Health and safety training services for your staff

Did you know that over 200 people are killed each year in accidents at work, and over one million are injured? This can be greatly minimised, or even better, entirely prevented by ensuring staff have all the necessary health and safety training.

If you are an employer, providing health and safety training to your staff means you can:

• Ensure your employers are unharmed and don't get ill from work

• Gain a positive attitude towards health and safety for you and your staff

• Meet legal duties to protect your employees

• Raise safety awareness

Training that is effective means:

• Your business can avoid the stress accidents ill health can cause at work

• You can steer clear of financial costs of accidents in the workplace as insurance won't cover this.

• You will avoid damaged products, injured/ill staff or a loss in production

Who needs health and safety training?

Training can benefit everyone in a company, no matter what industry they work in. However, industries that require extra special safety training are areas such as construction or sports.

Employers in every industry should give new staff basic health and safety information such as arrangements for first aid, fire, evacuation as well as any company rules.

In more safety driven sectors, like construction, this basic training needs to be far more in depth. It needs to cover things such as manual handling, scaffolding, forklift driving or asbestos awareness training.

Should I keep training records?

It's not a legal requirement to keep training records, but it is a good idea to keep track of it, and have staff sign it off as this way, you will know which members of staff still need it. Also, it means you will be able to easily access information regarding refresher training.

When is refresher training required?

Some skills' refresher training is compulsory after a certain amount of time; for example, first aid training is required every three years to ensure their certification stays valid. Bear in mind however, that if an employee does not use their skills regularly, their competence in that area will decline so it's best for him or her to 'top up'.

Unfortunately, accidents in the construction workplace are far more likely than any other area so make sure your staff are fully trained in everything they need to be. There are lots of safety training companies out there who can provide multiple training courses.