Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Joe and Jen Allen of Allen Safety LLC take their combined 40+ years of worker safety, OSHA, EPA, production, sanitation, and engineering experience in Manufacturing Plants including Harvest Plants/Packers, Case Readies and Further Processing Plants, Food Production Plants, Feed Mills, Grain Elevators, Bakeries, Farms, Feed Lots, and Petro-Chemical and bring you their top methods for identifying risk, preventing injuries, conquering the workload, auditing, managing emergencies and catastrophic events, and working through OSHA citations. They're breaking down real safety opportunities, safety citations, and emergency situations from real locations, and discussing realistic solutions that can actually be implement based on their personal experiences spending 40+ weeks in the field every year since 2001. Joe and Jen are using all of that experience to provide a fresh outlook on worker safety by providing honest, (no sponsors here!) and straight forward, easy to understand safety coaching with actionable guidance to move your safety program forward in a way that provides tangible results.
Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
#66: Safety Training- Are You Overpaying For What You're Getting?
In this episode, Joe and Jen dive deep into the world of training costs and provide practical insights on how to manage your facility’s training budget without sacrificing quality or compliance. From in-house vs. third-party training to hidden fees and travel expenses, they break down the key factors that can make or break your training program.
As a plant manager or safety leader, it's essential to ask the right questions when evaluating training vendors. The episode touches on everything from the true cost of training (including travel and overtime) to how to ensure your team receives effective, hands-on learning that directly applies to your operations. Jen shares real-world examples of the challenges that arise when hiring external trainers and the surprising additional costs, like billing for travel time or the risk of not getting full value from PowerPoint-heavy sessions.
They also discuss the importance of customizing training to your specific needs, whether it’s for confined space entry, lockout/tagout, or specialized equipment, and how to ensure your team is actually getting the skills they need—not just a certification. Joe emphasizes the importance of hands-on training and competency verification, while Jen explains how management can be more involved in the training process to ensure it delivers real value.
Ultimately, the episode gives a no-nonsense approach to managing training costs, understanding bids, and evaluating whether the training you're paying for meets your facility’s needs. With tips on how to get the most out of your training investment, this episode is a must-listen for anyone responsible for safety and compliance training at their facility.
The episode walks through key questions you should ask when selecting a training provider, including:
In-house vs. Third-Party Training: Should you keep it internal or bring in external experts? How do you evaluate the expertise of external trainers?
Customization of Training: Is the training tailored to your specific industry, plant, and job functions, or is it generic and broad?
Understanding the True Costs: Get clarity on whether you're paying for travel time, overtime for your employees, and potential hidden fees.
Hands-On vs. PowerPoint Training: Is the training interactive and relevant to your team's daily tasks, or are you getting a generic, one-size-fits-all presentation?
Managing Competency and Verification: What does competency verification look like, and how do you ensure your team actually learns and applies the training?
For more details, check out their website at Allen-Safety.com or connect with Joe and Jen on LinkedIn.
SEO Keywords: training costs, safety training, in-house vs external training, plant training budget, safety training budget, training vendors, hands-on training, competency verification, safety compliance, industrial training, industrial safety training, confined space training, lockout/tagout training, arc flash training, maintenance team training, training customization, hot work, welding, liability, risk mitigation, risk reduction, safety manager, safety budget
This podcast is intended for educational purposes. Solutions offered are not designed to take the place of an attorney or medical professional, and should not be taken as legal or medical advice. It is recommended that viewers consult a safety consultant, medical provider or an occupational safety legal team as applicable to help navigate their specific circumstances.
Today's episode training cost. It is allergy season, so a thousand apologies. Here we go.
Speaker 2:We'll do our best.
Speaker 1:Training cost. Again, it's going to be the plant. I'm the consultant. My job is to make all the money I can.
Speaker 2:My job is to not get in trouble with my GM for overspending on the budget.
Speaker 1:Don't worry about it. Just pay me more and everything will be fine.
