---

U.S. Safety School is a division of McDowell Incentives, Inc., a full-service employee incentive and recognition company, in partnership with noodleStream.  The principals of McDowell Incentives, Inc. have been providing Accident and Injury Prevention programs for 30 years and currently operates U.S. Safety Awards.  The addition of a safety training component - once we found the perfect partner -  was natural.

So what is U.S. Safety School?

In nutshell, U.S Safety School is the next generation of Environmental, Health & Safety & Competency Management - a reinvention of the way organizations deploy, manage, and track critical EHS training for their employees.  Our innovative approach allows any company (of any size) to maintain a best-in-class EHS training program that provides substantive, relevant training that insures employee competency and organizational compliance without the significant investment typically associated with custom-built training solutions.  U.S. Safety School will save lives, save time, and save money.

Active Learning Elements

The U.S. Safety School's learning compendium consists of hundreds of Active Learning Elements™ built to deliver a defined EHS competency.  With each Element, learning objectives are determined, validation tests are developed, and relevant references are associated.

Relevancy

To be effective, it is critical that training be relevant to employee activities and their associated risks.  U.S. Safety School's Active Learning Elements™ are not only designed to achieve a specific competency, but also be deployed in an almost infinite number of combinations to meet the requirements of your defined learning groups. 

And there's no need to worry about keeping your training program current.  With LiveUpdate™ all content is monitored for currency with regulatory changes and industry best management trends.  When changes are necessary, you are notified and your deployed training is updated with no effort from you.

Content

U.S. Safety School is developed by an in-house team of board-certified EHS professionals, experienced instructional system designers and creative content developers to ensure that your deployed training is accurate, effective and engaging.  Our content is standards-based (SCORM/1.2/2004/AICC) and will integrate with many popular ERP's such as SAP™ and PeopleSoft™.

U.S. Safety School is a hosted (SAAS) solution including support, monitoring, and updates.  It's a secure, scalable application, which allows customers to assign, notify, distribute, track, validate and report EHS training activities throughout their organization... and best of all it's branded with your corporate logo or theme.

Communicate - Appreciate - Reward - Educate

Let them know you CARE.  These four elements encompass an ideal Accident and Injury Prevention program.  We recommend you get the most out of your training program by utilizing an Accident and Injury Prevention campaign by U.S. Safety Awards.  Tell employees what is expected of them, train them how to do it effectively, and validate and reward them when they do it right. Linking rewards to behavior is the right thing to do.

---

There are a lot of companies on the internet offering online safety training. What makes U.S.Safety School so different?

U.S.Safety School is different because it is based-on a fundamental belief that irrelevant, overly generic training is not only inefficient, but can be counterproductive to the very goal of the training in the first place. U.S.Safety School is designed to allow organizations of all sizes to deploy an enterprise online safety training platform that provides meaningful, effective training targeted at the organization's specific EHS and HR-compliance aspects.

U.S.Safety School is different because our online safety training content is unrivaled in its production value. U.S.Safety School's online safety training content contains dynamic, engaging Flash™-based animations, high-definition video, and studio-produced audio narrations. Our standard design complexity includes at least one interaction for every three frames.

U.S.Safety School is different because of its competency-based design. Providing standards conformance and analytics to management with the resolution necessary to support sound EHS and HR compliance decision-making.

U.S.Safety School is different because we are first and foremost an environmental, health and safety compliance training company (and have been for over 15-years) with substantial experience in designing, developing and delivering environmental, health and safety training conventionally (in the classroom). We leverage that unique experience in our online training solutions.

What do you mean by competency-based online safety training?

We believe that training is not the ultimate goal, but a means to an end. The real objective is that your employee's have the knowledge, skill, and ability (or "competency") to ensure your organization's EHS performance.

