As part of January’s Hazard of the Month, Lack of Communication, we’re highlighting three key areas: Communication Skills, Conflict Resolution and Health and Safety Site Induction.
Communication Skills
Communication skills have an important role in the workplace for a number of reasons – not only can they be greatly beneficial to productivity and teamwork, but are also essential to successful health and safety management. To ensure a safe workplace, there needs to be effective communication up, down and across the organisation so that everyone is kept in the loop.
While all organisations need to inform their workers of the risk to their Health and Safety (as identified in their risk assessments) and the preventive and protective measures necessary to control these risks, they should ensure this information is communicated appropriately.
For example, they need to consider the competence of their workers in Health and Safety matters – the information needs to be delivered clearly in a way that everyone can understand.
The size of the workforce is also important. For smaller businesses, it is more feasible to communicate daily with employees directly, delivering toolbox talks or holding meetings about potential hazards.
However, in a larger company it may be more difficult to both gather all employees together at once or reach out to everyone individually, therefore other methods, such as holding a site-based health and safety committees, may be more effective.
Make sure your workforce can communicate effectively with our Communication Skills E-Learning course – this course is suitable for any worker who wishes to improve their verbal and non-verbal communication, and will help to improve both interpersonal and business communication skills. Get 10% off this course with the code ‘comms10’! We also have a few different communication courses that fit different needs – see below courses, and visit our online shop to view our full range of training.
Conflict Resolution
No matter what your position in a company is, conflict resolution skills are an important tool to improving workplace relationships. If left unchecked, workplace conflict can escalate from a minor issue to a large problem, causing unnecessary stress and animosity.
There are four main types of conflict:
- Intrapersonal – an internal conflict someone has with themselves, which might involve conflicting thoughts, emotions and values.
- Interpersonal – between two people.
- Intragroup – between individuals within a team.
- Intergroup – between different teams in an organisation.
Interpersonal, Intragroup, and Intergroup are the more relevant types of conflict in the workplace.
There are also three main causes of workplace conflict, which can overlap and interact:
- Individual sources – such as personal stress, different work styles or unhealthy competition.
- Environmental or external sources – such as poor working conditions or a recession.
- Work-based or organisational sources – such as unrealistic expectations, miscommunication or poor management.
Understanding the type of conflict you’re facing and the potential causes behind it can help you to choose the most effective conflict management style.
To reduce the risk of conflict in your workplace, enrol onto our Conflict Resolution E-Learning course! Suitable for any employee in any type of organisation, this course helps learners to both manage their own emotions as well as understand techniques that can be used to prevent conflict and manage challenging situations. Get 10% off this course with the code ‘comms10’!
Health and Safety Site Induction
All working environments require a Health and Safety Induction by law. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 states every employer should provide a Health and Safety Induction for their employees, that covers:
- The responsibilities of both employers and employees in providing a safe and healthy working environment.
- Accident prevention guidance.
- How to identify common workplace hazards risks.
- How to implement an efficient workplace health and safety policy.
- Best practice for reporting accidents in the workplace.
Site inductions are required in every place of work, from offices to construction sites. Alongside regular employees, they must also be provided to occasional visitors to the site, such as external workers or consultants. They may not need a full induction however, as this will depend on the visitors access and the nature of their visit. For example, escorted visitors require less detail than those allowed to move around the site unaccompanied.
Enrol your new staff onto our Health and Safety Site Induction E-Learning course to help induct them into your organisation! This course explains introduces learners to the Health and Safety procedures in a working environment and is an ideal way induct new employees. Get 10% off this course with the code ‘comms10’!
Communication Skills, Conflict Resolution and Health and Safety Site Induction training work in tangent to ensure you and your employees are able to communicate information (Health and Safety or otherwise) clearly and effectively. Make sure you don’t miss out on our 10% off deal on these essential safety courses, available until the end of January. Simply enter the code ‘comms10’ at checkout to save!
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