Making a safer workplace

Over 200 people are killed each year in accidents at work, and over 1 million people are injured. Workplace injuries are not just a feature of dangerous environments, but every workplace across the world. A basic essential health and safety training course will give workers an understanding of how to prevent themselves, other workers and others who enter the workplace from suffering illness or injury. As an employer, it is also your legal duty to protect the health and safety of employees, and failing to create a safe working environment can be breaking the law.

A basic safety course enables you to ensure everybody in your workplace remains safe and healthy. Basic safety training will cover the essential factors in a number of areas, making it an easy option for managers wanting to maintain a good working environment. 

The key areas you should look for in an essential health and safety training programme are the following; 

• Fire awareness
• Manual handling
• Display screen equipment training
• Slips trips and falls prevention

These areas are the most common causes of workplace accidents, and should therefore be covered in a basic safety training course. The training should encourage employees to be aware of hazards which may occur in your workplace, and encourage them to do something about them if they do identify hazards. This is effectively done by giving students a risk assessment. This can for sure give them a great basis to be able to learn from and get all the more advanced in their health and safety know how.

A good general health and safety programme will be able to be completed at different times, rather than all in one go when a student may not be concentrating for the full length of time. Online and CD-ROM based courses offer this advantage. It is key though to be able to hold of as much useful information from which you will be able to train and in turn inform a workplace.

To track the learning progress of employees, it is often useful if the employer has access to an easy-to-understand tool to measure progress. This way, you are able to ensure that staff are completing their training effectively. To help you meet health and safety legal registrations, it may help to have certificates to prove that employees have received their essential health and safety training.