To Retain or Not to Retain?
- Jun 5
- 2 min read
Congratulations, you have completed your training and have waited out the 60-day full implementation period! What’s next? It’s time to evaluate. Use the HSEp evidence submission templates to guide you through this process. We’ve recently noticed some of our HSEp members struggling with this step, so let’s revisit training retention.
Training retention demonstrates to the validator that workplace parties are competent in their roles and responsibilities related to each topic. To successfully measure retention in your workplace, you are required to conduct interviews/surveys with a randomly selected sample of employees from different
impacted departments. Impacted means those parties that received the majority of the training and are the main individuals responsible for enforcing your topic program. As you must provide proof that training has been retained, these interviews/surveys must be documented with the exact date, the full name, and the position of the employee.
How many employees must be interviewed or surveyed? This number will depend on the number of
employees in your organization. The WSIB typically wants 20% of employees to be interviewed/surveyed; however, for your submission, only 3-5 examples are required due to the sizing limitations of your submission.
Consider the following tips as you evaluate your topic’s effectiveness:
Your interview/survey questions must be related to the topic and be based on initial training. This allows you to determine if training was retained, as you are using the actual questions from training. Only use 3-5 questions from the specific topic training.
As you interview staff, it is important that you interview different employees for each topic(s). This is to show the validators at WSIB that you are ensuring a good sample is being taken of your staff’s knowledge and a broader picture of your overall workforce.
After the interviews/surveys are completed, answer the pressing question at hand:
Was training retained?
How do you know this?
Do employees understand and follow the procedure?
As the goal of this section is to successfully demonstrate training has been retained, those involved in your interviews/surveys must get their questions right. If you notice staff are not answering the questions correctly, you must have an action plan to address how you will revisit training and address any knowledge gaps.
As with all attachments for your evidence board, your file must be a PDF or Word document as these are
the only acceptable formats WSIB accepts. The WSIB will not accept Google docs.
As always, we are here to support you through your journey. Feel free to reach out to us with your
questions by phone 1-866-754-8839 or by email (excellence@systems24-7.com).
