Worker and supervisor training is a key element of your compliance efforts and safety and health management program. All workers need to understand the hazards related to their work and appropriate control measures—elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, and personal protective equipment (PPE).

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) training outreach program offers worker, supervisor, and trainer training. Training is industry-specific—construction, disaster site, general industry, maritime industry—and is provided by OSHA-authorized, third-party trainers. Trainers give workers and supervisors who complete training OSHA 10 or OSHA 30 cards, and the OSHA Outreach Training Programs provide the cards. At the top of the card hierarchy are the trainer cards, reflecting the highest level of achievement and proficiency.

Safety training card hierarchy

Here’s a look at the card hierarchy:

• Trainer card: Trainer card holders are authorized to teach 10- and 30-hour outreach courses and receive student completion cards from OSHA. Cardholders must meet requirements for training and industry safety experience. Trainers are allowed to tailor the 10- and 30-hour training topics to meet the needs of their audience, but OSHA specifies mandatory topics and flexible topic requirements for each industry. OSHA Training Institute (OTI) Education Centers offer trainer courses. Trainers must complete updated training every 4 years.
• 30-hour card: Students who complete the 30-hour course, intended for supervisors or workers with some safety responsibility, receive this card. The 30-hour course provides a greater depth and variety of training on an expanded list of topics associated with workplace hazards than the 10-hour course.
• 10-hour card: Students, usually entry-level workers, who complete the 10-hour course receive this card. The 10-hour course provides information about worker rights, employer responsibilities, how to file a complaint, and basic awareness training on the recognition, avoidance, abatement, and prevention of workplace hazards.
• Disaster Site Worker card: Students who attend either a 7.5- or a 15-hour Disaster Site Worker Course receive this card. The courses are intended to provide disaster site workers with an awareness of the safety and health hazards they may encounter, as well as the importance of respiratory and other protective equipment and proper decontamination procedures that may be used to mitigate disaster site hazards.

A training session can last no longer than 10 hours, including instruction and administrative time, such as meals and other breaks, attendance, and optional testing. Classes for the 10-hour program must take a minimum of 2 calendar days, and a 30-hour class must take a minimum of 4 calendar days. The outreach program’s guidelines include class sizes, classroom setting, attendance, breaks, hours, documentation, and verifying student identity.

OSHA maintains a database of authorized trainers on its website, and it monitors trainers’ compliance with the program’s guidelines.

Be aware that fraudulent trainers may advertise offers of OSHA 10-hour or 30-hour training or cards but aren’t authorized to issue them. For example, a formerly authorized trainer once admitted to selling over 100 fake OSHA 10 cards at $200 each. OSHA maintains a watch list of suspended and revoked trainers the agency has found aren’t compliant with the Outreach Training Program’s requirements.

Training requirements

Many OSHA standards contain training requirements. For example, general industry standards with training requirements include those for the control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout); electrical safety; emergency action and fire prevention plans; forklifts; hazard communication and hazardous and toxic substances; occupational noise exposure; permit-required confined spaces; PPE, including respiratory protection; and powered platforms. Other standards, like the powered industrial truck standard, have operator certification and refresher training requirements.

Many industry-specific standards, such as electric power generation, transmission, and distribution; logging; and telecommunications, also have training requirements.

While OSHA’s construction industry fall protection—general requirements standard (29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §1926.501) is its most cited standard, its fall protection training standard (§1926.503) is the seventh most cited regulation. OSHA cited 2,050 violations of the training standard in fiscal year (FY) 2024.

A “competent” person must perform fall protection training—someone well versed in fall protection measures and site-specific systems. Depending on the on-site crew's makeup, training may need to be delivered in a language other than English.

Training needs to be geared toward your intended audience, which may involve considering their cultural and educational backgrounds.

Training resources in Spanish and other languages are available from OSHA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and the labor union-supported Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR).

The training must cover the nature of fall hazards in the work area and the proper procedures for erecting, inspecting, maintaining, using, and disassembling fall protection systems like guardrail systems, personal fall arrest systems, safety net systems, warning line systems, and safety monitoring systems.

Working at heights also poses a risk of being struck by materials and tools falling from above, so training must also cover the correct procedures for handling and storing equipment and materials to prevent struck-by hazards. Workers must be instructed on the limitations of their fall protection equipment while performing roofing work on low-sloped roofs. All employees must be instructed on their responsibility for monitoring safety when using fall protection systems.

