Over 200 people are killed each year in accidents at work and over one million people are injured. Over two million suffer illnesses caused by, or made worse by, their work. Preventing accidents and ill health caused by work is a key priority for everyone at work. As the owner or manager of a business you know that competent employees are valuable. Providing health and safety information and training helps you to:

• Ensure your employees are not injured or made ill by the work they do
• Develop a positive health and safety culture, where safe and healthy working becomes second nature to everyone
• Find out how you could manage health and safety better
• Most importantly, meet your legal duty to protect the health and safety of your employees.

The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 requires employers to provide information, instruction, training and supervision as necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of their employees. This is expanded by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, which identify situations where health and safety training is particularly important, e.g. when people start work, on exposure to new or increased risks and where existing skills may have become rusty or need updating. The Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006 states that food handlers must receive appropriate supervision, and be instructed and/or trained in food hygiene, to enable them to handle food safely. All training must be recorded.

The following is a guide for who must receive training and when it should be carried out:

1.  Manual handling: All staff - on induction and then every 6 months
2. COSHH: Staff exposed/handling chemicals - on induction, when new chemicals are purchased or when work procedures change

3. Risk assessment: All staff - on induction, when new risk assessments are developed and whenever there are changes to the existing risk assessments
4. Fire (inc evacuation drills): All staff - on induction, then every 6 months
5. Essentials of food hygiene: All food handlers - on induction
6. Foundation Food hygiene: Food handlers preparing open high risk food. Before they start the job, then every 3 years

This information relates to basic health and safety and food hygiene training requirements. Please be aware that staff may require specific training for specialist work activities they undertake.

Once completed, training must be evaluated to ensure that staff have understood what they have been taught. This can be achieved through supervision, observation and asking questions as that is the only way to assess the level of understanding.

For further information visit the barbox Business Resources package, which provides further staff training guidance for all of these areas. Downloadable records to monitor training levels are also available as well as a basic food hygiene and health and safety exam, that your employees can take online, to test them on the training provided.