Who Needs Training Anyway?
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published a new guide giving tips on how to properly implement a health and safety training program at your company. As an employer, you may already have implemented a strategy to roll out effective health and safety training methods, but if you haven’t, the guide provides five key steps to instigate a process of safety training.
Before we go through the steps let’s take a look at who needs health and safety training in your organisation. According to the guide, nobody is excluded from the health and safety training process. This means that everybody, including management, should get some form of training. “If you employ managers or supervisors,” says the guide “they need to know what you expect from them in terms of health and safety.” Let’s not forget about the employees, everybody means everybody, and the self-employed, contractors, part-time and full-time staff should not be excluded from any training.
Legislation
Furthermore, as the guide details, by carrying out effective training you are ensuring your company is legally compliant with the Health and Safety Work Act 1974, which requires employers to provide information and training to employees for their own health and safety while at work. You should also be aware of the Management of Health and Safety at Work regulations 1999, which tells you what aspects of training are important, the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977 and the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996. There’s also the Health and Safety (Training for Employment) Regulations 1990, which as the guide states, ensures any employees on work experience are covered under the law.
Now, let’s look at those steps for the proper implementation of health and safety training and the different training methods.
The Steps
Step 1: Decide on Training
The first step, according to the guide, is to decide on what training your organisation will require. You should start this by identifying the “skills and knowledge” required for people to carry out their jobs in a health conscious environment. You should then compare “these against people’s current skills and knowledge,” and then go through a phase of looking at the gaps in training. Finally, the guide suggests:
- Reviewing past accidents and incidents
- Considering the training needs for everyone
- Identifying who is responsible for what
- Assessing costs
- Evaluating risks
- Controlling known hazards
Step 2: Decide on Your Training Priorities
According to the guide, you should look over the law to see if you need to carry out specific training, first-aid training for instance. Then, you should begin a process of prioritizing. The guide states, that the following people will need training:
- New recruits
- Those that benefit the “largest numbers of staff”
- People changing jobs within your company
- Those for whom a “lack of information may cause harm”
- People using new equipment.
Then you could consult your employees of “their views” in terms of the training.
Step 3: Figure Out What Your Training Methods and Resources Are
According to the guide, you should decide where you are going to carry out your training. Will it be in a room? Will you carry out on-the- job training? Open or distance learning? Or online training? If you decide to go with online training it will ensure that your employees are fully versed in terms of health and safety training and employee testing which reduces time and resources for you as an employer. As the saying goes ‘content is king’ and nowhere more so than in safety training. It is suggested that you use the free resources at your disposal to develop comprehensive training modules. These resources can be found here. Regardless of what workplace or role you are training for you’ll need to have the right material to educate and inform.
Step 4: Deliver the Training
The guide looks at some basic things during this process, like ensuring the information is “easy to understand” and to use a “variety of training methods to deliver your message.” If you conduct at least some of your training online you may have greater options in terms of method of delivery. Nowadays, software systems can easily deliver video, graphics, audio or diagrams to trainees in a way that increases information retention over time. It is a well cited statistic the 65% of us are visual rather than verbal learners but, less well known is that 65% of information delivered visually is retained by the learner after 3 days as opposed to 10-20% of verbal content (Research Institute of America). Taking the time to consider variety in training materials is time well spent and can greatly assist the teacher, if any, when they are delivering as they may not be very experienced.
Step 5: Make Sure the Training Has Worked
According to the guide, you should ensure that your staff know the following: what is required of them and whether they are working with the training in mind. As an employer you should know if there has been any improvement in your company’s health and safety performance? Was the most suitable training methods used? All of these are important questions which you need to ask and let’s not forget keeping track of important health and safety training documents, which can be a pain at the best of times.
A lot to think about for any employer to ensure compliance with the law and a safe and productive workforce.
