Understanding regulation is a necessary and important element of running a company. It is your duty to ensure that all relevant staff understands and adhere to relevant legislation.
Many of the rules cut across all industries while others are industry specific. For example, companies in the health and social care sector must ensure that their employees are qualified to perform their respective roles. Their practice should be up to date, and they must have gone through the statutory and mandatory training courses that might include manual handling and infection control. Anyone working in the food industry will have to complete training on food hygiene and safety.
Unfortunately, some business professionals are often confused about what constitutes statutory and mandatory training. But these training courses are necessary for them to function well in their jobs. These courses aim to equip them with essential knowledge and skills, as well as awareness of the latest legislative updates and regulatory frameworks in their respective fields. Above all, the training will help define each of their professional roles and responsibilities.
In this article, we’ll give an overview of the main areas of statutory and mandatory training courses and all the other topics related to these training courses.
What is Statutory & Mandatory Training?
Statutory training refers to a training course that the organisation must provide to its employees as required by law. Thus, the term “statutory”. It basically obliges organisations to provide training for its employees based on legislation. Some of the key courses covered by statutory training include Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. These training courses aim to teach employees how to maintain a healthy and safe working environment, including working from home.
Meanwhile, mandatory training is a training course that the organisation deemed to be essential to ensure a safer and more efficient operation. The training aims to minimise risks among the employees and ensure that the policies, regulatory framework, and government guidelines are complied with. Since it is mandatory, all employees are required to attend.
Sometimes, the nature of the statutory or mandatory training will depend on the industry sector, which is why these training courses often have broad definitions.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding means protecting an individual’s right to live in a safe environment, free from neglect and abuse. This concept has been introduced in the UK several decades ago to ensure that children, young people, and other vulnerable individuals will be protected from possible danger, harm, neglect, and abuse. It covers a wide range of measures, including making sure that the individual is protected from sexual abuse and malnutrition.
Although safeguarding can apply across a wide range of situations, it is the Health and Social Care sector that is most in tune with these practices since it usually deals with organisations and agencies that look after the welfare of children and vulnerable individuals. It’s also important to note that the safeguarding measures that will apply to kids are different from that of adults. Different individuals have different needs, and unlike kids, adults can make their own judgements. Nevertheless, the broad concept of safeguarding will equally apply to both groups of individuals.
Health and Safety
To ensure the safety of employees, organisations are required to comply with health and safety laws. Failure to comply can result in civil and criminal penalties for the organisation. If someone gets seriously hurt due to an accident at work, the health and safety regulator could charge the employer with a criminal offence.
The Health and Safety at Work Act sets out the framework for managing the health and safety of every workplace in the UK. This act defines the general duties of everyone, from employers, employees, managers, business owners, and those individuals responsible for the maintenance of work premises. Businesses that operate in a higher risk environment, such as chemical manufacturing and construction work, have to follow a different set of health and safety measures.
When it comes to controlling substances and chemicals that are hazardous to health, the COSHH law will apply. The law obliges employers to prevent or reduce the exposure of workers to hazardous substances by implementing safety measures. These include risk assessment, providing control measures to minimise the danger to health, and planning for emergencies.
The Regulatory Reform on Fire Safety Order 2005 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to conduct a fire risk assessment in the workplace. It also requires employers to provide and maintain the necessary fire precautions to ensure the safety of everyone in the workplace. Employers are also required to provide relevant information, evidence of completed training ergo health and safety certificate courses, which can be done online, and instructions about all the businesses fire precautions.
Data Protection
Designed to streamline and improve data protection all over Europe, the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) impose stricter standards for businesses that collect and process data. Businesses that fail to comply will be slapped with heavy financial penalties. The GDPR was built from the groundwork of the 1998 Data Protection Act but added new restrictions that are more relevant to today’s data-driven world.
The Data Protection Act and the GDPR differ in so many ways. First of all, the Data Protection Act only applies to businesses based in the UK, while the GDPR applies to any organization that stores and processes data of EU customers.
Another significant difference has something to do with marketing communication. With the Data Protection Act, if you will directly market to prospective customers and a negative opt-in is all that’s needed, the customer can tick a box stating that they don’t want to receive further communications. The customers must also be made aware that their data will be utilized for marketing campaigns, and they should be given an option to opt-out.
With GDPR, before companies can send out marketing communications to prospective customers, they must first secure a positive opt-in from these customers. If they will request to collect data, the request should be written in a simple language and must clearly explain how the data will be used. In addition, companies must ensure data is secure from cyber-attacks.
Equality and Diversity
In order to protect the rights of individuals in society, the UK government has implemented The Equality Act 2010. This is a set of laws to ensure advance equal opportunities for everyone. It brings together the various anti-discrimination laws that were passed since 1970 and covers sex, race, sexual orientation, equal pay, and more.
The aim of The Equality Act 2010 is to make all the laws and provisions on equality easier to understand and follow. It also aims to strengthen some of the previous legislation to ensure effective implementation. This law now serves as the UK’s main legal framework in dealing with discrimination.
Those are the main areas of mandatory and statutory training for businesses today. Make sure that your team is trained and qualified in the specifics for your industry and that each staff member has a training record and certification to prove their competence in the job.