed for construction, just as following OSHA restaurant regulations is needed for any place serving food. OSHA certifications can be pricey, whether you need an OSHA forklift license or just want to learn about an OSHA 300 log, training doesn’t come cheap. Check with your company to see what OSHA training is reimbursed; free OSHA training is the best OSHA training, right? Many companies won’t pay for a second test, so don’t fail that OSHA forklift test! Pass the first time!

Common OSHA 10 Hour Training Topics:

Below we’ve listed much of the topics covered in OSHA 10 hour training, and more extensively for OSHA 30 hour certification:

Hazard communication – Lessons and communication on how to avoid or clean up hazardous chemicals.
Emergency action plan – In case of fire or natural disaster, provide a concrete plan for employees to execute.
Medical and First Aid – This covers the necessary first aid kit and the items and their uses it’s equipped with. Some industries require different.
Bodily fluid spills – OSHA standards of proper, safe processes to clean and dispose of bodily fluids, e.g., blood spill from a cut.
Exit routes – OSHA has standards for the number of exit routes within a workplace, additionally, the exit information can be incorporated into the emergency action plan.
Walking/Working surfaces – this topic covers the areas within a facility prone to slipping or falling and provides necessary precautions or signals to avoid slips and falls.
Electrical hazards – We all know not to stick a fork into an electrical socket, but this topic covers not only the avoidance of accidental interaction with electrical shock but also the design of electrical systems to adhere to OSHA standards.
Construction/Industrial Equipment — While OSHA doesn’t provide certification for heavy equipment operators, it does require that employers instruct employees to avoid unsafe conditions. For example, while OSHA overhead crane training requirements may not be specifically covered, there is training that covers effective crane and hoists operations.

More topics covered with OSHA compliance training vary per industry.

Your Workplace and OSHA Compliance

OSHA provides a quick-guide to OSHA compliance within a company. Below are the steps, and though we will focus primarily on number five (Training), the fleshed-out guide can be accessed here. The steps are as follows.

Requirements that apply to General Industries
Requirements that may pertain to your specific workplace
Surveying the workplace for missed hazards
Developing safety and health programs
Properly training employees
Recording and reporting
Finding additional help and resources

Delivering Effective Training to Meet OSHA Training Requirements

More than 100 of OSHA’s current standards, from healthcare safety training to annual training requirements for construction, include requirements for training. The best workplace safety programs need to include comprehensive and effective training.

There are several factors that contribute to successful OSHA training. One of the most important factors is to ensure the trainer exhibits expertise, great teaching skills, and flexibility. They also need to be able to help employees identify safety and health problems in their workplace, analyze the causes of each problem, and how to bring about safe and healthy work environments.

OSHA training can seem overwhelming or cumbersome to some team members. To combat these feelings, OSHA’s education center recommends following these best practices:

Accurate: Training materials should be prepared by qualified individuals and updated as needed.
Credible: Training facilitators should have a general safety and health background or be a subject matter expert. For example, you wouldn’t want a trainer talking about OSHA training requirements for construction without ever stepping foot in a construction zone.
Clear: Training programs also need to be delivered in a clear and understandable way. If the material is only understandable to those who work for an OSHA training institute, the program will fall short.
Practical: OSHA training should present information, ideas, and skills in a way that employees see a direct correlation with their work. While it may be easy to just follow the OSHA required training checklist. General industry training lessons can easily share real-world examples and scenarios that employees can experience in their daily role.

Studying to Become a Certified Safety Professional With Lessonly

Training on hazardous information and procedures is beyond necessary, it’s vital to the safety of employees and those people around the environment in which they work. Let’s flip the context: imagine if employees weren’t trained on and work facilities weren’t abiding by OSHA regulations and standards? Let’s spell it out for you: D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.

To avoid having to hear or spell that word, train your employees. OSHA training is sometimes recommended for all, but often necessary for some. With an elearning software like Lessonly, compliance training can be executed through lessons and tracked through quizzing.

Elearning is simply an option, not a substitution, to help employees further retain OSHA certification. Additionally, elearning can be used after OSHA certification to apply real context to standards. For instance, use elearning to take a standard and apply it to something at your place of work, e.g., “Wear protective gloves when sawing something, but if you cut yourself, immediately grab the first aid kit in the cabinet below the bathroom sink.”

Lessonly is great for updating materials too. OSHA regulations change periodically. Does OSHA 10 hour training expire? No. But it’s important to update certifications due to any changes OSHA issues. With that said, Lessonly software automatically saves any updates to a lesson or course. When preparing a group for OSHA certification requirements, any updates the administration has made can be easily fixed.

Ultimately, Lessonly is best for the courses outside OSHA that must be covered by an organization. Choosing and implementing the right elearning system can change the entire dynamic of learning within a company. With Lessonly, evaluating training programs takes less time, because tracking learning is a breeze.

Understanding the training is up to the teacher to strategize content placement, but after that, the placement itself is intuitive and the delivery and tracking process is seamless. Courses on operating procedures, work practices, routine, and nonroutine work authorized activities and other subjects pertaining to overall health and safety, can be added, distributed, tracked, and updated with ease.

For example, say an employee needs to know if they can come in later and work after hours. Some workplaces won’t allow that, because there might not be supervision after five o’clock. With Lessonly, you can provide onboarded employees with the basic learning about things like this; one-off answers to questions like “When do I have to clock out? Do I need a supervisor when dealing with a mechanical issue? What’s the kitchen policy?” Lessonly helps clients organize and condense the answers to these questions in a way that’s easy for teachers to construct and easier for learners to learn.

OSHA recommends clearly defining the subjects and goals at the beginning of a training lesson. We recommend going a step further and letting the learner know how long the training should take.

On top of elearning, we at Lessonly are big fans of the flipped classroom approach. Provide employees with perfectly packaged lessons, equipped with a variety of media like photos and OSHA training videos. Elearning prior to hands-on learning will help employees prove their learning and retain it mentally and physically.

A simple example here would be a bodily fluid spill. Say, an employee accidentally cuts their finger with a knife. Cleaning up just a drop of blood requires certain steps. With Lessonly, learners can take the lesson at their convenience before a due date. If you assign the ‘Spill lesson’ prior to an on-site training session, the learner can take the lesson on a mobile device, and you can use the on-site training session for learners to practice performing the appropriate steps in case of a spill.

Lessonly also makes tracking training requirements easy and quick. For example, do you need to pull a list of employees who have an OSHA certification? Our powerfully simple software provides customizable reports that help leaders track training completion and quiz scores so you can rest assured everyone is up-to-date with OSHA training.

For other elearning practices, we have free resources available.

Employees should always be well-informed. With Lessonly, employees can not only feel aware and informed, but employers can track progress and keep information up-to-date. For other questions regarding OSHA training, visit the OSHA website.