Efficiency Meets Safety: The Right Way to Cross-Train

Did you know that cross-training isn’t just about efficiency—it’s a critical safety strategy? When workers are trained to handle tasks outside their primary role, it ensures coverage for essential safety functions on every shift, even when staffing is lean.

Why Cross-Training Improves Safety

One effective approach is to train workers outside their primary roles to handle emergency tasks. For instance, laborers and other trades can be cross-trained during safety orientation to respond to incidents involving bloodborne pathogens. This way, even if a shift doesn’t have a dedicated responder, someone on-site is competent and prepared to act quickly and safely.

Cross-training of workers is one way that businesses can do more with less, and it should begin during safety orientation. I’d often cross-train my laborers and other trades on how to respond to incidents involving bloodborne pathogens. Not every shift had a laborer working (especially on the night shift). It made sense to cross-train them, so we always had someone competent and trained about bloodborne pathogen clean-up on the project who could respond to an incident if needed.

Safety Training Comes First

Doing more with less is a harsh reality for many companies these days. Therefore, it’s not unusual for workers to multitask from their first day on the job. However, employers need to make sure that safety training isn’t left out of the cross-training culture.

Safety managers and supervisors must review job safety analyses to determine the necessary safety training for workers performing the work. In most cases, safety training must precede cross-training.

Jobsite supervisors who make decisions about cross-training need to be aware of any additional safety training required. Before training workers on a different task, supervisors should check that all safety issues are properly mitigated and that appropriate safety training is provided.

Workers should be encouraged to ask about safety issues as they learn a new task. The safety trainer must be aware that more requests for training records may arise and that reviewing them offers opportunities to ensure that workers receive proper training. Good recordkeeping can also help management determine whether workers are receiving all the safety training they may need or are required to receive.

Key to remember: Cross-training is a wonderful way to allow workers on the jobsite to multitask, saving the project money and reducing the need to hire additional workers.