Hi,

I'm looking to develop a training package for my dept managers and supervisors level in key elements of H&S. My content for develop would be aimed at 1) Basic Intro to law & their responsibilities. 2) Risk Management Controls 3) Incident Reporting & Investigation 4) Monitoring & Review (namely proactive requirements, audits, training, KPIs, etc)

Unfortunately my organisation does not want to go down the IOSH 4 Day course route or NEBOSH General for Management team as they want something more company specific. Would anyone have ideas on content for this level of training to the targeted audience mentioned above?

Thanks

That's encouraging then. Rather than waste a lot of money and 4 days worth of everybody's time on some woolly, vague and generic cartoon nonsense, work with the senior management to determine (a) where you are now (b) where you want to be, and (c) how you're going to get there ( in terms of H&S compliance and performance).

The spade work and the buy-in lies above. Once the Organisation has a plan of action, a 1-day in-house launch session should suffice. Little point in embarking on a training or learning path unless you know where you're all going.

Safetyman - I agree with others who have said this is a great opportunity for you to develop something that will be really relevant to your own people. I've done exactly the same thing for a number of clients so here's a few ideas.

Don't go overboard on the details of the law. Concentrate instead on telling them how it REALLY applies to them, especially with their own responsibilities. Find some examples where failure by managers/supervisors has caused death or serious injury and take them through the scenarios step by step asking them to consider what they would have done. If you can relate this to actual incidents in the company, which may have involved similar failings (but hopefully not similar consequences!) it becomes far more powerful.

Risk assessment - show them the assessment for their own areas - it's sometimes depressing how many have not seen this before.

If you have time for some practical stuff - a simple RA, a workplace inspection, then try to do it. But make sure you show them what happens afterwards to the findings so they feel involved.

Let them ask questions about stuff that may be bothering them. It's much more valuable to go off at a total tangent for 30 mins and sort out a real issue than to bang on about the MHSW Regs until everyone falls asleep. This is a real bonus of a bespoke session so make the most of it.

I always try to include the reasons why we report near misses since many people regard them as a total waste of time. Again you have to give them examples to get them to see the point and try to get them engaged in the process going forward.

Good luck and enjoy it - this can be one of the best parts of the job when you realise you've actually converted someone to the cause of sensible safety through a training programme that YOU designed!

Safetyman, an in-house course is a good idea for the reasons already stated, but have you considered getting your course accredited once you've produced it?

We have developed our own course for our clinical staff, basing the syllabus on IOSH MS but changing the emphasis and presentation to something very much based in the reality of our workplace, and we got it accredited by IOSH. This was helpful as it imposed some much-needed discipline on us, and in my view it adds credibility. Other training providers will accredit your material, we chose IOSH as we use the generic MS for our retailers and office managers,

John