Working Safely Training

This course acts as an overview to identify the main risk and hazards found in the workplace. As such, the course is designed to be a first step approach for employers to build safe systems of work.  It is recommended for employers to expand the knowledge provided in this course with knowledge of how to deal with specific areas of risk, for example, through our course on Manual Handling, which goes into much greater detail.

Health and safety is one of the few areas where the law places specific duties on employees so a knowledge of where this applies and how to ensure that it is adhered to is important to protect individuals and businesses. As such, this course provides an excellent overview of the obligations of the employee, as well as the employer, and could be used as part of an employee training or induction programme.

There are some of the common workplace hazards and common ways of control measures to dealing with them which you will come across in most workplaces. The course will help you identify these risks and hazards and enable you build on this to create an effective risk assessment to be used as a tool to ensure a safer environment for workers, contractors and visitors. We look closely at the three most common workplace hazards along with case studies that illustrate where failure to comply with health and safety legislation led to criminal charges.  These three common hazards are:

• Working at height. Falls from height are the biggest cause of fatalities at work, and one of the greatest causes of serious injuries.
• Transport and vehicles where we look at the most hazardous areas it involves
• Work equipment. This is any manual or mechanical tool used to undertake work and could include things like lifting equipment, photocopiers, printers, floor polishes, forklift trucks, food processes etc

This area of the course looks at specific workplace hazards. These areas should be individually risk assessed. The course provides you with the skills to recognise these risks in your workplace and the knowledge to build effective, and ongoing, ways to measure and minimise these risks and keep your reporting up to date. Some of the major areas covered are:

Fire Risks
The course looks at the employer’s legal obligations to carry out fire risk assessment and ensure training and instruction are available to all staff and all affected people. It details the components of fire, with the objective of using this knowledge to use in the planning of an effective risk management strategy. We offer several more comprehensive fire safety training courses to enable employers implement a full strategy of fire control. These include Basic Fire Safety Awareness, Fire Marshall Training and Fire Extinguisher Training

Slips, Trips and Falls
Accidents relating to slips, trips and falls account for 34% of all injuries at work and 95% result in a broken bone. Here you will learn the common areas that create risk and be given procedures to implements to help control these risks. Management of these risks are more comprehensively covered in our Slips, Trips and Falls training

Manual Handling is defined as the pushing, pulling, lifting, setting down or carrying of any load by physical effort. Injuries from moving and handling account for the highest number of safety days lost to workers. These injuries represent over a third of all reportable accidents at work that affect the lower back or elsewhere. Our manual handling training covers risk assessment and management in detail

COSHH – Hazardous substance is defined as any material or substance with the potential to cause illness or injury to those who come into contact with. The COSHH regulations, Control of Substances Hazardous to Health, place specific duties on employers to prevent harm to people from exposure to these substances. Therefore, all hazardous substances must be risk assessed. Management of these risks are comprehensively covered in our COSHH training

Other areas detailed in the course which employers and employee have responsibility for under health and safety regulations include

• Computer Workstations, comprehensively covered in DSE Training
• Asbestos, comprehensively covered in our Asbestos Awareness training
• The risks surrounding noise, covered in detail in our Noise Awareness Training
• Stress at Work, comprehensively covered in our Stress Awareness Training

This area of the course looks at how to set up an Occupational Safety and Health Management System OSHMS. This means, for example, that in the event of a spillage, everyone needs to know what to do, how to do it and when to do it. In managing for health and safety, the Health and Safety Executive, the HSE, sets out clear guidance to employers on what an OSHMS should look like and uses the simple ideas of plan, do, check and act to provide a framework for OSHMS development.

The course sets out easy to follow guidelines on how to prepare an Occupational Safety and Health Management System and fulfil your obligations laid out by the HSE. Central to these obligations are employers written policy, if they have more than five employees. This policy details

• A Statement of Intent, written by the most senior person in the organisation and recognises the health and safety issues it faces, explaining objectives and measures being taken to address issues
• Organisational and Management where details of how health and safety information is communicated within the organisation
• Responsibilities which lays out roles and responsibilities of both management and staff at each level within the organisation for health and safety.

If systems and procedures fail, and there is an accident or incident, it will result in investigation to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This will certainly be internal, but in more serious cases, or if it falls into a RIDDOR category, The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, it will also involve an investigation by the HSE inspector or an environmental health officer. The HSE lists common areas for consideration in their guide A Safe Place to Work.