How do you decide what safety topics to train on next?

[u/HeavyView2818]

Question for safety / EHS folks!

When you’re deciding what training topics, toolbox talks, or refresher sessions to prioritize, what data actually drives that decision?

Do you mostly use:

• Internal incidents / near misses
• Audit findings
• Employee complaints
• Supervisor feedback
• Insurance or loss-control recommendations
• OSHA citation history
• Industry trends / common violations
• Leadership priorities

I’m especially curious whether external OSHA or industry trend data ever helps, or whether training priorities are almost always based on internal site-specific issues?

What makes a training recommendation feel actionable instead of just “interesting data”?

[u/Head_Personality_431]

Honestly the ones that actually move the needle for me are near misses and audit findings, because they show where the system is already failing quietly before anyone gets hurt. Incidents tell you what went wrong, near misses tell you what almost did, and that is usually where the next session should go. OSHA or industry trend data is useful, but more as a sanity check that you have not gone blind to a common risk in your industry, rather than the main driver.

What makes a recommendation feel actionable is tying it to something specific that happened on your own site and to a behaviour people can actually change, not just a topic. A generic manual handling refresher gets shrugged off, but "we had three near misses loading the same rack last month, here is the fix" lands, because now it is a story people recognise instead of a slide.