Workplace Safety Training

Tell us how our training helped you do your job more safely!

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Location:
CLEAR at Jefferson State Community College
Top Floor of the Fitzgerald Student Center on the Jefferson Campus

Mailing Address:
JC/FSC405
2601 Carson Road
Birmingham, Alabama 35215

Phone: (205) 856-8040
Fax: (205) 856-8044
E-mail: tcarter@jeffstateonline.com

CLEAR's Workplace Safety Training

Back Home Again: The Long-Term Impact of CLEAR Safety Training

It's rare for an educator to have the opportunity to follow up with students months or years after the training ends. For those of us working with adult students, when the class ends we may never see or hear from that student again.

Workplace Safety Training Program, however, decided to track down students who attended emergency response, hazardous material, and confined space training from 2000-2003 to see what impact those classes had on individual behavior, workplace practices, and community safety procedures. The results were very encouraging.

For almost two decades, CLEAR has received funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to train workers and others responding to situations involving hazardous materials.

CLEAR has focused on three populations: 1) firefighters in the southeastern

U.S.

; 2) members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA); and 3) members of Native American tribes throughout the country. The three populations face very different challenges as they try to protect those with whom they live or work. They encounter hazardous materials in very different ways.
Here is what 200 former trainees, surveyed in 2004, had to say.

Individual changes.

Some of the most important results of training are in the small personal changes that we often overlook. Our respondents made a number of such changes, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1:Behavioral Changes

	Firefighters	CWA members	Native Americans
Easier to recognize hazardous chemicals than before the training.	74%	87%	74%
More likely to avoid exposure to chemicals than before the training.	75%	78%	71%
Talked with other workers about safety and health more often than before the training.	50%	58%	55%
Talked with friends and family about safety and health more often than before the training.	39%	58%	60%
Taught safety and health classes for others since the training.	45%	36%	21%
Used ideas and materials from CLEAR in training others.	32%	40%	16%

Changes in workplaces and communities. Trainees carried their knowledge back to workplaces and communities to help implement changes that would have far-reaching implications. Table 2 lists some of those changes.

Table 2:Workplace and Community Changes

	Firefighters	CWA members	Native Americans
Hazardous chemicals have been replaced by safer chemicals since the training.	NA	27%	12%
Employer or community has improved emergency response plan since the training.	32%	24%	35%
Employer or tribe has offered emergency plan practice since the training.	51%	42%	26%
Changes in procedures for responding to hazmat incidents since the training.	35%	NA	17%
Changes in union or labor-management safety and health committee activities since the training.	NA	44%	NA

Respondents played a large part in bringing about the changes listed above. Among the actions firefighters reported taking:

Wrote a comprehensive confined space rescue plan.
Incorporated information into hospital emergency response plans.
Sat down with members of department and made changes to standard operating procedures.
Participated in a care drill with multiple organizations. Assisted in drill critique of communications and operations.
Bought new equipment and discussed what to do with it in case employees were exposed to a hazardous chemical.
Employees were more aware of potential hazards and moved more slowly and carefully when responding to an incident.
More aware of confined space limitations.
Used the materials in planning department's response to terrorism.
More aware of placards on vehicles carrying chemicals and how to react.
CWA members, meanwhile, reported helping to make these changes in their workplaces:
Recognized harmful chemicals and had them removed from work sites.
Worked on joint committee to revise formaldehyde policy.
Placed more qualified stewards on safety committee and educated them.
Scheduled monthly labor-management meetings to address safety issues.
Evaluated machines. Wrote standard operating procedures.
Employer changed paints and got new ventilation system.
Trainee became the go-to person on technical advice for employer and members.
Increased recognition of potential hazards among those working in small shops.
Native American trainees affected the practices on their reservations:
Helped designate disposal areas for household chemicals.
Established separate storage areas for chemicals.
Acquired Material Data Safety Sheets (MSDS) for all chemicals on the reservation.
Trained for, and became part of, community emergency response team (CERT).
Used information from training to identify hazards for emergency response plan.
Trained department directors in emergency planning.
Tribe established staff position of Hazardous Materials Specialist to oversee response to incidents.
Tribal first responders approached incidents more cautiously, surveying area more thoroughly and looking for secondary devices.

Barriers to further action. Finally, we also wanted to know what factors kept trainees from using the information they gained in the training.

Firefighters faced few obstacles because their employers sent them to CLEAR specifically to learn new skills and procedures. Their business was safety, and the training was directly related to what they did every day on the job.
CWA trainees often returned to the job ready to implement changes, but encountered some resistance from employers. They had fewer opportunities to reach members because many companies were not receptive to the idea of workers training other workers. Local unions could rarely afford to pay lost time for safety training, and members were less interested in attending safety training on their own time.
Native American trainees often worked in more isolated locations, and lacked the time and funds to carry out some of the training or changes they desired.

The three groups of trainees face different hazards on their jobs and in their communities, but the survey affirms that they share one commonality: CLEAR training is having an immediate and important impact in their lives. Next year, we hope to follow this study with a more comprehensive survey that tells us how we can help trainees after they leave the classroom.

Judi King
Alan Veasey