No need to duplicate previous training
October 1, 1999 less than 1 minute read
No need to duplicate previous training
One good aspect of the new forklift standard from the federal government is that employers do not have to duplicate training the employee received elsewhere, as long as you take reasonable measure to confirm that he or she received the training and then evaluate the worker’s safety.
The Occupational Safety and Health Admini-stration (OSHA) expects employers to confirm the training in much the same way they might confirm that a newly hired employee has appropriate skills on a certain piece of machinery, says Richard Sauger, safety specialist with OSHA and author of the new standard.
"If you hire someone and he says he can work a certain type of drill press, we’d expect the employer to confirm that before just throwing him on the line and telling him to work," Sauger says. "You’d probably have a supervisor with him for a while to observe and make sure the guy can do what he says he’s qualified to do. The same sort of supervision would apply to powered industrial trucks."
For the worker who says she already is trained in forklift safety, you don’t necessarily have to conduct your own training immediately. You do have to evaluate the worker’s performance on a forklift, and the worker is then subject to the periodic reevaluation.
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