Improved Contractor Safety Induction

Asplundh Tree Expert Company specialises in vegetation management. They contract to large energy providers and engage sub-contractors and small firms to keep trees out of powerline and create life saving fire breaks. Workers are exposed to high risk hazards on a daily basis including: working at height, working with electricity, operating power tools and operating powered mobile plant. Their work also involves manual tasks and working on public roads and verges in life traffic environments.

Asplundh had a clear focus on worker safety and came to Tap into Safety looking for a way to increase the interactivity and engagement of their online safety induction. Like many others, they were using a large number of slides in a ‘death by Power Point’ delivery coupled with occasional video They recognised that their valued staff and contractors are hands-on workers who were not engaged by classroom learning and passive computer learning.
Tap into Safety developed two customised courses for Asplundh that have been integrated into their safety induction. They kept the framework for their online induction intact and stripped out the power point slides in the middle replacing the with a URL hyperlink into our cloud-based platform.

Users complete the training on both a rural and urban scene. Once the training has been completed the user is taken back into the Asplundh online induction to finish. Reports on user results are immediate and act as a record of the induction completion and evidence of worker knowledge and competence.

This is a rapidly growing company engaging thousands of contractors. The results showed a consistent 10% reduction in workplace injuries over two years. In 2021, Asplundh extended the use of the platform throughout their international business.

“By incorporating Tap into Safety in our induction program, we have an engaging mechanism for clearly communicating key and critical controls associated with our high-risk activities. The reports generated, provide an invaluable tool through which we can now accurately identify and address any knowledge gaps prior to workers commencing”.

Daryl Marshall, Safety & Compliance Manager