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How to you ensure all employees have read and understood RA's?

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95HSE92
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How to you ensure all employees have read and understood RA's?

Post by 95HSE92 »

How to you ensure all employees have read and understood RA's?

Do you have them printed in a big folder, online? Training? Sign offs?

And in particular if you work for a multisite international company I'd love to know how you do this.
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Re: How to you ensure all employees have read and understood RA's?

Post by Penfold »

In the past Ive always gone down the root of their supervisors go through them in a TBT (or similar), taking the main points and controls and discussing everything. They then sign that they attended the TBT as per all the other sessions. They also get them either online if they have the technology to get access to the app or have a hard copy in their vans. They get checked in future onsite and discuss the RA and its main contents and make sure they are doing that in real world.

The key is discussion so that they all understand the problems and what to do to keep safe
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Re: How to you ensure all employees have read and understood RA's?

Post by Andyblue »

Nice post by Penfold,and agree that its important that the people doing the work understand what's required token them safe rather than signing of that they have read an RA, albeit they may not understand it. Lets be honest, the way some (many RAs) are written is they not user friendly rather aimed at placating the HSE should something go wrong. Converting a RA to a TBT seems a way more sensible and opertationaly sensible route. Most employees with sign anything if asked to do so, and with peer pressure, will say they understand it regardless of it being truer not.
This makes me think of a scenario where employees are asked to sign that they had the correct PPE. They signed to say YES.However, when asked what PPE they required, the responses were quite varied and mostly incorrect.
Signing to say they understand is quite different to understanding what they have signed.
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Re: How to you ensure all employees have read and understood RA's?

Post by stephen1974 »

2 Methods I've used in the past, 1 I put together myself and another stolen from LA Fitness.

1. Training is written in such a way that it incorporates the Risk Assessment. The employee has a copy during training and it is reffered to constantly. My operating procedures are always step by step based so its easy to do this. Example, putting away an olympic trampoline, one of the stages will be to fold it up. These come with a number of risks so as I get to this stage, I say, this comes with a number of risks, if you look at your risk assessment blah blah blah... It does make training more time consuming, but it is less boring than just reading a risk assessment and it also makes it more relevant to the task and less likely to be forgotton about.

2. Questions and answer exam. Not a multiple choice tick box excersise but a fill in the missing word or sentance exam. Its done 'open book' so you give the employee the assessments to read. When they say they have read it all, give them your best Kent Brockman face, and hand them the exam. Unless they have a photo graphic memory and did actually read it all they will have to go back through the entire folder looking for the answers.

You can also put them both together. Do the read, question and answer method on induction and training one when they are being trained on that specific task. The 2nd one is useful for jobs where you might not do much task specific training - ie general office safety, or where you have employed someone who is already trained and experienced and you are not going to teach them to suck eggs by going through it all step by step. Give them the work procedure, relevant RA's and do the exam as a record of training in your systems.


Also, I prefer to have them printed off and in a folder. 101 times out of 100 i've found that when a company says they have their stuff online, none of the employees will know about it or have permission to access it, and when i ask to see it, the relevant person with the log in details isn't there that day... Put it in a folder, let all employees know where it is - a permanent sign on the employee health and safety notice board will do this just fine, and if an inspector ever wants to see them, no issues with access.
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