It doesn’t matter whether your business is large or small; as an employer, you have a duty of care to your employees, and they should be able to expect a safe working environment. This is the very basis of your relationship, and if this fails not only could serious injury occur, but you would have failed as a business owner and a boss. No one wants this, which is why the health and safety aspect of every workplace is so important. This is true even if you run a small office or retail shop, as well as if you run a construction or manufacturing company that has a lot of tools at its disposal.
Yet as part of this contract between employer and employee, training is an important consideration. Employees should be trained in the aspects of health and safety that are going to be part of their working life, and employers should arrange for this training to take place. Why is this so vital?
It’s The Law
Apart from anything else, ensuring that all the correct health and safety measures are in place within your business is the law. There are several different rules and regulations that relate to this, including the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). Simply put, if you don’t have the relevant safety measures in place, you could be fine or even imprisoned, and your business could be shut down.
Training is part of this. It’s not good enough to have the right measures in place if no one knows how to use the height safety equipment or how to wear the PPE that you’ve provided. Every aspect of health and safety needs to be included, and training is part of this.
It Encourages Proactive Thinking
One of the best ways to prevent workplace accidents and injuries is to encourage your team to be more proactive in their thinking. Rather than walking past something that might be a problem and cause an accident, the right training will help people to see the dangers and do something about it. A spilled glass of water, for example, could cause someone to slip – proactive thinking would mean that this spill is cleaned away before it can cause any problems. It would be even better if a sign was put up warning people of the wet floor before the cleaning took place.
As you can see, proactive thinking is clearly a good way to run a business, and not just for health and safety reasons, but for general productivity. If your training addresses this, it will help you greatly.
It Increases Efficiency
Many of today’s working environments are fast-paced and there is always a lot to do. Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons why health and safety training can be missed, with employers feeling it would take too much time and cause problems with productivity. However, the opposite is true.
Although the training itself will take time out of your employees’ day, going forward from there they will be able to be much more efficient, since they will be more confident in using the equipment they need for their work, and they will know they are doing things the right way. Plus, with more health and safety training, there will be fewer accidents, and that means less time off work for injured employees (something that will also lower productivity within the workplace).