Manufacturing companies have played a key role throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. However, unlike professionals from other sectors, frontline manufacturing workers are unable to work from home. For this reason, leaders of manufacturing companies must take special precautions to ensure the safety of their employees.
“The most critical focus for every (manufacturing) organization is to keep employees safe in an environment where repeated outbreaks are a persistent threat,” stated McKinsey and Company.1 By using the right online learning technology, manufacturing plants can simultaneously keep employees safe and foster productivity through manufacturer training programs.
3 ways to ensure the safety and performance of your manufacturing teams during the COVID-19 pandemic
1. Offer COVID-19 compliance courses for workers
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the type of compliance training manufacturing organizations must offer their frontline workers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains updated COVID-19 safety standards for these organizations. By keeping these standards and suggestions in mind when creating compliance training, L&D staff and compliance officers will help keep workers well-informed about how to stay as healthy at work as possible during the coronavirus crisis. Training designers can make these compliance courses more effective by building knowledge checks into them. Companies should also work with state and local public health officials when developing coronavirus-related compliance training.
Related Reading: What Exactly is an LMS?
2. Create a COVID-19 Assessment and Control Plan
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also a great resource for creating a COVID-19 Assessment and Control Plan, which can help manufacturing companies prevent or slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“A qualified workplace coordinator should be identified who will be responsible for COVID-19 assessment and control planning,” stated the CDC. “All workers in the facility should know how to contact the identified coordinator with any COVID-19 concerns. Infection control and occupational safety and health plans should apply to anyone entering or working in the plant (e.g., all facility workers, contractors, and others).” A COVID-19 Assessment and Control Plan will help keep manufacturing organizations on track as they navigate the challenge of protecting their staff throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. Give manufacturing workers flexible training schedules
Many manufacturing companies are increasing the amount of compliance training workers are expected to participate in and implementing a COVID-19 Assessment and Control Plan of some sort that will affect workers. Additionally, they are requiring employees to take extra safety precautions (for example, sanitization and social distancing practices) in the workplace. All of this may add to an employee’s current workload and decrease engagement, which can lead to lower levels of productivity.
To encourage better employee performance, company leaders should make every effort to give workers training schedules that are flexible. Flexible training programs can increase employee engagement and may help companies attract more qualified talent in the future.
An LMS for manufacturers fosters employee safety and productivity
An LMS for manufacturers makes creating and delivering compliance courses, implementing a COVID-19 Assessment and Control Plan, and offering flexible remote training to employees easier tasks for organizations. Companies can use LMS features to create, deliver, and track compliance training, store assessment and control plan documents in one secure online location where workers can easily retrieve them, and offer mobile learning to give workers more training flexibility, increasing their productivity.
An LMS designed for manufacturers is one of the best learning investments a manufacturing company can make at this time. Check out our Quick Start Program to learn more.
Sources:
1. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/managing-a-manufacturing-plant-through-the-coronavirus-crisis#
