Evaluation of the attendance of refresher courses for forestry machine operators

The study finds out the forest machine operators’ opinion about the need for refresher courses, the quality of the courses, the knowledge and skills gained as a result of attending the courses. As part of the research, a questionnaire was compiled and sent to forest machine operators who have attended courses at the Forest Machine Operator Training Center in the last 4 years to improve their professional skills. The questionnaire was prepared and sent electronically at the end of 2021. Within two months, the questionnaire was completed by 147 operators. The aim of the survey is to find out the operators’ opinion about attending refresher courses, and whether operators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills in refresher courses, which would increase their productivity. Among the surveyed operators, operators in the age group up to 30 years with work experience on the respective machine under 5 years were more interested in refresher courses, while operators in the age group over 41 years of age having work experience over 5 years were less interested in the refresher courses. It was found that 30% of forwarders and 33% of CTL (Cut-To-Length) harvester operators attend refresher courses on their initiative, while all forwarders operators and 65% of harvester operators attend refresher courses on the initiative of the employer. 75% of forwarder operators and 66% of harvester operators stated that they had acquired additional new knowledge and skills as a result of their training, as a result of which their professional qualification level as well as productivity increased.