What is Compliance Training?
Compliance training is vital for any business, no matter what size they are. There are many rules and regulations that every company must comply with, and compliance training covers everything that one business might need to know to comply with legislation and avoid hefty fines or danger to life.
Compliance will include the businesses legal obligations, their internal policies and can even include compliance with ISO standards.
As you can imagine, compliance training may differ depending on what type of business you work in. Some industries will require more compliance than others – the food, building or pharmaceutical industries are examples of these. But there are also some universal laws that most businesses might need to comply with such as basic first aid and health and safety, fire safety, GDPR and COSHH.
What Issues are Covered by Compliance Training?
To set up an appropriate compliance training portfolio, you’ll need to list all of the regulations that you must comply with to run your business and then seek out, or create the necessary training.
You’ll find some examples of what types of training you might incorporate into your compliance training below.
Food Hygiene & Safety
Food hygiene and safety is vital for all catering businesses and all other types of businesses that may provide food — for example, a care home, a school or a shop.
If you handle or serve food to a client, customer, patient or visitor, you need to know about how to handle food safely.
Courses such as the Food Hygiene and Safety course by Online Training Academy cover all of the necessary requirements. Such as how to prevent cross-contamination, what you need to do to keep the premises and food hygienic. It also includes how to keep food safe at all times, in all situations.
Food hygiene and safety is vital because harmful bacteria can spread in all kinds of food but remain invisible to the eye or nose – making potentially life-threatening bacteria undetectable.
A variety of cautionary measures must be taken to prevent the risk of cross-contamination or rise of harmful bacteria. Any time these measures are breached – the food that has been exposed is unsafe to eat. Even if it may not have developed harmful bacterias, because you cannot tell the risk is too high.
Health & Safety
Every business in operation will have some kind of health and safety regulations to follow while they are in service no matter how few employees they have.
The Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) requires you to provide all necessary instruction, training, supervision and sufficient information to ensure that the health and safety of your employees are protected.
Under the Health and Safety at work act 1974, the business owner, and all managers, supervisors and staff should attend health and safety training. You can easily find appropriate and compliant health and safety training online.
There can be high fines and severe injury if you do not follow health and safety precautions, which is why this should be an essential factor in your compliance training.
Safeguarding
If your business, establishment or public service comes into contact with children or vulnerable adults, you’ll need to comply with the Children’s Act (2004) and work to safeguard all children and vulnerable adults who walk through your door.
Safeguarding includes measures to protect the safety, health, wellbeing and human rights of individuals who cannot defend themselves. Under the Children’s Act, all people should be able to live free from abuse, harm and neglect and in the case of children and vulnerable adults the safeguarding framework enforced by the Children’s Act accomplishes this.
To comply with the Children’s Act the business owner and all staff must take safeguarding training so that they can understand what signs to look out for and what measures to take if they notice a child or vulnerable adult ‘in need’. So if your business comes into contact with children, then you’ll need to add safeguarding training to your compliance training portfolio.
The safeguarding framework is vital because it protects those who cannot defend themselves from people who seek to harm them. In some cases children and vulnerable adults who are exposed to abuse and neglect have died or suffered extreme abuse at the hands of their abusers and workers who comes into contact with children can be the only way that they can find safety.
First Aid
At any time, people can be taken ill or suffer injuries. And regardless of whether the injury occurred at work or not, you have an obligation under the Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations (1981) to ensure that anybody on your premises requiring first aid can receive it. You must provide adequate equipment, personnel and facilities to administer first aid at any time during your business operations.
You should train at least one person if you have a company with between 5 and 50 workers and then add additional first aiders who have received health and safety training for every 50 workers after that. Also, you’ll need to ensure that you have all the necessary medical supplies and arrangements to comply with the First Aid Regulations. Making First Aid Training a critical aspect of Compliance Training.
HACCP
HACCP is a regulation enforced under the Food Safety Act 1990. If you have a catering business, you must understand the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point principles (HACCP).
This regulation ensures that the food you serve is safe from chemical, biological and physical food safety hazards. An essential aspect of Compliance training for any catering business!
