ClickSafety at 20: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going
Over the last 20 years, ClickSafety, the first company to offer an online OSHA training course, has evolved into the industry-leading online safety training platform that offers more OSHA courses than any other provider. It currently serves over 10,000 organizations and is ready to expand even more as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.
“Our success really stems back to the ‘Safety First – Injury Free’ culture that’s been adopted across the entire company,” says Pete Rice, CSP, CIH, REHS, former Vice President of Environmental Health and Safety Programs for ClickSafety and current Subject Matter Expert. “Our primary objective, woven into the fabric of ClickSafety is to provide safety and health training that’s going to be of value to the construction worker and laborers in other trades, so that they learn the skills to stay safe on the job and return home to their families at the end of the day.”
How ClickSafety Was Founded
It all began in 1999 in Oakland, California, when the company’s founder, Blaine Tomimoto, a former construction manager, witnessed a fellow construction worker fall 30 feet at a job site. His employer was sued because there were not safety or fall protection training records for the worker on file. The incident fueled Tomimoto to find a better way to provide and track training for construction employees.
“ClickSafety was conceived and developed by construction tradesmen and supervisors who were skilled in the trades and had real-world experience on jobsites” says Rice, who started as the company’s first content writer. “ClickSafety leadership came out of the trades and recognized what the construction worker and employer needed.”
The nearly hundred years of combined, hands-on industry experience found within ClickSafety’s staff was quickly made evident. The company began offering the first OSHA 10-hour construction course to ever hit the web, followed by the OSHA 30-hour construction course that began to shape the future of ClickSafety.
Period of Steady Growth
By 2007, ClickSafety had more than 300 health and safety courses online, with over 50 available in Spanish. And they didn’t focus on just construction. The company branched out into educating employees and employers in the environmental sector and general industries such as service, financial, manufacturing and insurance.
“We started off in construction because we had a unique skill set and very few competing companies had the level of construction experience that we had,” says Rice. “But as we continued to develop new courses for other industries, we wanted to ensure we stayed as state-of-the-art as we could to provide the best value to not just employees, but also their employers, families and communities.”
In 2014, ClickSafety became an accredited International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) provider of Continuing Education Units and Contact Hours. The company was also awarded IACET’s Exemplary Organization Training Award in the same year, solidifying ClickSafety’s reputation as a leader in safety and health training across many industries.
Present Day Picture
Today, an estimated three quarters of ClickSafety’s clientele is based in the construction, engineering or architecture field, with the remainder in general industries. In the last several months, ClickSafety has identified another industry that would benefit greatly from its educational opportunities.
“Healthcare is the sector with the highest frequency of workplace safety incidents, which are commonly sprains from moving patients or lifting heavy objects,” says Ed Moura, ClickSafety’s General Manger. “We are currently working through the nuances and researching the healthcare industry to develop more content and additional services.”
According to Moura, ClickSafety is embarked on a set of aggressive strategies with a goal of doubling the size of its business over the next five years. To do so, expansion into more than just the healthcare industry is imminent. “We’ll also be expanding into a number of industries, along with other products and services beyond OSHA courseware” says Moura.
One of those services is microlearning, which takes advantage of the digital age to enhance interactive learning techniques in small doses. A simple example would be a daily safety reminder sent to the inboxes of employees and employers, but ClickSafety is looking into games, simulations and virtual reality as well. The goal is to remain a top provider of health and safety training that is engaging, realistic, accessible and effective.
ClickSafety has also recently acquired SPAN International Training, the leading provider of certification prep courses and study materials for the Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) exam. SPAN’s complimentary products enhance ClickSafety’s ability to serve as a resource for safety professionals throughout their entire career.
Train Your Employees Now
From the early days of designing student-centered lessons to ranking as one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing companies from 2013-2016, ClickSafety’s mission has remained the same – to protect employees and foster safe work environments through award-winning interactive safety courses. “An unsafe workplace is an unsustainable and unacceptable situation today in our modern economy,” Moura concludes. For more information on training your employees, contact ClickSafety today by calling 1-800-971-1080.