Five Ways to Make Electrical Safety Training More Effective
Electrical safety training shouldn’t be a checkbox exercise. These five strategies can help safety leaders improve engagement, reinforce safe behaviors, and strengthen compliance across different job roles.
- By Glorianna Reeser
- Feb 27, 2026
The technology around electricity has certainly evolved over the years — and continues to do so. EV chargers, for example, were once curious. Now they’re everywhere. Electricity itself hasn’t changed. It still plays countless parts in a wide variety of workplace settings. It’s still as powerful as ever. And, when not handled properly, it’s still extremely dangerous.
That’s why control of hazardous energy (including electricity) continues to rank among the five most frequently cited OSHA standards. And it’s why electrical safety training remains critical for a broad spectrum of frontline workers — from office staff managing power strips to technicians executing complex lockout / tagout procedures.
The Real Problem with Electrical Safety Training
Compliance matters, but effective electrical safety training can’t stop there. When training exists only to satisfy OSHA, it rarely changes behavior on the floor.
And many electrical safety training programs fall short for that very reason. Because they’re nothing more than a checkbox exercise, rather than a key step in creating and maintaining a consistent culture of workplace safety.
Frontline engagement is a real safety multiplier. Here are five principles to keep in mind to design and deliver the kind of training that will have a real impact on your workers — and to help make safety part of the DNA of your organization:
1. Tailor Your Training
Nothing turns off an audience — particularly one composed of workers trying to get through a mandatory safety training session — quite as decisively as material that doesn’t apply to their situation. Consider the many different positions in your organization that might need different forms of electrical safety training:
- Aware: Office staff need to know what they can and can’t plug into a power strip or whether they can safely use a space heater at their desks. But there’s very little chance that they’ll be accessing an electrical panel in your warehouse or mechanical room.
- Affected: Some employees might work around electrical panels but not directly with them. They need to know general safety, but not in-depth procedures.
- Authorized: Well-trained mechanical and technical workers need to know the latest panel clearance guidelines and lockout / tagout updates. But they likely have little use for, or are interested in, a refresher course on extension cords.
Will a one-size-fits-all electrical safety training program work across all these positions? Probably not.
A diverse workforce — especially one that works with electricity in different ways — needs specialized training materials. A well-rounded program that addresses more individualized functions will not only help ensure everyone is getting the training their position requires, it will also have a far better chance of keeping them all interested.
2. Provide Real-World Context
An extension of tailoring your training to different positions is to tailor your materials to your workplace — or even to individual departments. This will help your people see how the training applies to their actual day-to-day work.
For example, which of these training pieces is likely to have a greater impact?
- A printout from the internet of a tangle of extension cords beneath a desk with a few tips on the dangers of the pictured situation.
- A photo from your office showing a similar spaghetti pile under a common area that your people are familiar with.
The second option is, of course, much more impactful. This violation was found in our shop. This is our issue.
When the training is more specific to your place of business, your people are more likely to understand how it directly affects them. And they’re likely to get much more out of the training.
3. Know Your Learners
Just as there are different levels of electrical safety training for different positions, there are also many different learning styles. And if the goal is to make sure your frontline workers have the best chance of absorbing and internalizing the information you’re presenting, it makes sense to try and touch on as many of those styles as possible.
For example, some of your workers are probably just fine reading through a printed pamphlet or safety manual and taking a written assessment. But that method may not work for everyone. And if some of your people are just glancing through a printed piece that doesn’t reach them, they’re not really getting the training they need.
More effective training materials will branch out to appeal to:
- Visual learners, with elements that include diagrams, infographics, and video demonstrations.
- Auditory learners, with more audio presentations, as well as group discussions and Q&As.
- Kinesthetic learners, with more touch-based elements, including hands-on demonstrations, equipment demos, and role-playing.
The good news is that managers and others who work closely with different employee groups should have a decent idea of who responds to these different learning styles. And many of these can be incorporated in online training courses, which usually combine elements of each.
By incorporating multiple learning elements for each concept and providing materials in various formats for review and reference, you’ll allow learners to engage with the content in their own style and at their own pace. You’ll also accommodate a range of experience levels and backgrounds.
4. Try Internal Marketing
No matter how effective your electrical safety training program is, a lot of employees are going to start tuning out as soon as they hear the words “safety training.” Why? Because it sounds like “take your medicine.” It sounds like one more thing to add to their already busy day.
Let’s face it — you’re not going to be able to make safety training fun. But it doesn’t have to be such a downer. Addressing different learning styles helps (see #3 above), but you can also sweeten the deal by:
- Making things less formal: Call it a “toolbox talk” or a “shop talk” to take some of the pomp and seriousness out of “required safety training.”
- Getting together: If your usual training is done individually, shake things up by making it a group session.
- Gamifying it: Include some contests and little prizes to help keep people engaged.
The important thing is to make sure the information sinks in with your people. If any of these ideas can help take a little bit of the dread out of the process, all the better.
5. Track Your Training
While the goal of improving your electrical safety training may be to make it more than just a checkbox exercise, the fact remains that you do eventually have to check that box. No matter how many other aspects come into play, compliance still needs to be one of your top priorities.
That’s why documentation needs to continue to be a significant consideration. Even if you’ve shifted your training method (from paper to online, for instance) or started selling it to employees as a “toolbox talk,” you still need to stay on top of the when, who, what, and where of how the training was delivered.
Online tools and training modules make documentation easier than ever, of course. But they also have another benefit: many can tell you exactly how each individual employee scores in each area of the training. If a certain worker or group of workers scores poorly in a particular session, for instance, that might be an area you focus more intently on in the next training course. Or if you’ve added a gaming element to one part of your training and noticed a dramatic jump in engagement, that could be a signal to expanding the contests to other aspects as well.
Just like electricity itself, electrical safety hasn’t changed much over the years. But the options for how organizations train their people have. The companies setting the standard today are those that not only meet their training requirements but also invest in new and better ways to ensure their training is understood and applied. And they’re benefiting from safer, more efficient workplaces as a result.
This article originally appeared in the February/March 2026 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.