The emergence of performance-based standards (e.g., NFPA 472) have resulted in a new approach to personnel training for critical activities. While most online safety training is developed to achieve "terminal and enabling learning objectives," every U.S.Safety School learning element requires the learner to "demonstrate the ability to ...". With U.S.Safety School managers are assured that learners not only received relevant training, but actually demonstrated a particular competency at a point in time.

Process-based standards (e.g, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18000) require organizations to maintain mechanisms that ensure that employees associated with critical processes (linked to significant impacts) have the required competencies. Through this unique competency-based approach, U.S.Safety School Enterprise provides such a mechanism by allowing organizations to "map" individual learning elements to critical processes.

Can our online safety training platform be customized to reflect our corporate brand?

Yes! All U.S.Safety School Enterprise solutions include (no additional fee) custom interfaces in both your learning management system and in the training itself. Your corporate logos, your corporate colors, your corporate style.

Can U.S.Safety School online safety training be customized to target our specific workplace hazards and compliance issues?

Yes. U.S.Safety School is about customization! We built U.S.Safety School in order to allow for the deployment of highly-targeted and need-specific online safety training programs. All U.S.Safety School learning content is developed in small components we call Active Learning Elements™. Each learning element ranging from 2 to 5 minutes in duration targets a specific competency. When we configure a "course," for an individual learning group, we are able to rapidly aggregate a series of learning elements together to address that specific set of competencies.

For those identified competency requirements for which we have no existing relevant learning elements, our experienced development teams create one. The result is a highly-customized online safety training solution at off-the-shelf costs.

Can I do my own customization?

Yes, you can! Today, most of the premier online safety training providers offer some user-customization capability. Most of these however are rarely-more than a simple content mangement system that allows only rudamentary edits. As always, we take it one-step better. Through a unique partnership with Trivantis Corporation, the maker's of the industry leading authoring tool Lectora™, our customers can not only customize U.S.Safety School learning content, but create and deploy their own eLearning courses from scratch. Contact an account representative for more information.

The training sure looks great. But how do I know it's accurate and credible? Who writes U.S.Safety School?

We do! Many leading online safety training providers will resell courses developed by other companies, or sub-contract the subject matter expertise. All U.S.Safety School online safety training courses are developed by our in-house staff of EHS professionals. We have been providing EHS compliance training services since 1993. We have successfully deployed over 450 conventional platform-based, as well as web-based, EHS training solutions, in sixteen countries and in seven languages with our development team. Our development staff includes board-certified professionals, most with advanced degrees in their fields who are actively engaged in supporting conventional training programs. Our instructors hold certifications with the EPA External Provider Program, OSHA's Outreach Program, International Fire Service Accreditation Congress, Institute for Hazardous Materials Management, National Environmental, Safety and Health Training Association and the Registry for Environmental Professionals.

I'd sure like to take advantage of the substantial benefits of an online safety training solution. But what if a substantial number of our employees are not "computer-savvy" and do not have routine access to the internet.

Actually, you may be surprised. Recent studies indicate the prevalence of broadband approaching 85% and increasing rapidly. Your employees are using the internet in all facets of their lives from entertainment to banking. In any case, U.S.Safety School was designed to be simple enough to be used by those with no computer skills, as well as dynamic and engaging enough to reach even the most avid computer gamer.

You can also deliver U.S.Safety School conventionally. For those offline, we offer Instructor Packs for many of our U.S.Safety School titles. These Instructor Packs include a PowerPoint™ presentation complete with instructor notes and course examinations in MS Word™. They are developed to mirror what is delivered online to ensure consistency and standardization in your EHS training program. If you'd like we can even provide a certified instructor. Contact an account representative for more information.

What if, after we deploy our online safety training program pertinent regulations or referenced industry standards change, is my training then obsolete?

No, all U.S.Safety School subscriptions are equipped with LiveUpdate. With LiveUpdate, you can rest assured that your training is always current. If a referenced regulation or standard changes, you are promptly notified and your deployed training updated with no effort required on your part.