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How Online Training Can Help Businesses Prepare for Brexit Uncertainty

By Keir McDonald / July 2016

TYPE: OPINION
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In the wake of the results of UK's "Brexit" referendum on the 23rd of June, in which the British public voted to leave the EU, professionals across every sector in the U.K. are assessing what a potential could mean for their legal requirements and regulations. But what about requirements that apply to all sectors, like health and safety? Examining these universal legal requirements may not be the most urgent regulations for your team to address, but it's vital—both legally and operationally—to know exactly where key legislation applies to your business or where your organization will stand in the event that the UK does leave the EU.

So, in such uncertain times, what resources should businesses and organizations turn to educate ourselves? One of the best resources available to employers and employees is that of online training.

If you're a larger business or organization, when you're faced with an uncertain legal situation, you can employ your legal team and set them to task in order to find out exactly which regulations might shift for yourselves. If you're a smaller company or business, you might not have such resources available to you. This is where online training comes in.

Online training plays a very significant role in educating employers and employees about not only the importance of health and safety in the workplaces, but the current structure of UK health and safety law. For example, the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) is the primary legislation covering occupational health and safety in the UK. It is enforced by the Health and Safety Executive, along with local authorities. In the event of an exit from the EU, this legislation wouldn't be dissolved as it's part UK law, and any regulations that fall under the Health and Safety at Work Act will remain. As part of a good online training course in health and safety, you should cover the legal requirements and parameters of health and safety law in the UK, and how it's structured. This aspect of training would allow you to not only expand your understanding of the how the law works in a specific sector, but also how this impacts your business or organization's work.

Investing in a training course that gives your employees both additional skills and understanding about their sector is always an excellent idea. By opting to have your employees undergo a training course in health and safety, you will not only boost your understanding of the legal system with regards to health and safety requirements, but you'll also gain access to experts in the field, who will be able to answer some of your more specific questions about requirements and regulations, and how they might change in the coming months thanks to Brexit.

Another of the major advantages of online training is the flexibility it offers in terms of scheduling. Online training allows you and your colleagues to self-pace your learning without having to relocate or take time away from busy work schedules to do full-scale traditional training. What this means from an employers' point of view is that, in the meantime, work can proceed as normal.

No matter what the political climate of the moment is, it's very important to invest in excellent health and safety training. Ensuring your staff has the skills and knowledge they need to be able to keep themselves safe and healthy in their environment isn't just an investment in their well-being—it's an investment in your business, too. Studies have regularly shown employees who are happy and healthy are on average 12 percent more productive than their colleagues who don't self-identify as happy at work. So, health and safety training could have more positive, far-reaching results than you initially expected!

About the Author

Keir McDonald MBE started EduCare 30 years ago with just a handful of talented people. At the time, he had little idea that his company's learning programmes would end up teaching more than three million people about duty of care issues, including health and safety. In acknowledgement of his work and achievement in safeguarding children, McDonald was honored with an MBE for Services to Children in 2012.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

2016 Copyright held by the Owner/Author. 1535-394X/16/07-2974028



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