Why Do Managers Need Health and Safety Training?

Top management has an essential role in ensuring the safety of employees in the workplace. As a part of building safer workplaces, managers should have adequate training in health and safety and understand their respective roles and responsibilities. Managers and similar personnel in high-ranking positions will typically be loaded with various other tasks. This often leads to overlooking their responsibilities in health and safety.

However, managers play a primary role in ensuring a safety culture in the organisation. This blog will explore the key reasons why managers should take health and safety training.

Core reasons for Manager Health and Safety Training

Legal compliance

Managers and supervisors are legally responsible for the workplace safety of employees and for mitigating the risk of accidents and injuries. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the UK’s primary legislation for workplace health & safety, emphasises the duties of employers in ensuring a safe work environment and highlights the practical measures to be undertaken to protect the workforce.

Managers are responsible for ensuring that safety procedures are followed as per legislative requirements in a fair manner.

Morally responsible

Apart from the legal responsibility, employers have a moral commitment to keep their workforce protected. However, health and safety are not meant to just comply with regulations. But, it goes beyond the legal rights and ensures every person in the workplace is assured of sound health and safety.

The health and safety training highlights managerial responsibilities associated with making the employees understand the policies and procedures that promote safety and involve their team as well.

Financial benefits

It is estimated that employers in the UK lose nearly £45 billion every year, and over 800,000 workers suffer from workplace-related illnesses and other health challenges. Proper health and safety training for managers helps in avoiding the financial expenses related to occupational accidents and illnesses. Health and safety training for managers is one of the best ways to mitigate potential monetary effects of an organisation, such as reduced productivity, worker compensation, increased insurance premiums and fines.

Crucial aspects of health and safety that every manager should know:

As per the law, every worker should have awareness about delivering their duties safely. Considering this, the managers are expected to have a comprehensive understanding of:

  • The need for health and safety management and the potential consequences if it fails to achieve
  • Root causes of accidents and incidents, and ways to avoid them
  • Effective ways to recognise, evaluate and mitigate potential workplace risks
  • Legal regulations to manage health and safety as per the Health and Safety at Work Act.
  • Core contributors of a health and safety management system and ways to deploy them
  • How to measure the overall health and safety performance
Make the smart investment – health and safety training for managers at GWG

Reduce the risk in the workplace and improve your health and safety performance. Enrolling in the NEBOSH National General Certificate with Green World Group, the NEBOSH Gold Learning Partner enables managers to train on health and safety and upskill themselves to foster a safe workplace culture.