Other construction industry standards with training requirements are blasting and the use of explosives; cranes and derricks; hand and power tools; motor vehicles and motorized equipment; overhead power lines; scaffolds and steel erection; signs, signals, and barricades; underground construction; and welding and cutting.

OSHA often cites employers for failing to provide required training and meet other requirements of a standard. For example, the agency may cite you for the lack of a hazard communication program, failure to label containers and post signs, failure to maintain a safety data sheet (SDS) collection, and failure to train employees in workplace chemical hazards. Citations for control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout) violations often include separate citations for training violations. In a construction inspection, OSHA could cite an employer for failure to provide personal fall-arrest systems and a failure to provide fall protection training.

During an inspection of a facility for hazard communication compliance, agency compliance safety and health officers (CSHOs) will interview contract and temporary workers, employees, and supervisors to evaluate compliance with training requirements under the standard.

Employers recently cited by OSHA for training violations include:

• An Ohio shipyard employer for failing to train fire watch employees on the basic elements of fighting a fire, including extinguishing agents and methods of extinguishing fires. After a large fire in the cargo hold of a commercial iron ore vessel moored at the Port of Ashtabula, the agency cited the employer with 15 serious violations, seeking $164,540 in penalties.
• A Mississippi steel pipe manufacturer for failing to provide safety training to stacking yard employees. The employer settled with OSHA in November to resolve citations and penalties involving one worker’s death and another’s amputation injuries.
• A Mississippi poultry processor for failing to provide lockout/tagout training. The employer reached a settlement with OSHA following a teen janitorial employee’s death and also agreed to ensure the plant’s manager and safety director completed OSHA’s 30-hour general industry training and plant supervisors completed OSHA’s 10-hour training.
• A Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, commercial bakery for failing to train employees in lockout/tagout procedures. OSHA proposed fines totaling $262,953 for two repeat, six serious, and two other-than-serious violations. The agency opened an investigation into an employee’s disabling injuries that the company failed to report as required.

Nonregulatory training

Some workers’ compensation insurance providers may offer resources for employers to help them limit injuries and illnesses. For instance, The Travelers Companies offer a Workforce Advantage® program to help employers onboard and train new employees. Liberty Mutual’s SafetyNet resources for risk control include training webinars and workshops.

The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) has developed two consensus standards for training: the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/ASSP Z490.1-2016 “Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health and Environmental Training” and ANSI/ASSP Z490.2-2019 “Accepted Practices for E-Learning in Safety, Health and Environmental Training.” The ASSP Z490.1 standard covers how to manage safety training programs and criteria for developing training that incorporates adult learning principles. It also covers how to effectively deliver training, evaluate training outcomes and on-the-job training, and document training to maintain compliance with company policies and regulatory mandates.

ASSP Z490.2 covers accepted practices for eLearning in safety, health, and environmental training programs.

The ASSP suggests taking a higher-level view of safety training, integrating it into an employer’s overall safety and health management system. Beyond training, safety and health management can benefit from safety observations, audits, job hazard analyses, and incident and near-miss investigations.

The National Safety Council (NSC) has similar recommendations, such as identifying training needs; setting goals and objectives for training; choosing materials, methods, and resources for training; and continually evaluating and improving safety training programs.

Questions about training’s effectiveness

How effective is safety training in reducing worker injuries, illnesses, and fatalities or your workers’ compensation claims? The evidence is inconclusive.

Several years ago, NIOSH looked at research on training effectiveness and found that training does affect workers’ safety practices. However, it couldn’t find definitive evidence for the impact of training alone on worker safety and health outcomes.

Training is just one aspect of safety and health management, but it’s a key element. Observation (“management by walking around”), audits, and safety rules also have their place.

Along with audits, observation, and safety rules, training may help you rein in your workers’ compensation claims, lower your recordable injury rate, and ensure compliance with state or federal safety and health standards.

Safety training can also help reinforce a strong safety culture at your facility or jobsites. Basic safety instruction like the OSHA 10-hour course may help foster employee safety awareness and compliance. Risky worker behavior and failure to comply with your safety rules, policies, and procedures may be signs of a troubled workplace safety culture. Employees “bending” or breaking your workplace safety rules and procedures can have serious consequences.

Despite any questions about training effectiveness, you must still comply with training requirements in OSHA’s safety and health standards and its requirements for maintaining training records.

Consider using resources offered by federal OSHA or state workplace safety and health agency outreach programs, labor union-affiliated groups, or your workers’ compensation insurance provider.