Do you manage a group of employees? Check the required health and safety qualifications.

Regular participation in health and safety training is extremely important for all employees, regardless of the level of their position or the scope of their duties. They are aimed at familiarizing or reminding people of the principles of occupational health and safety at the occupied workplace and the principles of first aid. Such knowledge is especially important for people who manage a group of employees because they are responsible for the team. Which health and safety qualifications are required to manage a group of employees?

How often do managers need to attend health and safety training?

It should be mentioned that managers are also employees, therefore, they are obliged to participate in health and safety training. As with employers, managers must attend once every five years. A manager should be defined as a person who directs a specific group of employees. These can be, for example, foremen, heads of departments, or other organizational units.

Trainees, similarly to lower-level employees, acquire or refresh their knowledge on occupational health and safety at the workplace during training.

Regulations require that the person in charge not only know the principles of pre-medical first aid, but also acquire practical skills in applying them.

In this case, however, it is also important that they are able to create safe and hygienic working conditions for their employees. For this to happen, they themselves must acquire the skills to manage systems for safe work performance. Awareness itself is just the beginning of the process of supervising the work and tasks commissioned by the employer.

It is also important to be able to assess the risks that may arise during the performance of daily duties by employees. The lives and health of employees who are managed by the manager on a daily basis may depend on it.

What is the manager's responsibility?

It is extremely important for managers and other people in charge of employees to have broad knowledge of occupational health and safety because their responsibility for them is comparable to that of an employer. The most significant in both cases is the liability resulting from the violation of criminal law. According to it, failure to fulfill the obligations in the field of supervision over the safe performance of work by subordinates and thus expose them to loss of health or life may result in imprisonment of up to 3 years.

The only difference is that the manager is responsible only for a selected group of employees, and the employer is responsible for all the people employed in the company. The manager's knowledge of health and safety regulations is useful not only when performing his own duties or ensuring appropriate working conditions for the team, but also in the event of the need to draw professional consequences against the employee. One of the basic duties of each employee is to comply with health and safety regulations, and failure to do so may result in punishment or even termination of the contract without notice. The assessment of the risk and the obligation to draw appropriate consequences rest with the manager. Well-established knowledge in the field of occupational health and safety will facilitate solving many problems related to the safe performance of work by subordinate employees.

One of the basic duties of managers in the field of health and safety is to conduct on-the-job training

Such training must be completed by each newly employed employee on the first day of work. Unfortunately, practice shows that this instruction comes down mainly to people in charge writing out documents without conducting training in practice. This is confirmed by the statistics provided by the National Labor Inspectorate in annual reports after inspections for a given year. Such an approach may give rise to very serious legal problems for the entire management of the company and the employer. The solution is for the person in charge to undergo professional training in the methodology of conducting initial training and on-the-job training. The purpose of this training is to learn the methods and techniques of conducting on-the-job training and to develop detailed training programs for a given position. During such training, the person in charge of the employees must acquire basic knowledge of psychology and education. He must be able to verify whether the knowledge given by him is understandable by the new employee. Only then can employees be required to comply with their health and safety obligations. Otherwise, fiction can turn into a nightmare.