Do you know that health & safety legislation requires managers to be trained in health & safety? At the very least they need to understand what health & safety applies to the tasks they are assigned to manage.

The HSE have for a number of years suggested that a good qualification for any line manager to undertake is the IOSH Managing Safely course. This provides a good base level of knowledge to help managers to identify what they are responsible for and to help them understand where they need to ask for help.

The problem is that not that many businesses seem to want to release their managers for training and therefore; they are left to manage something they know very little about. It’s not much wonder then that health & safety issues get neglected; if they don’t know what they are looking for how can mangers be expected to manage?

We have recently carried out a health & safety audit for a SME business and found that the managers are failing to consistently deliver induction training or to complete risk assessment for the activities of their teams. These are both legal requirements and also go a long way to ensuring that the staff and the business stay safe; yet these key tasks are being overlooked.

If there is a reportable accident or a HSE visit this business will be found to fall short of what’s expected and for the HSE such failures are easy to prosecute. Risk assessment is a mandatory requirements for businesses and where it’s not done or not done properly then the court will inevitably issue a fine.

In your business all of this is easily overcome but only if you take the time to make sure your managers are properly trained to deal with health & safety matters.