HACCP training helps you to comply by showing you the hazards that you must avoid, reduce or remove and how to identify the critical control points, which are the triggers that should cause you to prevent hazards. This training helps you set appropriate limits, monitor them and troubleshoot problems, all of which are vital for helping you to comply with the Food Safety Act.
This aspect of compliance is so vital that enforcement officers are employed to check that all catering businesses are following the HACCP principles properly.
Fire Safety
Fire poses a risk to every business and if not contained, can become out of control fast. Workers who do not know what to do in the case of fire will put themselves in danger without realising it. Which is why under the Fire Safety Order 2005, all businesses should create appropriate fires safety drills for their employees and should train all responsible persons on fire safety legislation and compliance.
The good news is that most fires are preventable and death or significant harm because of fire is also avoidable too. Fire Safety Training is necessary to remain compliant and to educate all staff on what they should do in the case of fire.
Risk assessments, appropriate fire drills, the use of alarms and other factors are necessary to reduce the risk of fire and the risk of danger to life due to fire. In many cases, we all think it won’t happen to us, but the danger is if it does happen and there’s no plan in place chaos could ensue, which is what can cost lives.
Asbestos Awareness
The Control of Asbestos Regulations (2012) exists to protect workers and the public from the fatalities that come with exposure to asbestos. It is mandatory legislation for anybody who may come across asbestos through their work such as contract workers, cable installers, and people involved with asbestos removal.
Asbestos training ensures that all workers and employers understand what precautions must be in place to protect the worker from any asbestos and also what to do if they discover asbestos during their work.
Asbestos once was used in building works before the year 2000 and can be found in factories, houses, and all other building types. It is now banned because it is a deadly substance and currently causes approximately 5000 deaths per year. Hence why asbestos training should be part of your compliance training for any worker who may find themselves exposed to the substance.
COSHH
You must abide by COSHH legislation if you work with any hazardous substance, which most businesses do. COSHH is the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health 2002 legislation that requires employers to control these substances to prevent or reduce exposure and protect the health of employees.
It’s complex legislation because many factors influence COSHH and so training is necessary and an essential compliance requirement.
COSHH training teaches you how to be compliant and keep yourself and everybody in the workplace safe. It’s a necessary and important part of compliance training because it shows you what the health hazards are. It also teaches you how to prevent harm to health and how to create and maintain all control measures. You’ll also need to know how to manage an emergency should it arise.
Most businesses use hazardous substances, and some even create these substances. The consequences of not protecting yourself and your employees are high. They can lead to terminal illness, death, and long term health issues which is why there is stringent legislation in place and legal consequences if you do not comply.
GDPR
Every business in Europe now needs to abide by the General Data Protection Regulations (2018), also known as GDPR. It modernises laws that protect the personal information of individuals online or otherwise. If you collect a customer or clients personal date, you’ll need to comply with this act.
There are many aspects of the GDPR legislation, it can be complicated to figure out what you need to do to comply, which is why GDPR training should be an important addition to compliance training.
With this particular legislation, the tricky part is to avoid accidental non-compliance. Many of the ways we store data may seem to be usual and reasonable, but they breach compliance with GDPR. Taking GDPR training will help you understand exactly what your business needs to do and also what your employees need to do at all levels within the company to comply with GDPR.
GDPR is relevant legislation to comply with because, without it, you could unwittingly compromise the safety and finances of your customers, which could ruin them, your reputation and cost you a significant fine. Small offences can lead to penalties of up to 10 million or 2% of a businesses turnover (whichever is greater) and for serious offences you can expect to double those fines. We recommend you add GDPR training to your compliance training pronto. Those fines are nothing to be sniffed at!
Why compliance training is so important
Compliance training brings all of the necessary legislation together under one branch – compliance. Making it easier to delegate, update and comply across the business, no matter the size.
Larger businesses usually have a compliance manager who is responsible for ensuring that everybody in the business is up to date with and adhere to all compliance matters. Compliance, in turn, ensures that the organisation operates efficiently, safely and legally.
What are the Benefits of Compliance Training?
A good compliance training programme helps businesses to manage all aspects of compliance without missing something vital. It ensures proper management in the organisation, often brings about safe and money-saving operations and minimises risk.
It also creates a better environment for your employees which will help with staff morale, retention and your company’s reputation.
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