Speaker 2:So the intent of this episode is kind of trying to show you how to manage your training budget and not let it spiral out of control on you Absolutely, and just also how to make sure that you're getting what you're paying for right, Because I feel like we're all kind of like did I.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of money.
Speaker 2:I feel like we pay the most money now for the least service ever for anything we do Exactly Right so here's how you can try and maximize your chances of getting what you pay for All right?
Speaker 1:First of all, are you going to do the training in house, or should you hire a third party?
Speaker 2:Well, it really depends what it is and it depends how well you know my business.
Speaker 1:Doesn't matter. I'm a consultant, I've got great people on standby, I can send it any day. It doesn't matter if they're right or the subject of your industry, but I can sure send them and charge you for it.
Speaker 2:So the questions that I'm going to be concerned with are things like well, what's your experience specifically? In my industry. I don't want to spend all day Our company just got sold and now we've been bought out.
Speaker 1:So now we have to produce so many units and so many sales a day, and I've got to get some training. So is your plant one of them?
Speaker 2:Well, it depends who you're sending me.
Speaker 1:Okay, it depends what's who's ever available. He just got out of college a few months ago, but he's really good.
Speaker 2:It also depends on his experiences, specifically Again within my industry. I don't want to take my utilities and maintenance team's time walking you around the whole facility trying to explain how the world works. Oh, when you're supposed to, when I'm paying you. Well, you know what we do we cut the hours, we'll charge you for eight, but you'll only have to be there four, so your maintenance doesn't get all aggravated. Yeah, my concern again is, first off, does the training need to be eight?
Speaker 1:Well, theoretically, but not really. I mean, you kind of look at the standard. It kind of suggests it, but is it really?
Speaker 2:I think my question would be so what's the training topic? Does it have to be eight?
Speaker 1:What are we really going to be doing all day? I have eight hours of PowerPoint and they are custom to nothing that you're going to be doing, so they're going to be general info that I can send to you and bill out. That's my goal.
Speaker 2:Okay, excellent. So when I'm hearing some of that, it makes me wonder is my team more qualified? Because they at least know my facility.
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 2:And at least I'm getting a little bit of cost savings. My biggest thing is the liability of the subject that we're talking about, right? So do they understand enough about this subject? Does my team have an expert quote unquote expert in that subject to be able to take that on and feel comfortable with?
Speaker 1:it, and that's what I'm trying to do. Well, I've got one of those for confined space. Oh, okay, this guy got an A at college on confined space, so he is good to go yes.
Speaker 2:So my next question would be so, within all of this PowerPoint, how are we going to ever learn how to use any of our equipment?
Speaker 1:You wanted to be trained, so I'm going to train you to be compliant. So you're good to go in the standard.
Speaker 2:Okay, so how does my team know how to do it for real though Any of these things?
Speaker 1:That's a you issue. My job is to bill you for a certain amount of hours so that my team can get paid and you're compliant, isn't that the goal Is to stay compliant.
Speaker 2:So when I do lockout training, I have to walk them out and show them how to lock out and physically do the test. So are we gonna have, like, what's your competency verification?
Speaker 1:I don't know any of your equipment and I'll just pull your lockout procedure. That's not been validated, probably by someone who does know, maybe I don't know, because maybe a third party wrote those, didn't validate them and I'll just go off that.
Speaker 2:I don't know that I'm comfortable.
Speaker 1:How many hours are you really looking at? Because I can modify our hours too, so I can do two hours here, an hour next month, an hour next month. So if you're worried about hours, they're really going to know what they're doing, because I'm going to spread it out to make it more user-friendly for your maintenance teams.
Speaker 2:Okay, I like user-friendly. User-friendly is good. My problem is going to be like how do I make sure that I get everybody the correct portion of the class? What are you going to be?
Speaker 1:covering. It'll be different things every month okay, so how does what?
Speaker 2:what happens if I have somebody on vacation for that? Well, that's why we're doing 12 months, that's why we're not doing eight so are you going to come back and redo that training for the group that missed?
