Spring training is a critical time for baseball teams to prepare for the upcoming season. It is when players reconnect as a team, define their roles, set new performance goals, and discover how they will contribute to franchise success.
While environmental, health, and safety (EHS) training doesn’t immediately call to mind baseballs, bats, and bubble gum, the purpose remains essentially the same: creating a workforce that can turn up for their teammates and deliver wins for the good of the organization.
The good news is that you don’t need to wait for the grass to turn green before rounding up your team for training. Hold on tight as we step from the sun-soaked outfields into the nebulous space of EHS training at a time when the discipline (like so many others) is fundamentally transforming.
EHS Training Fundamentals
EHS training is designed to provide employees with the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to identify and manage workplace hazards and prevent accidents and injuries. There are also regulations to follow, compliance mandates to meet, and reporting that needs to be filed correctly.
Meeting all of these demands is the purview of the EHS team and quality training is the key to getting it right.
Unlike baseball, your organization’s training window isn’t limited to a yearly, intensive camp. This frees you up to craft a training plan that ensures your employees have the right balance of learning, repetition, and practical experience across the entire year.
Here are some great lessons to learn from those training pros in baseball that you can apply to your ongoing EHS training.
1. Develop strong teams
Strong teams deliver results, whether in sports or business. When the result you’re looking for is a safe work environment, it’s important to invest training time in developing collaborative teams.
Group EHS training provides an opportunity for employees to work together and develop a shared understanding of workplace hazards, safe practices, and emergency procedures. By building a culture of safety and cooperation, teams can better identify potential hazards and work collaboratively to mitigate risks, preventing accidents and injuries.
Online courses and group e-learning opportunities are excellent tools for bringing together learners from disparate departments and locations to learn together and build stronger bonds.
2. Establish clear communication
The way baseball players communicate using hand signals and body language has an almost mystical quality to it and demonstrates the power of establishing clear patterns of communication.
For your workforce, breakdowns in communication often have consequences more significant than simply losing a game. When employees have a shared vocabulary around safety, they are better equipped to communicate effectively with each other, identify potential issues, and work together to solve problems.
3. Build skills that benefit the whole team
Some safety skills are universal while others require specialized knowledge. Without the right balance of skills, your team won’t be ready to meet challenges as they arise.
Just as baseball players need to master the fundamentals of throwing, catching, and hitting, your workforce needs to develop strong foundational skills for workplace safety. This might mean learning about basic safety rules and regulations, identifying common workplace hazards, and understanding emergency procedures. Learning CPR and basic first aid also falls under this category.
When it comes to those specialized skills, however, it’s wise to employ targeted skill-building, offering more in-depth training to those who need it. This way you can ensure that your whole team is receiving the individualized training they need to ensure everyone’s health and safety needs are met.
4. Use technology to your advantage
Technology has revolutionized baseball training by providing players and coaches with sophisticated tools to improve their skills and performance. Every movement, every pitch, and every swing can be broken down and analyzed with remarkable detail and sophistication.
Technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality (VR/AR), wearables connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized training across all functions.
The same is true for the EHS field. VR and AR are being used to train workers in hazardous situations, so they can walk through procedures risk-free before having to attempt a real-life scenario. Wearables are monitoring vital signs and locations of workers so emergency aid can be dispatched promptly.
5. Practice makes perfect
Repetition and practice are key to skill-building in EHS training. Just as a baseball player might spend hours in the batting cage or on the field, EHS teams need to practice their skills in a variety of scenarios to ensure that they can apply their knowledge effectively in real-world situations.
This might involve hands-on exercises, simulations, or other training methods that allow team members to practice identifying and responding to workplace hazards.
It’s Time For EHS Training Camp
Building a strong and consistent EHS training program has countless downstream benefits. Not only will your workforce be ready to respond to situations as they arise, but they will also have the knowledge and skills to avoid issues in the first place.
Baseball has been benefiting from focused, purposeful, and consistent training programs for over 150 years. Now is the best time to revamp your training programs and ensure you’re getting the results your workforce is capable of delivering.
