Health & Safety Training II

Kilian Murphy reports on the current state of health & safety in the Irish workplace, and looks at some of the initiatives being taken to improve our performance in this vital area...

Occupational health and safety training is a continuous, never-ending process. As a workplace changes – in terms of personnel, equipment or technology, among other factors – so do its safety risks and hazards. Therefore, it is not possible to receive instruction in health and safety awareness, at the outset of your career, that can adequately cover all subsequent experiences throughout your working days.
This changeability is something that is touched upon when I ask Martin O’Halloran, the CEO of the Health and Safety Authority (HSA), the Irish national body responsible for securing health and safety in the workplace, about the importance of carrying out regular safety audits. He gives a brief summation of the timeline of a business’ health and safety development.

‘The first thing you have to do is identify the hazards, and then assess the risks,’ he explains. ‘Then you decide what the appropriate control strategy is, and put that in place. Once you get that up and running, you must have periodic reviews. You continuously check: are things the same as they were? Has technology changed? Have work practices changed? Have I got new people, and do they understand everything we are doing?’

He continues: ‘At a minimum, an employer must carry out an annual review. But, we would strongly recommend that a review is also carried out if there is a change in work practices, in technology, in people – or in any other circumstances’

So, preparation for continuous change is something that needs to be built into training and consultancy within the occupational health and safety sphere. As such, the HSA recommends that consultants are part of a professional safety body; their membership within this body is dependent upon their continued attendance at its seminars, lectures and events. Therefore, they are obliged to keep up with developments within the world of safety.

Garreth Skerritt, from Heartbeat Safety, an organisation involved in health and safety training and consultancy, explains further:  ‘Any reputable consultant needs to keep abreast of current changes,’ he says. ‘Not just in legislation, but in technology and processes as well. That would be the thinking behind the HSA recommending that you are a member of a professional body.’

Heartbeat Safety are members of British organisation IOSH (the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health), Europe’s leading body for health and safety professionals. IOSH have a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) system which, as the name suggests, involves continuous lectures, seminars and activities that its members must participate in.

Indeed, safety training in Ireland is something that is, on the whole, in a continuous state of development. Our current safety record in the workplace is below the desired level, as Pierce Martin from the National Irish Safety Organisation (NISO) explains: ‘Our actual safety record at the moment is variable,’ he explains. ‘If you take it in a European context, it’s going a bit beneath the mid-performance, towards the lower quartile performance, amongst other European countries.’

Authorities in the area agree that this variability in our safety record is reflected in the mixed quality of our training programmes. However, they also agree that the range and standard of instruction in occupational health and safety has improved a great deal in recent times.

Martin O’Halloran is pleased with the improvements made in the health and safety training sphere, and says: ‘When I joined the world of safety, there would have been very few courses, so it has improved enormously. Now you can start off with a Certificate and then go up to a two-year Diploma. The Diploma is now being offered in a range of colleges and universities around the country.’

He continues: ‘There is also a distance learning programme from UCD, and there are a great number of universities and colleges offering our full BSc Degree in Occupational Safety and Health.’ The Diploma is widely regarded as the minimum standard required for someone who wishes to provide training or advice in the field of occupational health and safety. However, there are a whole host of other training options tailored towards people who wish to glean safety knowledge solely and directly related to their specific role.

Garreth Skerritt explains: ‘If you look at the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, there is a definition of a “competent person”. A competent person would be anybody with the relevant knowledge, skills and training to do whatever job it is they have to do.’

Heartbeat Safety provide ‘all levels of health and safety training, from the ground up’, ideal for people who wish to meet the ‘competent person’ criteria. Skerritt believes this sort of variety is necessary, because it is important to tailor courses to the aims and needs of their attendees.

He explains: ‘If you’re talking to operatives on a construction site, there are basic levels of safety training you have to go through. But if you’re talking to line managers, middle management or senior management, you have to provide different levels of knowledge, with regard to the employer regulations and the employer duties. The operatives wouldn’t need to know that, but they would need to know their employee duties.\\\'

One major complaint levelled against Irish occupational health and safety training (and legislation) is that it is more accessible to, and geared towards, larger companies.  ‘Major companies can generally afford good training programmes,’ Pierce Martin explains.  ‘But when you get down to small-and-medium-sized companies – and particularly micro-sized companies, you get a lot of variability in the training that is delivered to them. Obviously, people say it’s important to comply with legislation, but the legislation is very vague for a lot of small companies. They need to know what the standards are in relation to the risks that they’re faced with.’ Indeed, the HSA seemed to have acknowledged this lack of clarity with their recent launch of a Safety Toolkit for Small Businesses. The package was designed with the needs of small firms and micro-businesses in mind, and comes with checklists that can help them to improve health and safety standards.

‘We have a role, which is to provide information and advice,’ Martin O’Halloran explains. ‘One group that sometimes does not appear to be able to either obtain or utilise the information is the micro-industry, that is, self-employed people, or organisations with up to 10 employees. We brought out this toolkit so there would be information available to them that is accessible, readable and easily manageable. It enables them to ensure they are equipped to do the right thing.’

However, Garreth Skerritt believes that more funding is required before the HSA can realise their dream of an impeccable Irish workplace safety record. ‘There needs to be a more pro-active approach with regard to enforcement,’ he explains. ‘The HSA are responsible for enforcing the legislation in this country – and they do a fantastic job – but they are seriously under-funded. They need a lot more money to provide a lot more safety inspectors, to do a lot more visits. That’s the way it works.’
Perhaps Skerritt’s point about the importance of enforcement gets to the heart of the matter. Lives depend on the quality of a workplace’s approach to health and safety. Therefore, the quality of a consultant’s initial training is irrelevant if their knowledge is not honed, developed, and applied diligently in practice.

Kilian Murphy