Emerging Issues of Health and Safety Training Delivery in Australia: Quality and Transferability

This paper presents some initial findings that have emerged from a critical realist study in progress in Western Australia that is examining the impact of health and safety training in relation to the introduction of a national Work Health and Safety Act (WHS Act). Training has been identified as a key support mechanism to implement improved work health and safety under the newly harmonised regulatory framework through professional development, workplace certificated training, and tertiary educational training. There are a limited number of studies that evaluating safety training programmes by examining the quality of training and the impact on reducing work-related injury. This paper addresses this issue, indicating the impact and opportunities for safety and health training from the perspective of diverse managing stakeholders within the system and concludes by calling for research to evaluate training that monitors and supports quality delivery standards and transferability of the learning into the workplace.