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Effective Health & Safety Training to Improve Workforce Safety Awareness, Skills and Practices

SMART Safety provides hundreds of training courses that increase workforce safety awareness, skills and practices to help reduce incidents, injuries and claims. We also offer bilingual (English/Spanish) training!

We provide specialized and critical safety training in areas that include:

Silica Training
Forklift & Scissor lift Qualification
Fall Protection Competent Person
OSHA 10 & 30 Hour Construction
Active Shooter Training
First Aid/AED/CPR Certification
Defensive Driving
Excavating & Trenching
Confined Space
Electrical Safe Work Practices

Engaging SMART’s health & safety training will significantly improve overall workforce safety performance and build an effective safety culture across your organization.

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First Aid/CPR Training

Smart Safety Group Is Pleased to Announce Our First Aid/AED/CPR Course That Provides Your Company’s Workforce With Nationally Accredited Programs Through HSI’s Medic First Aid or American Heart Association Certification for This Life-Saving Training.

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Training Courses: What We Offer and Why You Need Them

Active Shooter Training

When an active shooter arrives, chaos ensues and lives are tragically lost. In past shootings, people’s quick thinking in the midst of terror has saved lives. When adequately trained for chaotic active shooter situations, your employees become empowered to protect themselves and others.

An active shooter is a person who is actively attempting to kill people with a weapon. This usually occurs in a highly populated, confined area with a firearm. Because active shooter situations occur without warning and are often over quickly, your employees need plenty of prior preparation.

Arm your employees with life-saving knowledge by creating an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) and mandating training. While forming your EAP, ask for input from stakeholders including HR, facility owners/operators, managers, and local law enforcement. Your EAP should include:

An evacuation policy and procedure
Emergency escape procedures and route maps
Local hospital information such as distance from worksite

Mock active shooter training exercises are the best way to reinforce life-saving concepts. Training should teach employees the following:

How to recognize gunshot sounds
How to react calmly but quickly when gunshots are heard and/or when a shooting is witnessed
How to determine whether to evacuate, hide, or take down the shooter as a last resort
How to safely dial 911 without attracting the shooter’s attention
How to react appropriately to law enforcement when they arrive

SMART Safety’s Active Shooter training program will arm your employees with powerful, potentially life-saving knowledge. Call us today to get started on the road to preparedness.

Fall Protection Training

According to the Department of Labor, falls are one of the top causes of traumatic occupational death. Employees working at six feet high or more must be trained in fall protection and protective equipment. OSHA also requires a “competent person” to be at every worksite to ensure that employees comply with safety guidelines.

OSHA defines a competent person as someone who has experience and/or knowledge recognizing fall hazards and correcting unsafe conditions. The designated competent person has the authority to halt operations at the worksite until any dangers are removed. The competent person should possess the most knowledge about fall protection at the worksite.

We offer a variety of fall protection training topics from Awareness to Competent Person. SMART Safety’s Fall Protection Competent Person training program rigorously prepares your employee to become a well-informed competent person. Our program meets all OSHA requirements on training the competent person to correctly identify and remedy fall hazards.

Defensive Driving Training

Did you know that commercial truck drivers accrue more nonfatal injuries than any other type of worker? Half of all nonfatal commercial motor vehicle (CMV) driver injuries are serious sprains and strains. The other half are bruises, fractures, cuts, lacerations, soreness, and trauma.

Operating a large vehicle is a serious matter, and statistics indicate that CMV driving is truly a dangerous occupation. For example, there are approximately 5,000 CMV-related fatalities, with only 14% of these deaths being CMV occupants. Meanwhile, out of more than 120,000 CMV-related injuries, just 20% are sustained by CMV occupants. Additionally, more than 650 CMV drivers die on the job, representing 12% of all workplace deaths. It’s clear that driving a vehicle presents dangers to both employees and other drivers. However, you can help reduce these terrible accidents by providing your CMV drivers defensive driving skills.

