Asking staff to attend a training course on health & safety often results in moans and groans and some asking do I have to go? It’s not really the best preparation for attending a training session that is likely help to protect their long term health is it!

Yet I bet this could be what you would hear in your business if you tell your staff they need to attend health & safety training next week. It’s amazing how many people will be too busy to attend and will give you all sorts of plausible reasons of why they can’t go.

Even when you tell them it’s for their benefit, many will fail to understand how sitting in a training course is going to keep them safe and healthy. Maybe this is because much of the training they have previously had has been boring and uninspiring. Clearly from a businesses position attendance is necessary because of the legal requirements to train staff; getting bums on seats is often how training is measured.

However it doesn’t have to be this way in our experience; what we find is that by breaking training down into bite sized chunks, it is much more effective. This takes away the arguments of not having enough time to attend or it will be too long and boring (as it has been in the past). But short sessions alone will not ensure training is effective; what is required is a trainer that understands your business and can provide an insight to staff of what the consequences of poor health & safety could mean to them personally. Ultimately the trainer needs both knowledge, experience and the ability to be able to tell a story well; only then can you look to grab people’s attention. Combine a great trainer with shorter to the point training sessions; then you can expect that people will sit up and take notice.

So why not ask your staff about how they feel about health & safety training; if necessary change the approach and see how it can benefit your business.