Worldwide health & safety from System Concepts

DFID staff overseas work in some of the poorest, most dangerous and least regulated countries in the world, but the organisation aims to ensure that as far as possible they benefit from the same health and safety conditions as in the UK.

To help achieve this they asked Christine Critchley, senior consultant at System Concepts, to audit their premises and develop and deliver training courses for staff from several offices in Africa and Asia, including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, India and Thailand.

Christine is well known as a lively and entertaining presenter of health and safety information.  She won the British Institute of Facilities Management Training Programme Presenter of the Year in 2002 and 2003 and received a lifetime achievement award from them in 2005, for consistently receiving the highest feedback ratings from participants on their public training course programme.

As preparation for the training, Christine had to research local laws and specific risks in each region, everything from poisonous snakes to the control of pests such as rats and mosquitoes which can spread disease.

In country, she audited the offices and the housing provided for DFID staff.  Christine was able to advise on many ways to significantly reduce risk and improve working practises at little or no extra cost.  She commented “Storage and archiving was often one of the areas we were able to improve quickly.  Moving from rooms full of boxes piled to the ceiling to a properly organised shelving system, not only reduced the risk of injury, but also made the retrieval of information much more efficient.”

She then presented an intensive two day health and safety training course which was customised for each region, ensuring that the course material was immediately relevant to staff and their environment, and was easy for them to interpret and implement.

The course was designed to help staff to evaluate and resolve potential health and safety risks and introduce preventative measures.  The first day looked at responsibilities and liabilities under health and safety law and how to manage risk and resources to ensure both compliance and a positive culture within the organisation.  Delegates were shown how to review Departmental systems and introduce practical controls to improve health and safety.

Day two gave practical advice on how to carry out the health and safety risk assessments required by the Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999 and covered all aspects of risk assessment and risk control.

Selected staff also received a third day of training which gave them the skills to conduct Display Screen Assessments, making sure that office based staff are safe, comfortable and productive at their desks.

DFID management was very pleased with the positive impact of the training in raising the awareness and standards of health & safety overseas.

Feedback from course delegates showed that the health and safety messages had been clearly communicated and received, one delegate commenting “The instructor was up to speed, concise and clear.  The content was quite enlightening and I think a lot of changes in the office are going to be made.”  Another said “The course was very valuable to me as it will help me to improve my performance.  My office is going to benefit a great deal as health and safety for office and staff is going to improve greatly.”