Online Forklift Certification – Is it Your Best Forklift Training Option?

Online Forklift Certification Training is quickly becoming one of the most popular methods that forklift operators use to obtain a valid forklift operator certificate. Whether it’s an individual looking to quickly get their forklift certificate or a company wishing to train their operators, online forklift certification offers many benefits.

Online training, however, may not be for everyone. Before jumping right in and choosing to use online training to obtain a forklift certificate or provide it to your operators, doing some research is helpful. This can assist in determining if it’s the best approach for your scenario and help you determine the best provider.

What is Online Forklift Certification Training?

Effective forklift training is broken down into four elements: Theory training, a knowledge assessment, workplace-specific training, and a practical evaluation. While workplace-specific training and practical evaluations cannot effectively be facilitated outside of the workplace and should be completed by the employer of the operators, theory training and knowledge assessments can be provided through various methods.

Get Forklift Certified

Online Forklift Training is a method for providing forklift theory training and knowledge evaluation through computer-based learning methods, usually via the Internet. Most online forklift certification training contains text, narration, video, interactive features, and knowledge evaluations such as quizzes, exams, and surveys.

Online Forklift Certification Training Pros and Cons

As with any method, taking or providing online certification can have specific pros and cons. No single method of training could possibly work for every possible scenario. It’s important to consider the pros and cons of each forklift training method to determine what’s best for your scenario.

Here are some of the pros and cons of taking online forklift certification training or providing it to your workers.

Online Forklift Certification Pros

Flexibility and Convenience

Online Forklift Training offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and convenience. Learners can take the online training from any location at the time that’s most convenient for them or their company.

They also have the flexibility to take the training at their own pace, stopping and resuming as required.

Leading forklift training providers also ensure that their training courses can easily be taken on mobile devices. This further increases the flexibility and convenience for those taking the forklift training.

Time-Savings and Efficiency

Online Certification can take much less time to complete than traditional training methods. Operators taking the training have a higher chance of remaining motivated throughout the course. For employers, this means eliminating or significantly reducing operational delays.

Lower Costs than Traditional Training Methods

Traditional forklift training methods, such as instructor-class classroom training, can be expensive. In addition to costly third-party instructors and expensive training materials, indirect costs such as those that result from lost productivity can skyrocket. Online forklift certification training eliminates many of the costs associated with these traditional methods without sacrificing effectiveness.

Low Stress

For some learners, traditional training methods can be very stressful. Online training allows participants who are shy or reserved to learn without any social phobia. Online training can be completed in the best environment that will help the learner perform at their best. Moreover, learners are free to choose a place that is quiet and free from distraction.

Consistency

Communicating the right message is important. Ensuring that it gets delivered the same way every time is also very important. Traditional forklift training methods that require an instructor to present content can easily become inconsistent, especially across multiple locations. Even the best instructors can deliver details a little differently from day to day and class to class.

Online Forklift Certification training from a reputable provider is always consistent. Learners get the exact same standards-compliant message every time.

Simplified Administration for Employers

Perhaps the greatest benefits of online training are for busy managers. Training program facilitation can be daunting. Scheduling workers for classroom-based sessions, shutting down operations, paying for costly instructors, filing training records, and being pulled away from other tasks can all be eliminated through the use of online forklift training.

Companies that provide their workers with online forklift certification training typically have fewer gaps in their training programs and reap the benefits of improved productivity. Managers who are in charge of training have much more time to focus on other proactive measures since they no longer have to worry about scheduling, chasing workers to complete their training, or filing vast amounts of training records.

Online Forklift Certification Training Cons

Reduced Ability to Interact with Instructor and Peers

One of the downfalls of online certification courses is the reduced ability to interact with an instructor and/or class participants instantly. Many online providers offer the ability to interact with instructors in various formats; however, the responses are usually not as quick as the instant responses that would be received in classroom training.

Selecting a Provider

Online OSHA Forklift Certification training is quickly becoming one of the most popular methods for getting certified or providing workers with forklift training. For this reason, many new online forklift providers are regularly popping up online. One downfall of this is the difficulty in choosing from these providers.

When deciding to take online forklift certification training or provide it to your workers through this method, ensure that you choose a reputable provider. To assist, we’ve put together a list of characteristics to look for when selecting an online forklift training provider.

What to Look for in an Online Training Provider

Not all online forklift certification training is the same. Some differences between providers and training options are subtle, while others are very significant.

