Every employer in Ireland has a legal duty to provide health and safety training. The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 is clear on this. But beyond the legal requirements, good health and safety training helps keep people safe.
The challenge most organisations face isn’t whether to train their staff. It’s how to do it effectively, consistently and without disrupting operations. That’s where eLearning comes in.
At The Learning Rooms, we’ve been helping Irish organisations deliver health and safety training for over two decades. We’ve seen firsthand how digital learning can transform safety culture when it’s done well.
The problem with traditional health and safety training
Traditional classroom based health and safety training has its place, but it comes with significant limitations. Getting everyone together at the same time is logistically difficult, especially for organisations with shift workers, remote teams or multiple locations. The training itself can feel disconnected from the actual work environment. And once it’s over, there’s no easy way to refresh knowledge or check understanding.
Then there’s the consistency problem. When different trainers deliver the same content, quality varies. Key messages get diluted. And when new employees join between scheduled training, they might wait weeks or months before receiving essential safety training.
eLearning solves these problems without sacrificing quality.
Our approach to health and safety training
We offer several ways to meet your health and safety training needs, whether you’re looking for something ready to deploy today or a fully customised solution.
Bespoke eLearning development
When your health and safety requirements are specific to your industry, your equipment or your work environment, generic training won’t cut it. Our bespoke eLearning service creates training designed to your exact needs.
We work with your health and safety team and subject matter experts to understand the real risks your workers face. Then we build interactive, scenario based content that puts learners in realistic situations. They practice identifying hazards, making decisions and following correct procedures in a safe environment before they encounter these situations for real.
Rapid eLearning development
Sometimes you need quality health and safety training delivered quickly. Perhaps regulations have changed, you’re introducing new equipment, or an incident has highlighted a gap in your training. Our rapid eLearning service gets professionally designed content into your learners’ hands fast. It’s ideal for getting critical safety information out quickly without compromising on instructional quality.
Off the shelf eLearning
For foundational health and safety topics, our off the shelf catalogue offers a cost effective solution. These courses cover essential areas like manual handling, fire safety and workplace hazards. They can be deployed immediately through your LMS and are perfect for regular upskilling, onboarding new staff or providing refresher training.
Tailored eLearning
Sometimes you want the speed and affordability of off the shelf content, but with a more personalised feel. Our tailored eLearning service takes eLearning courses from our catalogue and adapts them to your organisation. We can add your branding, incorporate your specific policies and procedures, include scenarios set in your workplace and even feature your own people. This gives learners content that feels relevant and familiar, without the time and cost of building something entirely from scratch.
Build your own with eXcolo
If your organisation wants to develop health and safety training in house, our eXcolo Toolkit provides everything you need. It includes Instructional Design training, Articulate Storyline training, Â Articulate Storyline templates, resources and ongoing support to help you create engaging eLearning content yourselves. This approach works well for organisations that need to update safety content frequently or want to build internal L&D capability.
Health and safety training we’ve delivered
We’ve worked with organisations across multiple sectors to create health and safety eLearning that makes a real difference. Here are some examples.
- Screen Pass for Screen Ireland. We developed Screen Pass, a health and safety eLearning course for everyone working in Ireland’s film, television and animation industry. The course covers the unique hazards of production environments, from working at height on sets to managing electrical equipment. It needed to be accessible to a diverse workforce including freelancers, contractors and employees, many of whom move between productions frequently. We also created a course for Covid-19 Compliance Officers, helping productions plan for, manage and monitor workplace health risks during the pandemic.
- Weather safety for StormGeo. Working with StormGeo, we created eLearning focused on weather safety for offshore energy operations. This training helps workers in high risk environments understand weather related hazards and make safer decisions. When you’re working offshore, understanding weather conditions isn’t just helpful, it’s essential.
- Health and safety for Green Tech Skillnet. We partnered with Green Tech Skillnet to develop health and safety eLearning for Ireland’s renewable energy industry. Using rapid eLearning development, we created training that addresses the specific hazards workers face in this growing sector, from working with solar installations to wind turbine maintenance.
- Food safety for safefood. Our work with safefood demonstrates how health and safety training can be both engaging and effective. We created a gamified blended learning programme to help students achieve certification from The Environmental Health Association of Ireland. The course uses interactive elements and game mechanics to make food safety training memorable and enjoyable.
What makes health and safety eLearning effective?
Based on our experience, the best health and safety training shares several characteristics.
- It’s specific to the work environment. Generic hazard awareness isn’t enough. Workers need to recognise the specific risks they’ll encounter in their actual jobs, with their actual equipment, in their actual workplace.
- It’s scenario based. Reading about safety procedures is passive. Making decisions in realistic scenarios is active. When learners practice responding to hazards in a safe digital environment, they’re better prepared to respond correctly when it matters.
- It’s anytime, anywhere. Health and safety knowledge needs to be fresh. eLearning allows workers to access training when they need it, whether that’s during onboarding, before starting a new task, or as a quick refresher.
- It’s accessible. Health and safety training needs to reach everyone in an organisation, including people with disabilities. We build accessibility in from the start, not as an afterthought.
- It’s trackable. You need to demonstrate compliance and identify gaps. Good eLearning provides detailed reporting on who has completed what training and how they performed.
- It’s inclusive. Health and safety training needs to reach everyone, including workers with lower literacy levels and speakers of other languages. We build inclusitivity into everything we create.
Industries we support
We’ve delivered health and safety eLearning across a wide range of sectors, each with its own unique challenges and requirements.
- In manufacturing and engineering, we help organisations train workers on equipment safety, hazardous materials and workplace procedures. Our work with the renewable energy sector is a good example of how we address industry specific risks.
- In the arts and entertainment sector, we’ve created training for film and television productions, covering everything from on set safety to managing the health risks of production environments.
- In food and retail, we help organisations meet food safety requirements while keeping training engaging for frontline staff.
- In healthcare, we develop training on topics from manual and people handling to infection control, ensuring clinical and support staff can work safely.
Getting started with health and safety training in Ireland
If your current health and safety training isn’t delivering the results you need, or if you’re looking to move from classroom based delivery to eLearning, we’d love to help.
Whether you need a fully bespoke solution for a high risk environment, rapid development to respond to new regulations, or off the shelf content to cover the basics, we have options to suit your needs and budget.
Get in touch to discuss your health and safety training requirements. We’ll help you find the right approach to keep your people safe.