Speaker 1:well, that that's that February. That's a good problem.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:All right, so there's that one. So now it is about the hours, really. So you got to think about that. You got to think about when you hire anyone external. You got to look at how many hours, because that's also your maintenance time. That's probably overtime. Some of it's their days off.
Speaker 2:And that makes people aggravated when they got to come in their days off and you're only given two hours for eight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are we doing nights and weekends type of a thing, you know? I mean like those are, you know you got to bring all your people in from nights and weekends.
Speaker 2:Well, I've got overtime, but do you, as a trainer, do nights and weekends.
Speaker 1:No, that's that monday through friday eight to four, but you need to bring all your people in during the day.
Speaker 2:I know they're going to be aggravated. Yeah, you're cheaper, but I have to pay overtime now.
Speaker 1:You're correct. Okay, so you're not willing to come in.
Speaker 2:It's more for my overtime to pay my team to come in on their off shift and they're aggravated and crabby about it than it would be if you just had a night differential. So you wouldn't even do.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just going to do days because I have dinner appointments. I have to do Dinner appointments.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've got to go to the man. I have to exercise. I got to have some dinner. I mean, we have a daily per diem and I'm going to spend every dollar on it.
Speaker 2:Okay, good.
Speaker 1:How am I going to do that if I'm at your plan all day? By the way, we do have some people, if you need us to accommodate, that are of doing this so they can fill in as needed. So don't worry about what month like that you're missing.
Speaker 2:I can find somebody to go in that day okay, good, so it's just whoever, though, that's free, or?
Speaker 1:how does that work?
Speaker 2:yes, are they going to charge me travel absolutely okay. Are they charging me for the actual day they're traveling? Yeah, okay. So if I bring your second team member down, because I had team members that missed from my side- Flights aren't free. I'm paying for two travel days.
Speaker 1:Hotels aren't free.
Speaker 2:Travel time, travel cost all of it, absolutely.
Speaker 1:That's how that is.
Speaker 2:That's a lot. That changes my price then. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah a little.
Speaker 1:Plus or minus 20. 20% Plus or minus 20%, that's how it goes All right.
Speaker 2:So the next one Shout out to all my maintenance teams and engineers that are getting plus minus 20 on their bids.
Speaker 1:You know what I could do? You could just send all your people to a conference.
Speaker 2:So I think what I'm understanding is that you have a class that you're putting on, like maybe after hours on the Saturday before a conference, and my team can all come down and do that as part of the conference. Well then, I still have to pay for the conference. So I mean, I guess theoretically that sounds like a good deal, but you're not at my location then. No, where are you going?
Speaker 1:to do the training. I can bail out a lot more people if I get more people around me.
Speaker 2:So where are you going to do this training?
Speaker 1:at Wherever I can, wherever it holds a hundred people okay, because.
Speaker 2:I, I get paid per head okay, so it sounds like it's a better deal for me, though, if you come to my location and do it though yeah, but I've got that travel bill.
Speaker 1:You gotta remember that it's gonna oh, that's true.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I've got to evaluate your travel bill and correlate that to whatever the conference bill is and the travel bill for my people to get down there, correct?
Speaker 1:see, it is cheaper to hire me cheaper than what so then we go back to um, maybe your team doesn't like the way I did the job. Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So hire me, I'll come back and redo it.
Speaker 2:Is that a cost?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, because we're just going to change it up for you a little bit.
Speaker 2:So I didn't like it how you did it the first time, but I'm going to bring you back or just I guess maybe ask for somebody different. Correct, I've got different people. Okay.
Speaker 1:So this whole episode, for this is how it moves, this is how it lives. When we're asked every week how do we manage our training costs? Do we do it internal, do we external? And all these things get brought up.
Speaker 2:Jen's got to take all this data back to her boss I gotta do something I gotta sell it somehow I've gotta make some kind of semblance of all the things that he just told me, because that is the norm, right? Yes, and that is typically what what our clients are hearing from training vendors. So, whether this is a group that's coming in and doing arc flash or electrical training, or hot work training.
