Safe working and safe work procedures will only be effective through training and employee and management cooperation on site.
Company management and supervisors have a duty to ensure that staff are trained and competent to ensure that tasks are carried out safely.
Management is responsible for:-
- Selection of employees for training, this includes existing and new persons.
- Plan in advance of works any training that maybe required, and organize the training whether external or internal.
- Plan and develop safe work procedures for the works, this would be via Method Statements and utilising the results of risk assessments.
- Employee training and work performance evaluation, measures should be in place to ensure that the training provided is effective.
- Ensure that staff at all levels take an interest in safety, it helps to have employees attend safety inspections and meetings, safety issues raised by staff must be allowed without intimidation (this unfortunately is still common, where programme and targets are seen as more important that health and safety). This is an ideal method for Management to determine training requirements that they perhaps did not initially see as required.
- Management should investigate any incident or accident, determine the cause and compile non conformances where required and make sure that corrective actions are taken, this normally involves extra training of staff to assist in reducing/eliminating safety issues.
- Management should also arrange training where new products or equipment are used, this should apply to hired equipment as well as purchased.
- A suitable budget should be set aside for training, either at a company level or on a contract basis where tenders for work would have a training and development budget.
- Records of training, certificates of achievement/attendance should be copied and placed in the company training register and placed in the contract safety file, these should be logged in a manner so that renewal of certificates that are due to expire are carried out before the expiration. In addition where certificates are old, the employee should be required to attend a training course where up to date methods of work or instruction can be achieved.