Defensive driving teaches your employees to be more aware of their surroundings and to react safely in unsafe situations. Defensive driving covers the following at minimum:

Inspecting and taking care of your vehicle
Recognizing dangerous driving conditions such as black ice
The importance of being “hands-free” and wearing a seatbelt
Following safe driving practices in all driving conditions
Using signals and headlights
Responding effectively to emergencies
Modifying your own driving based on the behavior of other vehicles

SMART Safety’s Defensive Driving course equips your CMV drivers with the right techniques to stay safe on the road.

Silica Training

Crystalline silica is a compound that is found in concrete, stone, artificial stone, sand and other materials. Whenever these materials are cut, ground or drilled workers expose their lungs to very dangerous, small silica dust particles. These particles are called “respirable” particles.

Overexposure to respirable silica may cause serious medical conditions including silicosis (a sometimes deadly lung disease), lung cancer, and kidney disease.

Silica presents dangers that your employees should be fully aware of. Providing protective equipment and properly training employees who work around silica will lessen their exposure to it. Silica training should address:

Identifying the materials and tasks that produce respirable particles
The company’s plans for controlling the amount of silica dust created
The health risks of working around silica
Working safely around silica, including the proper use of equipment and protective clothing
The name of the competent person designated by your company to take control of silica safety procedures at the worksite

SMART Safety offers an in-depth course on silica safety. The lessons learned will safeguard your employees’ health in the years to come.

Confined Space Training

Confined spaces hinder employees’ ability to enter or exit easily due to their tight or unusual configurations. They may be hazardous and should not be inhabited by employees for extended time periods. Confined spaces include but are not limited to underground vaults, tanks, storage bins, manholes, and pipelines.

Employees need to understand how to work in confined spaces safely because they do present hazards. A “permit-required confined space” is a confined space that has one or more of the following characteristics/hazards:

Contains or has the potential to contain a hazardous atmosphere
Possesses a material that can possibly submerge an occupant
Possesses walls that converge inward or floors that slope downward and taper into a smaller area. These configurations could trap or smother an occupant
Contains other safety or health hazards such as unguarded machinery, exposed live wires, or excessive heat

Our top-notch Confined Space training ensures your employees know how to safely work in confined spaces. At SMART Safety, our #1 priority is creating a safe work environment for all employees in all workspaces. Give us a call at (844) 820-8098 to jumpstart your employees’ training today.

Excavating & Trenching Training

Excavations and trenches can be treacherous for workers. An excavation is a man-made cut, cavity, trench, or depression in the earth. A trench is a narrow excavation (in relation to its length) made beneath the earth’s surface. Trenches are typically greater in length than width.

Trenches and excavations present serious dangers to employees if not treated carefully. Cave-ins are the biggest danger; they are more likely to cause worker deaths than other events. A single cubic yard of soil can weigh as much as a car. Other trenching hazards include falling loads, toxic atmospheres, and dangers associated with mobile equipment. It your company’s responsibility to safeguard the worksite against cave-ins and other hazards before allowing employees to work there.

The importance of training employees in trench and excavation safety cannot be overstated. Some safety tips for working in trenches and excavations include:

Knowing where underground utilities are located before digging
Keeping excavated soil and other materials at least 2 feet (0.61 meters) from trench edges
Keeping heavy equipment away from trench edges
Identifying equipment and activities that could cause the trench to cave in
Testing for atmospheric dangers such as low oxygen, hazardous fumes, and toxic gases when workers are more than 4 feet deep

Luckily, SMART Safety offers a comprehensive Excavating & Trenching safety course that warns of these dangers.

OSHA 10 & 30 Hour Construction Training

OSHA 10-hour and 30-hour courses make up OSHA’s Outreach courses. They introduce workers to OSHA safety guidelines and employee rights. OSHA 10-hour training discusses some of the health and safety hazards associated with various jobs. It also teaches employees how to avoid or mitigate them. OSHA 30-hour training gives supervisors a greater understanding of health and safety issues so they can manage their team’s safety. The programs are split into “industry” outreach programs for people in Construction, Maritime, and the catchall General Industry.

