Starting a business is a calculated risk.
It involves weighing relative costs and benefits, assessing known financial risks, seeking advice from trusted sources, accepting uncertainty and pushing ahead anyway.
Most startup owners are big advocates of ‘when you need it’ learning. This usually involves learning something ‘on the run’ and finding out what you need to know about a specific subject area right before you need that information.
However, when it comes to the legal obligations involved in setting up and running a safe business, ‘when you need it’ learning doesn’t really cut it. This is largely because you need to be aware of your legal duties towards your business and your staff in order to actively comply with them.
It’s a lesson that was hard won by RM Williams earlier this year when the chain was fined $90,000 for breaching the Work Health and Safety Act after a worker was seriously injured, partly due to a lack of appropriate training.
This lack of formal workplace safety training can have a significant financial and human cost for businesses. In most states, businesses can face up to $3 million in fines for breaching workplace health and safety legislation.
CourseGenius And Compliance Training
Launching today, CourseGenius aims to fill a gap in the market by providing accessible and affordable online safety and compliance training courses to small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Australia.
The WA-based company offers a platform for SMEs to create and deliver custom online training programs.
With additional topics to follow, the suite of compliance courses provides training in three core areas:
- Workplace Health and Safety Fundamentals;
- Workplace Bullying and Harassment; and
- Social Media and Electronic Communication.
Developed by Australian law firm People + Culture Strategies, the courses are legally compliant and tailored for Australian workplaces.
Co-founder and lawyer, Sarah Mateljan, was able to see the significant risk and potential cost to SMEs who fail to run formal compliance training:
We’ve listened to our customers and we know it’s hard for them to find engaging and legally compliant training content on a budget. Our new suite of compliance courses solves this problem by providing interactive, legally authored online training on-demand. Our customers, such as ECOYA are well placed to make this move as they are more agile than larger enterprises, and can more easily adopt new technologies to solve problems.”
The CourseGenius compliance courses were exactly what I was after. I oversee manufacturing where compliance and training is of critical importance. Being a medium sized business, we are good at implementing practical training elements however this not always reflected on paper. If I had to create the program myself, not only would it take me two or three days to prepare the material but I couldn’t be entirely sure that the content is correct and current.”
Further Information
To sign up for a demonstration visit CourseGenius.