Creating a safe work environment cannot occur without training our teams—which is the reason safety education is the cornerstone of our service to our manufacturing members. In this issue, we look at orientation and job training best practices for the employees among the most at risk in your organization: new employees and workers learning a new job.

In a constantly changing environment with new information and evolving risks, such as with COVID-19, we need to consider training and re-training to transfer knowledge and understanding to our employees and to increase vigilance as workers tire of the restrictions or grow complacent with controls.

Tapping into the insights of companies that have embraced health and safety in their organizational cultures, we introduce innovative training methods from several nominees for the Safety Innovator Award we presented during the October 28 online premiere of the 2020 Safety Pinnacle Awards.

Restrictions on gatherings and outside visitors create new challenges for workplace training. As your health and safety partner, we have responded with new online courses and subscription-based, self-service learning portals to provide greater flexibility for health and safety training. And where classroom instruction is a better fit, new virtual options allow classroom education at a distance.

At our Make It Safe Conference in October, we heard international perspectives from industry leaders and experts around the world. This unique opportunity to learn in our offices, plants, and living rooms continues with hours of educational content now available on-demand at MakeItSafe.ca.

As we look at the changes in our workplaces this year and consider the long-term impact, we invite you to revisit these conference sessions. Explore diverse topics such as psychological safety, mental resilience, and machine guarding in an age of robotics for guidance and insight into health and safety practices for post-pandemic workplaces.

With restrictions tightening this fall and new health orders in place for workplaces across the province, our team at the Alliance remains at your service. Call our OHS support line at 1.604.795.9595 for advice to strengthen your safety plan and controls—and for training to help keep your people safe. Together, we can build safer workplaces and emerge stronger in the recovery.