Regardless of whether you’re an individual looking for a training option or an employer looking to provide training to your workers, there are several things you need to consider.

Here are a few important factors that must be considered when looking to take or provide online forklift certification.

Compliance with Current Standards

This characteristic is possibly the most important. Any training that you’re considering taking or providing to your workers must be compliant. This is simply non-negotiable and should be the first thing to look for. Compliant, up-to-date training will ensure that you or your workers have the information required to be safe while working with hazardous products. It also ensures that you’re meeting your legislative requirements.

Only consider taking or providing forklift training aligned with a recognized forklift standard. The most common and recognized forklift standards in North America are the ANSI B56.1 and CSA B335 standards. The OSHA standard and several Canadian regulations frequently refer to the ANSI and CSA standards and require that specific measures be implemented from the standards.

Effectiveness

Any forklift training that’s under your consideration should be effective. This means that not only should it contain all required information, but it should also present that information clearly and effectively. Online forklift courses should be developed using established instructional design principles and further, ensure that learners can easily retain the required information.

Some of the most effective online training contains interactivity that allows learners to make decisions and experience the consequences of those decisions immediately. They contain mechanisms to provide actionable feedback throughout the duration of the training. This results in reinforced learning, improved knowledge retention, and improved learner satisfaction.

Efficiency

Not only should online forklift certification training be effective, but it should also be efficient.

Learners must be able to learn the required content and demonstrate their competence in a reasonable amount of time. Online learning can typically be completed in less time than traditional methods. This means that forklift training that is completed online should not be drawn out and longer than necessary. There should be no filler content just to make a course longer.

Modern

Do you remember the gory safety videos from the 70s and 80s? While they were sometimes extremely entertaining, they didn’t really accomplish the goal of getting workers to think more about safety. It’s likely that they actually had negative effects since they sometimes trivialized safety and made it seem less important.

Believe it or not, some people still show some of these safety videos today, and they’re even less effective than in the 80s.

Workers are more open to training that is modern and relative to current times. The online forklift certification you choose to take or provide to your operators should be modern and updated recently.

In addition to the modern content, the methods in which the training can be taken should also not be outdated. In today’s connected world, online forklift certification must be accessible on mobile devices and multiple platforms.

Simplicity

If you’re looking for online training, it’s because you don’t want to deal with the time-consuming complexities of traditional forklift training methods.

Any forklift solution that you choose should be extremely simple to take yourself and provide to your operators. After all, the goal is to get high-quality forklift training with a minimal amount of effort. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to take your training or assign it to workers.

Good forklift Online training providers offer a super simple process, from purchasing training to completing it or assigning it to your operators.

Production Value

Everyone can agree that watching a YouTube video with poor audio quality is nearly impossible, regardless of the video quality and content.

It’s already challenging to maintain a learner’s attention with safety training. Introducing low-quality production standards in the form of grainy photos, blurry videos, and terrible audio completely ruins the training experience for the learner. Any online forklift certification that’s worthy of your selection should be intuitive, visually pleasing, have very high audio quality, and generally be of high production value.

Price and Value

Price is definitely a factor when considering an online forklift certification solution. Perhaps more important than price is value. What exactly are you getting for your money?

Does the solution provide a printable certificate that you can print immediately and unlimited times? How long do you have access to the training? Do you have to pay additional fees for retaking quizzes and exams? All of these should be considered and significantly affect the value of the solution.

Companies wanting to train their operators should also consider factors that increase the value of their investment. For example, how easy is it to facilitate and track the training? If you save several hours a week in administration, the value of the investment skyrockets. Do you get additional tools to help you facilitate workplace-specific training? This will also increase the value of your investment significantly.

Guaranteed Satisfaction

Any online forklift certification that you intend on taking yourself or providing to your operators should be backed by some kind of guarantee.

One of the most common types of guarantees is a risk-free, money-back guarantee. The top forklift training providers are not afraid to offer this type of guarantee with their forklift training products because they are very confident in the products that they provide.

Conclusion

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, online forklift certification is probably the most popular method that operators currently use to get their forklift certificate. The affordability and convenience it offers simply cannot be matched by traditional forklift training methods.

Whether you’re a worker looking to get forklift certified or an employer looking to train your operators, online forklift certification can provide you benefits that weren’t available just a few short years ago. Do your research, find a reputable provider, and enjoy the benefits that technology has brought to all of us:)