DOT Supervisor Training Certificate – 7 Ways It Can Improve Workplace Safety
When we talk about workplace safety, the most volatile factor that we can think of is the human involved. That’s right. The machines are not going to work on their own. The equipment is not going to behave erratically without any human invention. You invite dangers and risks when you add the human factor into it. This is why keeping all your employees, associates, and workers 100% DOT compliant is not just important but absolutely necessary. DOT supervisor training is a big step forward in this direction. It helps you maintain very strict standards of workplace safety for everyone. All your supervisors or any managers and leaders that hold similar positions in your organization must receive this training so that they can easily identify any potential problems or risks that any employees bring to the table.
By enrolling your supervisors in the most relevant DOT training certification program, you can make a mountain of difference in the safety standards of your organization for every single employee, driver, and associate that works for you. Let’s talk about a few ways a DOT supervisor training certificate can help you achieve sterling standards of workplace safety so that you can stay DOT compliant throughout the year:
1. Staying Aware Of The Organization’s Safety Policy
This training makes your supervisors aware of the policy of your organization regarding drug and alcohol use and abuse. They are trained to educate others about the policy and implement the same in your company without any interruptions and hiccups.
2. Understanding All The Legal And Sensitive Areas
Providing your supervisors with high-quality DOT supervisor training can make a significant difference in maintaining the rights of your employees and ensuring a safe workplace. When you choose the best DOT supervisor training provider, your supervisors will gain the necessary knowledge to implement collective bargaining agreements, and comply with local, state, and federal laws related to alcohol, prescription drugs, and other controlled substances at work and beyond.
3. Ability To Identify Potential Problems
What DOT supervisor training means for your company can be understood a lot better right here. The entire point of this course is to enable your supervisors to do the following and more:
- Understand the performance parameters and identify the change in attendance patterns of your employees
- Recognize any altered personal appearance more easily
- Pay attention to mood swings and changes in the attitude of your employees
- Identify the inability to perform responsibilities and jobs with complete concentration
- Identify unusual behavior patterns and recognize incidents of sleeping while at the job
- Notice defensive attitudes and similar problems with employees while at work
4. Documenting Behaviors And Risks
Your supervisors are also capable of documenting the potential risks, problems, and behavioral changes that are mentioned above regularly and reporting the same to their immediate authority. These problems need to be documented as they occur and addressed as soon as possible. Your supervisor is going to be in charge of all these responsibilities and will also keep a complete record of all these incidents throughout the year so that advanced collective action can be taken in a timely manner.
5. Taking Necessary Steps To Uphold Organizational Safety
Your supervisor is also able to understand a few very critical actions and policies that can be enacted to control the changes in the behavioral patterns and attitudes of “problematic” employees. Because they already have documented evidence of various performance deficits and issues with all those employees, drivers, and associates, they can come up with the most suitable and effective plan of action. This might include the following:
- Getting the employees and individuals in question involved in discussions identifying the strength of the employee
- Describing the job performance problem to the employee
- Talking about the documented evidence with the safety-sensitive position holder
- Offering supervisory support right at the beginning
- Addressing issues related to attendance with the employee without drawing any attention of other associates
- Addressing personal problems and offering solutions to them to improve work performance
- Going into regular progress reviews with all your employees and safety-sensitive position holders
6. Referring Employees To Appropriate Programs
Let’s assume that none of the above-mentioned actions or policies deliver the expected results. What are you going to do next? The supervisor is made more than capable of referring your employees, workers, and safety-sensitive position holders to relevant programs. These apply only to the individuals that cause a potential threat or risk to others at the workplace. You can enable your supervisor to do the following with the right compliance educators:
- Choose from a wide variety of assistance programs for the employee in question
- Connect with the healthcare provider of the employee to understand his health problem better
- Make sure that the employee understands the various critical requirements of the job
- Refer them to training and re-orientation programs to get them reacquainted with your workplace culture
- Referring them to rehabilitation groups and programs so that drug abuse, if any, that is causing safety-related concerns at the workplace can be addressed
7. Workplace Crisis Management
Supervisors are also made capable of addressing workplace-related crises in a typical DOT supervisor training module. This is a very critical aspect of these courses and something that should not be avoided. Documenting every piece of evidence and recording all their observations and responses by employees and safety-sensitive position holders is only one side of crisis management. There are other more specific steps that can be taken to do the needful such as:
- Observing whether the unusual behavior is appearing again or not?
- Have there been any illegal activities or policy violations at the workplace?
- Noticing what specific behavior of a particular employee puts everyone at risk
- Staying connected with reliable witnesses who drew your attention to the problem in the first place
- Assessing whether the situation is serious enough for you to call security or law enforcement or not
- Identifying the need for expert consultation
- Identifying the need for reasonable suspicion training or testing
Conclusion
DOT supervisor training is essential for workplace safety and compliance. Your supervisors must understand its standards and practices. This certification not only benefits your supervisors but also helps your company maintain its commercial standing. This is because your supervisors are in a critical position and are capable of maintaining the safety and well-being of everyone involved whether directly or indirectly in safety-sensitive jobs. Your operations departments are exposed to these risks practically every day. These certifications enable them to minimize those risks significantly all the while keeping them compliant with the rules and regulations laid down by the federal motor carrier safety administration and the US department of transportation. Connect with your C/TPA to understand your DOT supervisor training needs today.