A significant number of companies find training an easy area to sideline. They are reticent to take workers away from the shop floor during busy times, while they do not like spending on non-essential items during slack periods. Their decision not to bother is made easier if they do not have an internal person with sufficient knowledge to run in-house training and they do not know a reliable external training provider.

Other companies take the opposite view. They see training as being essential for a number of reasons. In the case of health and safety (H&S), good training programmes will result in fewer accidents which in turn reduces accident related losses such as production downtime, machinery repairs, sick pay, compensation and investigation costs.

Some of the training knowledge will also be useful for employees outside of the working environment. For example, good manual handling skills will reduce the likelihood of absence as a result of back strains from domestic activities. It can also contribute to a positive safety culture and good company morale.

In addition, training and assessment are legal requirements for certain pieces of legislation. It is easy to see why this is the case after a brief visit to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website (www.hse.gov.uk) which publishes details of all prosecutions and enforcement notices. Between 1998 and the present, 779 enforcement notices have been served against timber companies and 368 against the furniture industry. Analysis of the timber related companies shows 275 successful prosecutions over three years with fines and costs which totalled £1.3m.

Common themes

This website provides a significant amount of detail on each enforcement notice and prosecution. The latter show a number of common themes – with the most frequent accident scenario being a young person who cuts their hand on a poorly guarded circular saw when trying to clear blockages manually. Such incidents can cause horrific injury and are completely avoidable if proper training is undertaken.

The table opposite highlights some of the pieces of legislation which require training. As ever, the foundation of such obligations is the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HASAWA) which requires: “The provision of such information, instruction, training and supervision as is necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of his employees.”

This is a catch-all clause which requires employers to provide training wherever it is necessary to ensure good H&S management. Some companies choose to address this through in-house H&S awareness raising courses, ranging from one hour to one day depending on the size and complexity of the company.

To some degree the wide ranging duty of the HASAWA renders all other H&S training clauses superfluous. However, training is specifically mentioned in many of the other statutory provisions to reinforce its importance.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 recognise the need for a central source of H&S competence within a company. Therefore, it is a requirement to have a “competent person” – someone with sufficient training and experience to ensure the company meets its H&S duties.

Within a small company (fewer than 20 employees) a person may be deemed ‘competent’ if they have a good understanding of their business together with basic knowledge of H&S legislation. Such individuals may have attended one-day courses on the key issues or may have called in an external expert to offer company-specific advice and training.

As employee numbers rise, there is an increasing expectation that more formal training will have been undertaken by the competent person. A NEBOSH (National Examination Board of Occupational Safety and Health) Certificate course will typically last 10 days and give a good grounding in the essential issues. When employee numbers enter the hundreds, consideration should be given to more detailed training – eg NEBOSH Diploma part I and even part II.

The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1999 (COSHH) provide a good example of the many regimes based upon risk assessment. COSHH requires the identification, evaluation and control of any substance which may be hazardous to health – for example wood dust. The person undertaking the risk assessment requires competence – which is often secured via external training providers but could easily be achieved through reading and self-teaching. Following on from the risk assessment process, companies should consider wider training to make employees aware of:

l Identification of hazardous substances: what is hazardous and why.

l Results of relevant monitoring and evaluation: what exposure levels were found and how these compare with relevant limits.

l Precautions: what engineering and procedural control measures are required.

l Personal protective equipment: what is required, when, where and how should it be used.

Such training is essential to ensure that employees respect and use control measures on an ongoing basis. However, it should be remembered that training is not a primary control measure in itself. In accordance with the general hierarchy of control measures it is always preferable to reduce risks at source through the elimination and minimisation of the hazard. Attention should then turn to ensuring that the employee and the hazard are kept apart.

The use of such measures should reduce risks to an acceptable level in many circumstances. However, training is still required – for example, to explain why a dust capture hood must always be in place and should never be removed.

Machinery use

Within the timber and furniture industry, the single issue on which the HSE is perhaps most keen to raise awareness and training levels is that of machinery use. The requirement for training is explicitly laid out in both the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 and the woodworking machinery Approved Code of Practice. Further guidance is given in the Woodworking Information Sheets available through the HSE website.

If such encouragement is not enough, companies should reflect upon the problems they are having with their insurance premiums due to personal injury claims. For example, it is not unusual to find an injury occurring when an employee has a quick job to perform and uses a machine for the wrong purpose even though training has been given which specifically forbids such use. If a company wants to defend itself, it will need to hold a number of documents including written and signed records which demonstrate that the employee has been trained on relevant issues, understood them and been able to put them into practice during assessments.