The benefits of health and safety training

If you invest in exceptional health and safety training, you'll see benefits and progress almost instantly, curbing the number of people hurt on the job and therefore, the risk of litigation.

However careful you are, you can always count on the unexpected. Accidents, minor or serious, will happen. The right training doesn't just show you how to prevent, it also shows you how to respond and react so they don't happen again.

Key points:

• Health and safety training will help you to comply with UK laws, save money and give you peace of mind health and safety is in hand
• Health and safety training usually includes some form of risk assessment training and will help you to spot skills gaps, so you can identify where your business needs extra support.
• We recommend the IOSH Managing Safely for your Level 2 qualifications and the NEBOSH General Certificate for your Level 3 qualifications - read more about IOSH vs NEBOSH

Common health and safety issues

Your workplace will have its unique challenges to overcome, but there are health and safety issues familiar to every business, small or large:

• Temperature, light and air conditioning
• Harmful surroundings and hazardous substances, like asbestos
• Workstation health and safety, like computers and other display screen equipment (DSE)
• Manual handling
• Noise and sound exposure
• Slips, trips and falls
• Handling heavy machinery, tools and equipment

It could be these hazards, or something more specific to your company, that creates health and safety issues if they go unmanaged. What are the tell-tale signs that your business needs health and safety training?

#1 A high rate of work-related injuries

 

Self-reported, non-fatal workplace injuries reached 581,000 in 2018/19

Certain accidents are familiar to every workplace, whether your staff operate a crane, or sit at a desk for most of the day.

Common injuries	Percentage of accidents reported across all industries
Slips, trips and falls on one level	29%
Handling, lifting or carrying	20%
Struck by a moving object	10%
Violence	8%
Fall from a height	8%

In 2018/19, 4.7m working days were lost due to non-fatal workplace injuries.

In 2020, your health and safety objectives should focus on eliminating the most common workplace injuries.

The IOSH Managing Safely is an entry-level course for anyone that works in a high-risk environment.

If you want to build a strong health and safety culture within your teams and show them how to spot a common hazard a mile off, IOSH Managing Safely is the right course for your business.

With the training, your team will:

• Constantly assess the function and size of a space, plus how many people are using it
• Schedule inspections but stay alert for hazards at all times
• Know how to assign a score to a hazard and describe the likelihood and severity of an accident if no action was taken
• Apply hazard and risk controls, plus communicate when it officially needs to be reviewed so the hazard won't put anyone at risk in the future.

#2 There are life-threatening risks at work