Is Light the Way a recruiting company or a technical skills training company for Safety Professionals?

We are both.  We can start working with your company when a vacancy arises to assist you in finding the most qualified candidate for the position. Once your management team hires the employee, we continue to partner with you to train the employee to become a productive member of your team as soon as possible.  We also realize that your management team may already have new hires or existing employees who have a technical foundation but need to increase their knowledge base.  We are flexible in our approach and are ready to start working with your new employee or existing employee at any point in their technical development. 

There are many other recruiting and employment placement companies and even ones that specialize in recruiting Safety Professionals.  What makes Light the Way different?

Yes, we are specialists in recruiting for safety professionals just like many other companies, but unlike many other recruiters that have not actually worked in the safety field, our team consists of professionals that have actually worked in the safety field starting as trainees, working their way up to specialist, supervisory and executive management positions.  We know what it takes to be successful at each stage of an employee's career so we are better equipped to assist in picking the best candidate for your open position.  Because we have engineering backgrounds, we love science and have used our decades of knowledge to add a scientific methodology to the employee selection process; a scientifically validated process that predicts future performance in the position based on employee skills, and that helps your company to hire the right person.    According to researchers at the National Business Research Institute (NBRI), the cost of a bad hire can range anywhere from $25,000 - $300,000.  When the researchers at NBRI asked companies the reason for a bad hire, 43% of the companies stated that the bad hire came from needing to fill the job quickly.  In a survey conducted by Career Builder, 21% of companies admitted that they had made bad hiring decisions because they did not take the time to properly test and research the employee’s skills.  Can we guarantee the perfect hire?  Absolutely not, but we can say that the methodology we use in the selection process, along with your interviewing strategies helps to bridge the gap in employee selection between shooting in the dark and an absolute certainty.

Why do I need to look at hiring employees with little or no experience?  Isn't it better to just hire an experienced Safety Professional that can immediately start working in the field and be productive?

Obviously, a trained safety professional that has the technical expertise to start doing work on day one is great, but so very hard to find!  With so many in the profession retiring, and so few companies electing not to train safety professionals in the past decade, it makes finding a seasoned safety professional close to impossible.  Hiring employees with little to no experience is an excellent way to rebuilt and add diversity to your department.

We have Safety Supervisors, Managers and field employees who can train employees.  Why not just use them?

The Safety Supervisor and Manager have many responsibilities within the department to ensure that the entire department runs efficiently and effectively.  A manager or supervisor would need to devote between 15 and 20 hours per week for each new, inexperienced safetyl consultant in order to produce a highly effective and productive field employee.  Field employees need to be productive and when adding the extra responsibility of training to a field employee's responsibility, the overall productivity of the department is diminished.  With so many competing demands and multiple responsibilities, it is very difficult for a supervisor or manager to devote the needed amount of time to ensure successful learning for independent field work.  Many companies have not developed training resources or effective training plans and this makes the training task even harder. For busy supervisors and managers who already have to juggle many responsibilities, Light the Way’s training program is a great and effective alternative to in-house training that immediately turns non-productive employees into productive ones.

Isn’t online training and self study just as good as having a training coach?

Employees can learn from online training and self study, but learning retention rates are very low.  Passive learning is most effective when it is combined with participatory learning.  To get the most out of the training experience, Light the Way combines passive and participatory teaching methods for higher  learning retention rates.

What are the benefits of a Light the Way’s recruiting and training program?

Light the Way takes the stress out of filling a vacancy and training your technical employees because it frees up more of your time and you get great results! Because recruiting, training and employee development is all we do, we do not have any competing demands.  Our focus is only on training employees to be great safety professionals!  Finding great employees for your company and training them to be highly skilled is our passion!  When an employee is a good match for your job position, fits well within your company culture and is well trained, your company reaps the benefits by having a high potential employee on staff for years to come.  You are investing in an employee’s career, and the end result will be a highly successful and productive employee.  Training develops and challenges employees, and when employees are challenged, they are engaged and happy.  When your employees are happy, morale is high and your turnover is low.

How can we afford to have an employee in training when there are so many other work demands and deadlines?

With the addition of our field training add-on or the customized one-on-one employee training program with field training, Light the Way's unique approach of incorporating training with field work allows the employee to train while still being productive for your company.  We work with your performance goals to make sure your new employee is developing based on what is important to your company.

I have a specialized book of business.  What are my options for training?

​Because we realize there are no two companies that are just alike, Light the Way's training philosophy is to customize a training plan that fits your company and takes into consideration the specialized carrier industry niches in your book of business.