How H&S Compliance Helps Organisations

While there is a growing concern that increased health and safety regulations are harming our innate common-sense, employees still expect their places of work to be hazard-free. Indeed, it is a basic human right and organisations have a legal responsibility to ensure that premises and working conditions cause no harm, either physically or mentally, through stress.

Legal Requirements

If your company employs five or more people, you must have a Health and Safety policy. Any risks must be identified and managed, with measures put in place to deal with these. In addition, emergency procedures must be well-known throughout your workforce, contractors, freelancers, etc. Health and Safety compliance training is imperative and should take place during working hours, free of charge to trainees. If an incident occurs where someone is harmed, the company itself could be held accountable, as well as any officers who were shown to be negligent in their H&S responsibilities.

Positive Rewards

Apart from not having litigation proceedings brought against an organisation and thereby saving time and money, there are other benefits of taking a ‘best practice’ attitude towards Health and Safety policies and procedures. Serious incidents can result in extreme distress throughout a department or location, products can be damaged, productivity reduced and employees demotivated. People who know their company has a positive attitude towards their well-being should be happier at work. Through regular training and by keeping H&S high on the agenda, compliance should become second nature.

Training

One of the most effective and well-received methods of compliance training is through an elearning program. The best learning management systems are flexible, interactive and can be accessed from anywhere. One of the problems of H&S compliance training is that content needs to vary between departments, sites, individuals, etc. Having to repeat the same course to different departments or at different premises can take a significant amount of time and effort. Using open-source software such as Totara LMS means you can deliver content to multiple sites, which can be tailored to the individual or group as necessary. No per-user licence fees mean firms see an 80% ROI, compared to non-open source platforms. According to the HSE, compliance training should take place within working hours, however this is not always convenient, particularly for part-timers or contractors. Totara’s learning platform can be accessed from laptops, tablets and mobile phones, giving the greatest flexibility for your employees. As well as being able to deliver multimedia and interactive content to make the compliance training more interesting and relevant, you can set up question banks and generate assessments, with course completion on assessment-only or combined with other practical activities. It’s of vital importance to review how staff are performing and Totara LMS provides in-depth reporting on who’s passed, as well as who has and hasn’t completed their assignments and training. Another key feature is being able to store historical and current records of employees’ training, so it’s simple to see who is missing a unit or needs a refresher course.

Webanywhere have been working with the British Safety Council (BritSafe) for three years, helping them deliver an ambitious program of elearning solutions. As a Totara Platinum partner, we can provide a fully comprehensive solution tailored to suit your requirements.