Salt Lake City School District Overhauls Risk Management Program

Salt Lake City School District, the oldest school district in Utah, spans the entire city limits – approximately 109 square miles.

Managing on-site state and federally required staff training across the district’s 41 schools was a hefty order, so the HR department began considering online staff training as a more efficient alternative.

Additionally, the district was looking for a better way to store safety data sheets so all employees could easily access chemical information, labels and handling instructions. After evaluating RFP bids, Salt Lake City School District recognized that the EmployeeSafe Suite from PublicSchoolWORKS was a comprehensive risk management system that not only met the expectations of the RFP, but provided a system that would help reduce risk for the district.

“With EmployeeSafe, we can deploy and manage all required staff training, as well as add other courses to the staff course load as needed,” says Byron Garritson, Director of Human Resources at Salt Lake City School District.

Using EmployeeSafe’s, MSDS Now! – Silver, a custom online SDS binder, Salt Lake City School District is creating an inventory of all the chemicals used in each school. The district can easily add new SDSs to the online binder. Additionally, employees have 24/7 telephone access to chemical specialists, spill specialists and poison control hotlines to answer all questions about the safe handling of chemicals, as well as how to safely address a chemical exposure or spill should one occur.

The district is also implementing EmployeeSafe’s Accident Management System to better manage and track injuries and claims. The result will be improved safety in schools as key staff members are automatically notified to investigate the incident and/or to remove the hazard from the environment, which will help reduce the chance of future occurrences.

Another key benefit of the accident management system is that when a report is submitted, the injured employee is automatically notified to take training related to the injury type to minimize the chance of similar accidents from reoccurring.

In the near future, Salt Lake City School District plans on implementing the rest of the suite to streamline other non-training requirements such as drills and expectations, staff injury and accident initiatives and more. By using the EmployeeSafe Staff Training System, the district will improve the new hire orientation process. When a school currently submits a request to hire a new employee, there may be a delay in the process if there is not an opening for the individual to attend an in-person orientation session. Starting this summer, new hires will complete their orientation expectations via the online system, expediting the process for a new employee to fill the school’s staffing need.

“There are other companies that offer parts of what PublicSchoolWORKS offers, but the biggest feature for us is that they continuously track all legislation and update their offerings accordingly,” says Garritson. “Prior to working with PublicSchoolWORKS, we tracked legislation by attending legislative sessions and reading resources from organizations like the Society for Human Resource Management, which was too time-consuming. With PublicSchoolWORKS doing this for us, we can be confident that our programming is compliant and that it will never be outdated.”

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