Employers have to get ‘competent advice’ on health and safety but there’s no official description of what that means.
IOSH has published a new guide to help them understand what skills their employees need to work safely, and how these should be developed and maintained.
‘Setting standards in health and safety’ provides a best-practice approach to raising health and safety performance across all levels of an organisation. This includes recognising what kind of qualifications and skills their health and safety advisor should have, what training they should deliver to staff, and what legal responsibilities senior managers have to meet.
But it’s not just about complying with the law. Speaking about the guide, IOSH policy and technical director, Richard Jones, said: “There is a requirement under law but, more importantly, employers need to recognise that workers are an organisation’s greatest asset.
“So it’s only good sense that they are given skills and training to do the job effectively, and that the training is actually working. It’s no good an employer having state-of-the-art equipment if their employees don’t know how to use it properly without hurting themselves, or others.”
