Astutis announce the publication of the Astutis 2022-2023 Health, Safety and Environmental training report this month.
The research, which was conducted by the Astutis in-house researchers highlights some fascinating insights gleaned from over 250 global industry professionals from a myriad of industries, regarding their application of health, safety and environmental training in their organisation.
The report focusses on topics such as ‘The Emergence of the Environmental Agenda, ‘Current Trends in Health, Safety & Environmental Training’, ‘Mental Health and Wellbeing’ as part of the health & safety curriculum and ‘The Future of Health, Safety and Environmental training’.
The research report is specifically designed to provide valuable insights for individuals seeking training, organisations choosing training, and providers looking to analyse and develop training for the future.
Here is a snippet of what’s included!
The Emergence of the Environmental Agenda
Environmental awareness has never been higher! In last year’s Astutis report there was a surge in interest from organisations concerning environmental training. In 2022 a growing focus from global leaders, environmental member bodies and general society has increased the desire for businesses to act and combat their damage to the environment even more.
The COP27 alliance meeting was seen to produce proactive-active commitments to environmental action than ever before. And this appears to be translating into action not only by the individual but organisations also, which is reflected in this year’s research results.
Encouragingly, over 52% of respondents state that their business has a proactive Net Zero plan, and 18% said that their business is involved with sustainability programmes.
27% of the companies surveyed stressed that the environment is a determining factor when choosing training, which gives a clear indication for training requirements in this field moving forward.
Current Trends in Health, Safety and Environmental Training
The pandemic exponentially grew not only the need for digital training, but also the acknowledgement of mental health and well-being as a core business concern. Accreditation training bodies NEBOSH & IOSH continue to provide the most attractive and popular training courses, with over 76% using NEBOSH materials and 70% IOSH.
Live Virtual & Online Training:
The research shows that through virtual and online training, businesses are obtaining even higher levels of learner engagement, and pass rates, and improving their bottom line at the same time. Thus virtual and online training continues to have upward growth in this year’s report, with live virtual training climbing to 52% and 83% of respondents declaring that most of their company training takes place online.
Primary Objectives of HSE Training:
Research from last year’s report identified that 62% of respondents stated that one of their primary objectives of HSE training was to improve attitudes and culture. The figure rose again this year to 69%, which shows that business has an ever-increasing desire and need for such culture-based training.
50% of respondents also stated that ‘Lower Accidents’ was one of their primary objectives of health & safety training, and 49% looked to ‘Ensure Compliance’, 47% citied ‘Staff Development’ and 33% judged their primary goal as ‘to Improve Efficiencies’. The research showed that over 62% of respondents claimed there had been a decrease in incidents after training within their organisation.
Influencing Factors when choosing HSE training
In this year’s report, Astutis were keen to discover the key influencing factors a company considers when choosing HSE training.
Courses that relate to the industry of the professional embarking on training maintain the number one spot with 62%. And it was immensely gratifying to see ‘Learning Outcomes’ in second place with 56%. This shows a firm correlation with organisations progression towards improvement of the individual and workforce development.
Turning Health and Safety into Health, Safety and Well-being
During the pandemic, mental health and wellbeing of employees was a highly discussed and debated issue that could no longer be ignored by business.
Some industry studies showed that the overwhelming consensus was that business had addressed this concern in the short term during the pandemic, but focus and resources had declined since.
The Future of Health, Safety and Environmental Training
Learner Engagement through Micro-Learning
One particular facet that Astutis has been very keen to develop and maximise through their training courses is learner engagement – learner engagement creates happy learners which in turn creates successful learners.
The learning development team at Astutis are constantly researching issues like information overload, which occurs when presenting too much information in large chunks and the learner becomes disinterested or disengaged with learning.
This can be addressed by the use and application of such techniques as ‘Micro-learning’. Micro learning is in essence the art of presenting complex information in smaller sections and bite-sized pieces of information which are much easier for the learner to digest.
Virtual Training
So what does training look like in the future?
Astutis have trialled VR (virtual reality) platforms to see whether such courses as the NEBOSH diploma would be compatible. The trials concluded that the application of innovative technologies within training – such as VR and gamification has positive effects on learners and learning engagement.
Such courses as the NEBOSH fire certificate could harness the power of this technology by providing real-life training practises to combat fire risks in the workplace – all of which is a really exciting prospect for the future of HSE training.
In the next few months.
A Brief Summary
In short, the research study confirms that digital training is constantly increasing, mental health and wellbeing have become a permanent feature of the health & safety syllabus, and environmental elements and training is now of growing demand.
Please do click the link below to view the full report and the statistics summary.
https://www.astutis.com/astutis-hub/News/2022-2023-hset-report
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