“You don’t need to know the whole Safety alphabet.
Points A, B, C will save you if you follow them”.
Mines Magazine
In the life of every company this day comes – the day of a new employee’s hiring. He has already received a laptop, signed a bunch of personnel documents but you feel that there is something left unsaid between you… This feeling will haunt you until you give your new recruit an introductory occupational health and safety training.
Let’s take a look at what this introductory occupational health and safety training is how to conduct it where to record it and what to do afterwards.
We offer a step-by-step algorithm for conducting an introductory training on labor protection.
Step 1
Determine who needs to conduct an introductory training.
Our answer is short – to everyone who shows up at your company’s doorstep.
To be more precise and in accordance with the law, an introductory training is required:
- all employees who are hired for permanent or temporary work;
- employees of other organizations who are directly involved in the production process or perform work for the company;
- pupils and students who have arrived for internships;
- to visitors in the event of an excursion to the enterprise.
Step 2
Who will conduct that introductory training?
If you ask who should conduct the introductory occupational health and safety training, the legislation says that it should be an occupational health and safety (OHS) specialist or another lucky person who has been appointed by order to do so. More on this in the next step….
And what if the occupational health and safety specialist is located in Kyiv, and a new employee is hired in Lviv, you may ask? Of course, you can use the services of Ukrzaliznytsia and send an OHS specialist to Lviv for coffee every time and give him/her a training session, but you must admit that this is not very practical, especially if you hire 10 people at 10 different locations every day.
Therefore, we propose to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the law and impose this obligation on someone who is actually at the place of employment. This may be someone from among the officials – a branch manager, chief accountant, chief engineer, etc. This person should be trained in a general occupational safety and health course at a training center. A sample of such an order.
Step 3
Where to conduct it?
According to the law, the introductory occupational health and safety training must be conducted in the occupational health and safety office. The law does not disclose what this occupational health and safety room is how it should be equipped, etc. So, if you don’t have such an office you have to improvise.
There are two options here:
Option 1 – We equip such a room with books, posters, icons, relics, etc. Here we rely on our own taste and vision. Or on your own financial capabilities.
Option 2 – We do not equip special places, but conduct the training wherever it is convenient, comfortable, or simply possible to do so. In practice, this option looks like this: either an online meeting is organized where the training is conducted or the training is conducted in any free space at the enterprise (HR office, warehouse manager’s office or in the warehouse itself, etc.)
An induction training conducted in the HR office has the same legal effect as one conducted in a special occupational health and safety office.
Step 3.1
Do we need an instruction manual for the induction training on occupational safety and health?
There is a widespread misconception that an instruction is required to conduct an introductory occupational health and safety training. However, the Model Regulation on the Procedure for Conducting Training and Testing of Knowledge on Occupational Safety and Health clearly states that only the program and duration of the induction training are approved by the employer. From this paragraph, we can conclude that this clause does not refer to the instruction, so the instruction may not be developed.
Step 4
We conduct the training ourselves.
During the training we tell everything that is written in the Program for conducting an introductory training on labor protection taking into account all the peculiarities of the enterprise. As mentioned above, such a program and the duration of the training are approved by the employer. Example.
If someone were to ask us for advice on what to cover in this induction, we would recommend focusing on the following points:
- where the employee will work and what the company does in general;
- tell them about labor protection legislation in general and how your labor protection management system works;
- remember the work–rest schedule, how much to work and how much to rest;
- important – tell about dangerous and harmful factors;
- and what to do in the event of an accident.
Step 5
Document the fact of the training.
To do this we need a Register book for the introductory occupational safety training.
When filling out the log, pay attention to what is indicated in the header of the template and fill it out in accordance with the requirements there. Don’t forget to ask the immodest question of how old the person is and enter this information in box 4. This point is often overlooked when preparing a briefing. And, of course, like all important logs, the logbook for the induction briefing on labor protection must be bound, numbered and stamped.
As a result of the training TWO signatures should appear in the registration book – the person who listened and the person who conducted the training.
A sample induction log can be downloaded here.
An important point that is not often mentioned is that the employee must sign the induction training not only in the logbook, but also in the hiring order.
Article 18 of the main law of Ukraine on labor protection states that employees, including officials, who have not undergone training, briefing and testing of knowledge on labor protection should not be allowed to work.
And here should be the end of this story but:
How to conduct an induction for employees who work remotely?
Pursuant to Article 13 of the Law of Ukraine on Occupational Safety and Health, when concluding an employment agreement on remote work or home work, the employer is obliged to systematically instruct (train) the employee on occupational safety and fire safety within the scope of the employee’s use of equipment and facilities recommended or provided by the employer.
So the requirement to conduct occupational health and safety training also applies to those who work remotely. Within the limits of the tools they use.
That is if we give out equipment (for example, a laptop or even a phone) we provide training.
The good news is that it can be conducted remotely, through a platform convenient for you. In this case, we do not need an office.
A training session is considered to be the exchange of relevant electronic documents between the employer and the employee.
A step-by-step algorithm on how to conduct a health and safety briefing for an employee remotely:
- In the regulation on electronic document management, which you must have if your company has implemented electronic document management, we describe in a few paragraphs the procedure for signing occupational health and safety documentation.
- We draw up an employment contract that sets out the format of remote work.
- Approve the format of the training and document exchange by order.
- We conduct online training.
- We exchange documents in accordance with clauses 1 and 3.
- Important – your electronic documents should be stored in the same way as paper documents. This does not mean that you have to print them, we are talking about cloud solutions, storage on an email server or somewhere on a local computer. The retention period for paper documents is 10 years, so we can assume that digital evidence of your briefing should be kept for the same period of time, and this point should also be described in the regulation on electronic document management in the company. The bad news is that it is not clear what these documents should look like exactly. Therefore, until a specific format is established, we will use the established form of a paper journal, according to (Annex 5) of the Model Regulations.
If you have any additional questions or need practical assistance in conducting briefings and trainings for your staff, please contact us. We will be happy to help you.
Kateryna Grimovych
Occupational health and safety engineer