Speaker 2:Whatever the training maybe it's somebody coming in and doing some kind of specialized equipment training, but a lot of trainers operate this way, and this is the feedback that we're getting from our clients and our customers that are telling us this is what our experience was before you got here. This is our experience with this other vendor that we just tried to work with last week, and so there's some weird stuff going on and there's some hidden fees and hidden charges. So we talked a little bit about in this episode the being billed for the person's time as well as their travel. So the day that they're taking to drive to your facility, you're paying almost a double bill that day for some groups, and so that's not expected for most of us. I don't think.
Speaker 2:I was surprised to hear that people were doing that Now our company doesn't do that because, we worked in the plants and we're the ones that justify this bill. It's like what, yeah, we were like what.
Speaker 1:All we want you to do is think about all the questions to ask yes, that way you're not paying because you have to choose between three different services. Maybe your plant says you got to get three bids. Yeah, you need to be asking because that's the real bid. It's not. It's not the bid that you think it's. The 20% thing is very common. Oh, we're going to do a project when it's 20 plus or minus.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? It's never minus 20%.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you that in my experience, so this episode is about looking at the puzzle a little differently. Yeah, thinking about you have to get three bids and then what are all the questions you'd be thinking about?
Speaker 2:let's run them down real quick and just make it nice concise, bulleted list. So things that I would ask. If I was hiring somebody right off the bat I would say do you, do you, do we? If you do, do you charge more for them? If I have a problem, can I call you? They're gonna be a bill. If I call you and I have a problem, are you gonna charge me for that? Can I call you anytime, or is it only during the week? Is it only eight to five Like? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Cause we allow people to call us all hours and we help them?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I would be asking things like is there a minimum or a maximum? What is the competency verification? Are we doing hands-on? What does that look like Like? What's your training method look like? Are you going to sit and talk at my people? Are you going to show them videos all day? Is the information going to be customized in any way to my facility or is this all going to be like general industry, could apply to anybody, be used anywhere? What is the customization of how you're going to tailor it to my plant?
Speaker 2:my facility, my team members, the jobs they're doing. If I send a different audience or a different group of employees so I'm going to have different job tasks.
Speaker 1:Or today it's all English, but tomorrow Spanish.
Speaker 2:Today's English, tomorrow Spanish, maybe I have a team that it's all my maintenance and utilities. Tomorrow it's food safety.
Speaker 1:Maybe tomorrow it's all off. You can't teach a class the same yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's my maintenance crews versus my sanitation crews coming in a different day and so their needs and their risks and how they're going to apply that information is going to be different. So is there going to be any kind of modification to the class, modification to the competency verification? So those are all things that we want to look at. So, yes, cost is very important and you're not going to get an argument out of me on that. But, in addition to how we're managing travel costs, are we per head? Are we per day, flat rate? You know, know, again, it's going to change the type of day potentially, if you have three employees as opposed to 15 employees, if that's supposed to be a hands-on class as opposed to it doesn't really
Speaker 1:matter if it's all powerpoint you can't have competency for some of these subjects with two people in class, it's very, very difficult when you're really supposed to have a group of people, because that's what you would normally have.
Speaker 2:So, for instance, you know if we're going to be doing some kind of confined space stuff, or maybe it's hot work, maybe it's some lockout or whatever. But it's hard to accomplish certain skill sets and really test it out If you have one person in a conference room or two people in a conference room. So we really have to evaluate what are we trying to accomplish and get out of the training? What's the end result we're looking for?
Speaker 2:And then here's all the questions I'm going to ask to find out if this entity or this group can meet the end result that I'm trying to achieve, and if they can, great, we'll put them in the possibility list and then from there I kind of start vetting out my trainers of who can actually meet the needs. Now let's compare those costs of those trainers that can meet my needs.
Speaker 1:You have to go down this list first. It's too volatile.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Location, location all over the country.
Speaker 2:It is, and you heard Joe bring up there's trainers that absolutely are saying
