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March 2, 2005

Employee training courses now online

State and federal laws require all Sacramento State employees—faculty, staff and even student assistants—to complete mandatory health and safety training. And the Office of Environmental Health and Safety’s online courses are making it easier for employees to do so.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have recently increased their enforcement efforts to ensure greater compliance with employee training standards at universities across the country. Employees are currently required to complete two basic courses before or within a few days of the start of their job: Injury and Illness Prevention Training and Emergency Action Training.

“Everyone is required by law to do these courses, because all employees are covered by OSHA,” says Mike Christensen, director of Environmental Health and Safety. Employees with unique job risks may be required to take additional OSHA or Sacramento State courses.

To help employees identify their training requirements, employees can view their official training profile through a new campus online learning center called LearnerWeb, accessible through the office’s website at www.ehs.csus.edu. After obtaining a username and password, employees can start their courses, log their progress and have the completion of their courses recorded.

A new e-mail system will be activated in March that will automatically remind employees to complete their training requirements.

“It’s really simple to do your injury prevention training whenever you want,” Christensen says. “It takes about 45 to 50 minutes and does not need to be completed in one sitting.” Emergency training requires a review of campus safety policies, available for viewing at the Environmental Health and Safety website. Afterwards, employees must print a form and mail it to the office to confirm completion of the course.

Illness and injury prevention training informs employees about Sacramento State’s safety program, instructs employees on their safety-related rights and responsibilities, and helps them identify and eliminate work hazards before injuries or illnesses occur.

It also teaches supervisors and department personnel ways to keep safety requirements current in their work area, how to avoid disciplinary action for unsafe practices and ways to voice safety concerns and complaints.

The Emergency Action Program informs employees of strategies to cope with emergencies such as floods, fires or bomb threats, and provides basic information on CPR, evacuations and reporting threats to campus safety.
Other training options include self-study courses and instructor-led training classes. Class schedules are available at the Environmental Health and Safety website.

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