What? and Why we should do them?
It’s that time of year again! When we get calls from our customers saying that someone is making an insurance claim against the company. Every year, at around this time, we hear lots of business owners, operators and managers receiving letters from No Win, No Fee lawyers. In most cases, the insurance company will advise our customers to simply pay out, well, of course they will! They then have an opportunity to increase premiums the following year and the only person who loses out is their own customer. At KVF, we provide our customers with the tools and advice necessary to avoid having to give in to the insurance companies and ambulance chasers. If our customers follow our advice, they should be able to provide enough evidence to fight most injury claims.
Where do most company’s slip up?
One word. Training.
When the HSE, insurance company or loss adjuster investigate an incident they want to see 2 things, a health and safety policy, which any business with 5 or more employees (including directors and part time workers) need to have, by law and written risk assessments, these can be hand written but most now are electronic although, they don’t need to be printed.
Most businesses have these but where a lot of companies fail to comply is training.
All employees should receive basic induction training and more specific, job related training. In 2017, KVF released Intuity Training, our in house, e-learning platform. This allows our customers to individually train all employees online on any web-enabled device, it also allows managers to monitor what training has been done and provides evidence of specific training carried out by everyone within their business or individual site.
Well, that’s fine. Problem solved, right?
To a certain degree yes however, recently we have seen loss adjusters and insurance risk managers ask for task specific training. For example, if you have someone working in a parts department, moving oil barrels, this task could be seen as hazardous, as it involves manual handling. Although the individual might have carried out our manual handling training and there is a risk assessment, the expectation from an insurer will be task specific training is carried out.
Toolbox Talks
We have been speaking to our customers about introducing a toolbox talk. These typically last 10 to 15 minutes, may take place once a week, involving small groups of up to 10 people. They should be appropriate for the audience providing reminders about specific issues or certain safety procedures or protocols and should be part of an ongoing training programme.
Toolbox talks should be delivered by workshop controllers, master technicians or department managers.
These simple tips can help you in your toolbox talk delivery:
Practice makes perfect. Yes, it's a cliché - but it's true...
Stay on topic. Try not to get side-tracked by other subjects or topics...
Pace yourself...
Keep it simple...
Present positively...
Engage and involve...
Speak then listen...
Check everyone understands and record everyone involved to keep record of training.
We at KVF really believe that Toolbox Talks are ideal for raising awareness, providing vitally important specific training for potentially hazardous tasks within Motor Vehicle Repair and provide important evidence that employers are providing everything necessary for their teams to carry out work safely, preventing accidents and injuries.
… “That’s great, but we’ve got enough to do already!”
We get that! So, KVF has decided to meet you halfway. We will, starting this month, provide a toolbox talk every month and, for our existing customers, using Canopy Safety, we will add the toolbox talks to the Global Library in the Files section with a toolbox talk register so every one of our customers can access it online.
Look out for our monthly blogs to let you know which subject we are covering each month and if there is anything specifically you want to see included, let us know at info@kvf-consultants.co.uk
Thank you and Stay Safe.
Lee Kennedy