RPS Bedford staff achieve Occupational Health and Safety Certificate
In an initiative to enhance safety awareness, ten RPS office and laboratory staff in Bedford recently passed and obtained the Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) Certificate for Managing Safely.
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Managing Safely is a leading health and safety course by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), the world’s Chartered body for safety and health professionals. The organisation has led safety and health awareness training courses and certifications in around 130 countries for over 25 years.
The training was organized and delivered by Alison Treacher, the Technical Director for Health & Safety at RPS. Alison is a verified instructor for IOSH and has been leading health and safety training for the last ten years. ”If you've done the course, it's something that you definitely want to shout about because it is an internationally approved qualification and it's actually quite tough. This is a certificate which has a strong kudos on your CV.”
The four-day intensive course united administration staff and managers with chemists and senior analysts to dissect and discuss a multitude of guidelines to ensure well-being in the workplace.
Alison utilised her experience to ensure the course was well-rounded and interesting. ”It was really important that we cater the course to what they wanted and how they wanted to learn. I run loads of training and sometimes it's like reading the news, isn't it? There’s all this heavy stuff, but you want to try and keep people engaged. It's really important to go in with an open mind.”
Phil Evans, Office Manager, found the course formative and deeply educational. “It was very varied, very interesting. it was delivered in an engaging way with loads of interaction and varied exercises resulting in all colleagues achieving the required pass mark”
The team underwent a series of workbooks, demonstrations, exercises, and questionnaires in their training, to learn and evaluate the correct procedures and principles for health and safety. The team also encountered live examples by visiting various office spaces and buildings to demonstrate what they’ve learned and assess possible risks and hazards. The course concluded with an assessment of all the accumulated learnings.
Anne Whittam, Residues Manager, scored 100% on this final test “I found the IOSH Managing Safely course to be a good balance of learning and activity-based application of the subject being studied.”
”I particularly enjoyed the team-based tasks as this helped to apply the learning to real situations. We were able to discuss the details within our teams which helped to get different viewpoints on the situations being assessed. Alison was also very knowledgeable and able to get the information across in an entertaining and positive way.”
The course utilised the opportunity for all RPS staff in Bedford to bond, share their experiences, and develop precise knowledge on how to support each other.
Phil emphasised how these activities bring them together. ”It was a fantastic example of how different parts of the RPS Family can help one another in sharing knowledge, expertise and learnings – this fantastic training course really demonstrated to us all how we can solve problems together.”
The Bedford staff all plan to undergo further training courses including one for manual handling in the upcoming year.
”What we're looking to do is to channel a message through all levels of the business, particularly managers and supervisors - If they see something and it doesn't look right, that normally means it's not right.” concludes Alison.
”We want to get health and safety in everyone's heads, not just as something additional to their job. It has to be linked to what they do every single day, and that's the only way it will truly work.”
If you wish to know more about our Bedford teams, please click here - Laboratories | RPS