Posted By Marc Willacy We are a large employer made up of three separate businesses. We want to establish a coordinated approach to health and safety training provision, delivery and evaluation across the group but are unsure of the best way forward. At present each business is doing its own thing. As a result we would like to identify best practice to help us improve.Can you help?

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Marc By building on ergonomic risk assessments, you can progress from the foundation of health and safety mangement, namely human limitations and strengths.

Posted By the badger Marc: This is not an answer to your question but rather another question. If it one which you have already asked and answered then please pass on to the next post. Are you clear why you want to “establish a coordinated approach to health and safety training provision, delivery and evaluation across the group”? You have three separate business engaged in different activities? Each presumably has its own management structure and culture appropriate to those activities. What is driving the need for a common approach to health and safety training? Is there a push for a common approach to other aspects of management across the group or is it just health and safety? Is the group keen to breakdown the barriers between the divisions or is it a strength that each division operates as a separate coherent entity? I once worked for a group where head office saw, what it considered to be, duplication of health and safety functions across component parts of the group and set up a central health and safety function to replace them. To justify itself, the central function then attempted to standardise the approach to health and safety management across the group when it would have been better to have recognised the differences between the parts of the groups. I felt that the central function would have done better to have supported each of the businesses within the group as a separate entity and set up different management systems for each of them which recognised the differences. You say that “at present each business is doing its own thing”. Is that a good thing or a bad thing and why?

Posted By Tony Brunskill Marc, Have you conducted a Training Needs Analysis or is that a part of the brief. Is there an existing competency set that can be built on and is succession planning in place already? Drop me an email if you wish to progresss this and I will give you a call. Regards Tony