I will wager that all of us have had to attend an after lunch training session at some point. Or, worse yet, had to give the presentation to a room full of nodding heads. Continue reading to learn how to develop training that will keep your attendees interested and focused.

The average forensic facility contains more than a fair share of hazards. With its typical mix of test laboratories, instrument rooms, chemical storage, waste handling, and busy receiving/loading docks, a wide array of hazards are always present. Every day our employees must deal with these while hopefully avoiding accidents and injuries. As you will soon discover, well-trained employees often do a much better job at this than average or untrained workers. In this column, we look at how to evaluate your training programs.

In our day to day operations, conducting crime scene investigations and processing evidence, we constantly encounter potential risks to our health and safety. Chemical safety, ergonomics, fire safety, hazard communication, housekeeping, lock out/tag out, and material handling are a few that come to mind. If you haven’t noticed, more than one hundred OSHA standards for the control of hazards in the workplace contain requirements for training in order to reduce potential for injury. During the period between 1980 and 1996, eighty reports were reviewed where training was used to reduce risk of work-related injury.¹ This review found overwhelming evidence demonstrating the value of training in increasing worker knowledge of job hazards and effecting safer work practices. On the flip side, a lack of training was found to be a contributing factor in worker injuries and workplace fatalities further reinforcing the review’s findings. A quick read of this publication should motivate you to take the time to evaluate your current training programs. So, let’s get started.

Whether you are developing a new training program or evaluating an existing one, our favorite idiom is “Start with the end in mind.” In this context, end means having a clear picture of what you hope to achieve. This is what is known in the field as defining your performance objectives.Ask yourself these three very important general questions:

1. Can employees recognize and identify hazards in the workplace?
2. Can employees recognize how these hazards result in personal injury, property damage, or both?
3. Can employees describe and apply appropriate safe work procedures and practices to cope with these hazards?

To help answer these questions, take a hard look at your facility’s safety record. Pull all recent accident and injury reports and trace them to their source area. Don’t forget to include reports of near misses and close calls. If your organization doesn’t have these, seriously consider implementing a procedure for reporting them. A careful review of this data should help you identify areas of your facility, particular job tasks or position classifications, in need of training.From here you can prioritize training topics and target your audience.