Soteria120 used OttoLearn to help business owners keep workers and customers safe during COVID-19

A safety training startup turned trusted COVID-19 guidance into short OttoLearn activities that help business owners apply safe workplace practices and spot misinformation.

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About Soteria120

Soteria120 is a Calgary-based educational technology startup that creates safety and compliance training for construction and other industries, with the aim of preventing injuries and saving lives.

Its founders bring nearly a century of combined safety training experience. The company sets out to augment or replace conventional training with a minimalist approach based on cognitive science. All of its training is built on OttoLearn.

Safety training that people see once a year is easy to forget

Much safety, compliance and recertification training happens once a year or less often, and learners do not remember material they see once, especially when they will not see it again for a year or three. Their welfare may depend on remembering the safety protocols it covers.

When COVID-19 struck, Soteria120 saw that businesses faced a double threat: keeping workers and customers safe, and keeping the business afloat. Owners needed accurate guidance right away, they had to be able to apply it, and the content had to be easy to update as government mandates shifted.

Already using OttoLearn for its corporate safety and compliance training, Soteria120 moved quickly from building its industrial and construction safety library to providing COVID-19 guidance, and launched its COVID-19 Business Survival Guide for business owners.

How the guide works

Trusted sources
Information comes from the World Health Organization, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, and national and provincial governments.
Active learning
Information is packaged as activities that challenge learners to think through safe workplace principles and apply them to minimize their risks.
What it covers
Personal and workplace hygiene, emergency management and business continuity, occupational health and safety requirements, curated facts about the virus, and how to recognize and combat misinformation.
OttoLearn's strengths
Soteria120 built on daily engagement, spaced repetition, active learning and a minimal, straightforward delivery of content.

Inside OttoLearn

The COVID-19 module opens on its topics
A concept card on emergency management

Project goals
- Combat misinformation about COVID-19
- Give hard-hit businesses training to help them survive the crisis
- Teach and reinforce key protocols and principles
- Help learners work out how to apply the information to minimize their risks
Challenges
- Government mandates shifted often, so content had to be easy to update
- Business owners needed help immediately
- Learners had to be able to apply what they learned, beyond receiving the information

The result

Soteria120 reports that public response to the guide was overwhelmingly positive. The guide delivers information from trusted sources as short activities, so business owners practice applying safe workplace principles as they learn them.

What Soteria120 says

People are really seeing the value in this platform through our COVID-19 demo. They're liking how it's different, how it's low touch, and how we don't throw a pile of information at them all at once. You just pick it up and go. Two minutes later, you're done!

Allan Macdonald, Co-founder, Soteria120