Employees who don’t have supervisory responsibilities should take OSHA 10-hour training. Employees who are responsible for team safety should take the 30-hour course. Some states and locations require OSHA Outreach courses for certain professions. Even if the training isn’t required by law, your company and employees would benefit from the programs.

In both the 10 and 30-hour courses, employees must learn mandatory topics that OSHA requires. The exact subjects vary by industry program. Elective topics are picked by course designers who choose the topics that are most relevant to their students. Optional topics include additional electives, unspecified safety topics, or topics previously discussed to devote more time to them.

SMART Safety’s OSHA-authorized trainers deliver our excellent OSHA 10 & 30-hour programs for the construction industry. Contact us today. You won’t regret it!

First Aid/CPR Training

Although your company may cultivate a culture of safety first, accidents still happen. Sometimes an employee has an emergency caused by his or her own health conditions rather than workplace hazards. Employees trained in basic CPR and first aid can render potentially life-saving service to a hurt or ill person. Below is a list of common topics in first aid training:

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training instructs employees how to resuscitate people who have stopped breathing and do not have a pulse. CPR compresses the chest and heart to pump blood to the brain. Employees have to be ready to successfully render CPR. If someone doesn’t start CPR within two minutes of the heart stopping, brain damage can quickly occur. 90% of people who undergo cardiac arrest die before reaching a hospital. However, rendering CPR within two minutes increases survival chances by 200% to 300%!

Giving someone first aid or CPR can be literally the difference between life and death. Give your employees life-saving skills by signing them up for our First Aid/CPR training today.

Electrical Safe Work Practices Training

Electricity is something NO ONE should play around with. Electrical accidents cause burns, shocks, electrocution, and even death. In fact, approximately 230 electrical-related deaths happen every year.

Your employees don’t need to fall victim to electrical hazards. Train them thoroughly to respect electricity and its powers and dangers. Effective electrical training should cover:

Identifying the three main electrical hazards, which are electric shock, fire, and burns
Explaining how electricity works regarding hazards on the job
Describing your company’s safety measures
Identifying and explaining how to respond to electrical emergencies
Identifying three main types of electrical safety controls. These are engineering controls (machinery and equipment), administrative controls (rules and regulations), and PPE (personal protective equipment)

You don’t need to be a licensed electrician to work around electricity. However, understanding the dangers associated with it and reducing those dangers are critical skills. SMART Safety offers a quality Electrical Safe Work Practices course that makes employees smarter around electricity.

Forklift & Scissor Lift Qualification Training

Forklifts and scissor lifts are handy tools that get people and products where they need to be. They are heavy-duty equipment though and must be treated as such. Did you know that forklift violations are routinely among OSHA’s top ten violations every year? Or that around 70% of forklift accidents could have been prevented with proper training?

Forklift hazards include unsecured loads that can fall and crush people, forklifts that tip over due to improper usage, and pedestrian accidents. That is why OSHA requires employers to certify training for forklifts. A forklift certificate indicates that the employee has been trained by the employer to operate the forklift safely. Here are a few other tips for forklift safety:

Ensure the load is balanced and fully secure to prevent a forklift from tipping over.
Put both forks as far under the load as possible before lifting.
Drive with the load as low as safely possible.
Obey posted speed limits and warning signs.

Scissor lifts come with their own hazards such as crushing potential, instability, and even collapsing danger. SMART Safety properly trains employees in manning both forklifts and scissor lifts.

Now that you have reviewed our different safety courses, choose one (or more) that fits your company’s needs. Whatever you need, we’re here to provide.

Call us at (844) 820-8098 or email us at INFO@smartsafetygulfcoast.com.