April 2, 2020 update: ITI has released a free course for drivers on COVID-19, available online immediately. ITI customers can also assign and track the course by logging into their account.
Well, all this coronavirus news and reaction has made for quite a week, hasn’t it? As a training and safety professional, your job typically deals with onboarding, injuries and crashes. With the coronavirus (or Covid-19), it’s a different animal. You’re being asked to help contain a contagion. If you’re like us, you’re seeing a lot of moving targets and rules: We’ve been polling the 1,800+ training pros on our LMS, and 60% of respondents say they’re pushing more training online vs. in person. We’re doing three things to help:
- We’re waiving hosting and set-up fees for any client to post Covid-19 policies or communications.
- We’re posting basic information and links from the CDC on all student-facing sites.
- We’ll be supporting the industry whichever direction it goes with things like conferences and gatherings.
The coronavirus Situation is Fast-Moving
Complicating matters is that the guidance from the various Federal, state and local health authorities keeps changing in this fast-moving situation. In the last 24 hours alone, a number of states have banned gatherings of more than 250 people, including concerts, conferences and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Colleges are sending students home. Local schools are canceling after-school activities. The NBA suspended games.
Rather than add to the cacophony of hand-washing advice, we’re going to suggest you listen to the experts. 
So we’ll be sharing the following links on our training sites.
Online Training: Stay Safe While Staying Safe
For over 20 years, ITI has been the leader in delivering effective online training. Online training can reach lots of people without bringing them physically together, keeping employees safe without sacrificing quality. We’ve heard too many stories of fleets calling together large groups of drivers in small rooms for safety meetings, while health authorities simultaneously ask people NOT to congregate. Online training is a better solution.
Communicate with the Tools You Have
Online training is, in this case, a great tool. Our particular system is scaled for huge amounts of traffic and was designed for maximum simplicity.
As you communicate your company’s policies on Covid-19, we can help. We're announcing today that we're waiving all charges for setting up and hosting your coronavirus policies and procedures. We can assign it company-wide. If you have a video from your CEO, we can post and assign it. If you have a PDF from HR, we can post it and ensure people read it. We can work with the following file types the fastest:
- Video
- Document
- Images
Easy Tip: Record Your Webinar
One of the easiest ways to get information out to everyone in your company is to record any kind of webinar or presentation you make on the topic, and send us the video file.
disinfect communal training Devices
More than half the fleets we’ve surveyed say they’re relying on more online training vs. in-person training during this situation. And that makes sense: it’s hard to pass along a virus when people aren’t in a classroom together. Or a small truck cab.
However, if you do have a training room with shared tablets or computers, that’s a potential hotspot: you need to make sure you’re disinfecting those shared terminals.
A better way might be to use the Sentix mobile app, which is available on both iOS and Android. Your team can access the information on their own device.
Common Sense Practices
None of this should be news to you, but the CDC says most common sense hygiene practices continue to be the best medicine.
- Wash your hands, whenever you can. Especially before eating.
- Assuming you can find hand sanitizer, use it. Drivers should especially try to use it as soon as they return to their vehicles. In these frustrating times when some customers won’t even allow drivers to use their restrooms, you might need to plan to provide them with hand sanitizer.
- Avoid, if possible, people who are coughing and ill.
- If you’re sick, seek medical help and try to isolate yourself.
Course Recommendation: Driver Distractions
In addition to our free course, COVID-19: What Drivers Need to Know, the main course we recommend is Driver Distractions. The distraction course talks about the many types beyond just cell phones. For example, illness is a distraction. More importantly, "many over-the-counter medications can cause drowsiness and slow your reaction time. If you're sick enough to need this type of medication, you shouldn't be driving,” according to our course.
If you want to assign a course that includes something on handwashing, our course on bloodborne pathogens includes a section and question on it.
How Else Can We Help?
We’ve been meeting daily about this for the past two weeks, and we feel this is the best way we can help during this unusual situation. We’re not medical experts, but our online training platform can help you reach a lot of your people with the message you want to convey.
As always, our outstanding Client Services team is here to help. They can provide an FAQ for hosting content to clients, and they’ve been empowered to pull in resources from our Training Production and IT teams to assist.
Good luck to everyone. Stay safe and keep washing those hands.
