Hi All, I work at a college that trains apprentices in building construction and engineering. Since the start of the academic year back in September we have reached over 50 accidents/incidents that have taken place in the various workshops, i.e plumbing, air-con, carpentry etc. Depending on who you speak to some people think this is too high whilst others think that it is par for the course and is all part of learning a trade. There is a clear pattern emerging which suggests most of the workshop cuts, bumps and bruises happen to our first year apprentice’s especially in Sep/Oct where they hit a peak whilst they get used to the hand tools and once they become more confident and experienced the accidents begin to tail off as the year progresses. However after conducting a benchmarking exercise against other similar construction and engineering college’s reported accidents, we are top of the table in terms of the percentage of accidents occurring in the workshops to students. So obviously both I and the powers that be want to get our numbers down. Last year I spoke to the tutors before term started about stressed the need to continue to demonstrate safe working practices and usage of equipment, re-enforced the need to control behaviour in the workshops and kitted them out with safety posters, taking care of your tools etc but alas after a good start the numbers stayed the same as the year before. This year I will be conducting a near miss campaign which while not directly related to accidents in the workshops, I’m hoping will have an impact on a wider scale. I’m looking for suggestions on how else I could get the numbers down? Thanks in advance

I don't work in the same industry as you but we do employ apprentices. They start in January and we always see a spike in accidents in February and March. I look at all the accident reports coming in and monitor the types of injuries and causes of accidents. There have, over the last 3 years that I have been looking at accidents, been no significant increases or decreases and all the accidents are minor - we accept there will be a certain number of accidents during this period (despite our best efforts to make the work and environment as safe as possible). I think its sometimes ok to accept the numbers for what they are and concentrate efforts on things you can change. If you do want to work on this maybe showing some videos to the students demonstrating how people's lives have been affected by workplace accidents - may help to bring the message home a bit

We had a similar position decades ago with our apprentices getting cuts. Our Convenor at the time suggested that, as the argument was that it's par for the course and part of learning a trade, we should line them all up on day one and slash their hands with a Stanley knife. You can imagine the argument that ensued but it was effectively what we were doing. We finally addressed it by introduction of suitable gloves, additional training on induction, and additional oversight as they started. I cannot recall the last time we had an accident involving an apprentice cutting their finger. If you accept it as part of the process of learning you will continue to get the same result and encourage that behaviour throughout their career.