At Dunedin-based private training provider The Learning Place, director Pieter van de Klundert says the more accessible it is made, the easier it is for people to engage.
If a workplace of 20 or more employees decides to have a health and safety committee, they elect a health and safety representative to represent them in those matters.
That elected position could issue a Provisional Improvement Notice (PIN), a written notice telling a person or business to address a health and safety concern in the workplace. But that could only be issued if the representative had training in unit standard 29315.
The Learning Place’s online development division has built New Zealand’s first online health and safety representative stage 1 training and assessment module delivering unit standard 29315. It used ADInstruments’ kuraCloud online learning platform.
Benefits included affordability, accessibility, as employees could do it at their own pace and in their own time, and it was also easy to understand and enjoyable to complete, Mr van de Klundert said.
Research done by The Learning Place showed far more workplaces were engaging with health and safety. With all the publicity around it, more people were looking to get involved.
Following a soft launch of the module in December, there had been much interest and many registrations throughout the country.
The Learning Place started delivering health and safety compliance for the liquor and food industries and then branched out into other areas.
Mr van de Klundert was looking forward to a "huge" year ahead. Since the development of the first wholly online licence controller qualification for the liquor industry 18 months ago, the online training division has continued to develop online compliance training modules for industry.
Four more products were in production, for hazardous substances, food safety, fire warden and gambling. The licence controller qualification had taken a 25% market share of national candidates since its inception. The Learning Place was, in total, training about 8000 people a year, he said.
