Opening a serious exposure to claim. How do you demonstrate employee engagement with the induction? Questionnaire at the end? They will skip through footage to find answers. Interactive web application? Two browser windows open simultaneously. Induction for many will be the first and likely the last formal training with the employer. More importantly remembering these are new starters how do they ask a video a pertinent question? Had an engineering manager insist on an induction video for contractors to save his staff time - the personnel attending site had not seen it or understood the video, the contracted firm subbied the job and failed to pass on the video so to save face contractors ended up sitting in a room watching an expensive 40 minute video. The verbal PowerPoint equivalent took 20 minutes. If you want to drive H&S at site you need direct one to one involvement - people get the message of how serious you are when they can see it real time in your eyes.

On a construction site that i go to often the first part of the Induction was web based and you had to pass that induction first in order to get a number for booking the Site induction. Its better on Large sites to be able to do something like this as it would filter all those that were not suitable, thus reducing the possibility of injury on sites. The Basics could be done online or via a cd or similar and the second part, The actual site audit would cover more important areas of the site etc..

Aren't the various construction card systems meant to cover the basics and haven't these virtual tests been proven of late to be open to abuse e.g. test answers available on line?

Even having face to face training is open to abuse, if you are the trainer working for a company do you really want a lot of people failing. The only way to ensure that people have listened and taken anything in is a test, or you could as part of the induction work alongside them correcting them at every step. The British Safety Council have a level one course which has 40 questions I think at the end, a few years ago when my kids were about 12 I asked them to sit and without any training complete the test both got the pass mark, but it is seen as the way to show a level of competence. (I am not slagging the BSC or anyone else but that is the way it is. I like to set practical tests so that I can see they have listened. As for litigation, it really doesn't matter what you do because if they can't get you for lack of training, they will get lack of supervision, or R/A not suitable etc, etc, etc.

Contractor Inductions are very time consuming. We moved away from the face to face inductions to an online version with questionnaire. Yes there are shortcomings in this online approach. We also made the Contractors Induction an annual compulsory requirement. In addition to support the Contractor Control program we also carried out prearranged formal one to one EHS reviews usually annually, function of the contractor/firm involvement, with the Manager of the Contracting company. Unannounced documented random inspections of contractors activities usually on a weekend also assisted- a time where slippage may be more inclined to occur. Monthly Contractors (30mins) meeting with all foremen/supervisors/managers of the Contracting companies were also held. New contracting companies to the business were always the greatest source of contractor performance shortcomings - despite prior explanation they may not believe you are serious until they are been hauled in over a potentially serious shortcoming. Generally though this approach with other controls brought in much improved contractor performance .

I don't have that much information regarding this thing but then I agree with the idea of seabee81 as doing this things physically could be really hectic.

Here is a link to an induction video from one of Northern Ireland's largest contractor's : although its on the internet, the contractor retains full copyright. It was professionally made, and covers most of the points made in many inductions. (I have no association with the company) https://www.youmatter.co...-at-work/video-induction PH2