That's the way to do it.

One of the big new changes which came in with the advent of the Health and Safety at Work Act etc. 1974 was the new concept for the provision of the "Safe system of work". A safe and logical way of completing tasks taking into account equipment, materials, environment, persons, supervision and emergencies (to name a few). The SSoW, lined up with another, more traditional requirement in (what was then) the new Act, which was for trained personnel. Whatever the new safe methods were, then the workforce could be trained to follow them and what to do if the conditions had altered. This hand-in-glove relationship between Safe systems and training, rapidly became a major influence on the falling accident rate. It also formed a major contribution to an organisations defence against prosecution.

Fast forward 50 years and every company has now become adept at internally training their own staff to use and follow their own internal methods. Millions of systems are applied and followed by millions of employees, each day at work.

Or are they? There's one major flaw of this defence for many companies; the traceability of the competent person who carries out the training. How can an organisation justify any-ones in-house training if the person who trained them wasn't competent (or competency which cannot be demonstrated)? Quite a few organisations go out of their way to ensure they have qualified trainers working inside of their company. A level 3 training qualification is usually a three day course, with micro teach to justify competence of the trainee and is adequate as a training qualification for delivering courses such as the IOSH level 1 or level 2 Managing Safely. However, isn't this qualification a bit of an overkill for explaining and showing someone how to change a blade in a hand held chop-saw, for example?

Fortunately, as always, Train to Safety have (and have had for quite a while) have the answer in a simple one day course to train staff into completing small practical straight-forward tasks. The course is aimed at real world complications and problems as opposed to becoming too bogged down all day with learning theory. As the trainers are themselves trained by level 5 or level 6 trainers (teachers), then the issue of traceability is solved once and for all.

It's a shame the uptake of the course is nowhere near to what it should be, and it does raise the question and wonder in our minds; just how many employees out there in the workplace would be classed as unqualified and not competent to carry out their tasks, based on this one simple weakness.

Next train the trainer course at TTS is on 25th April in Chesterfield, face to face of course!