Occupational Safety and Health Administartion (OSHA) is a division of the U.S. Department of Labor. The Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health is the overseer for OSHA. The Congress formed the OSHA to guarantee safe and healthy working setting for workers by setting and implementing standards and by providing assistance, outreach, education and training. This was due to the implementation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
OSHA offers an extensive range of educational programs and training courses to help widen employer and worker knowledge on the identification, averting and avoidance of safety and health dangers in their places of work. OSHA also offers educational and training materials that facilitate businesses in training their employees and meeting the terms of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
However, there are some difficulties facing safety training. Organizations perceive OSHA training as an expensive, over-protective and expensive. The training professionals also perceive OSHA training as untouchable in the sense that high quality custom training may be developed but still do not meet the OSHA standards. More so, the employees view the commercially purchased safety training as irrelevant and waste of time. Finally, the major problem linked to poor safety training is that a comparatively small cluster of providers has developed courses that attract a wide set of customers. Although it is true that there is OSHA training developed to fit a precise audience, most of OSHA training is generally aimed at the lowly common denominator.
To curb these problems, OSHA needs to come up with some mitigating strategies. OSHA needs to educate the employers and the workers on the importance of safety training. Workers should be made to understand that safety training is tailored for their own benefit and not just a waste of time (Hartnett 1). More so, the cost of safety training should be reduced therefore making it affordable to workers and organizations. Last but not least, safety training should be tailored to fit a specific audience.
In conclusion, safety training is important to both employers and workers. However, there are some problems facing safety problems. These problems need to be curbed in order to realize full benefits of safety training.