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Provide information, training and supervision

4. Supervise your workers

You must provide an adequate and appropriate level of supervision for your workers.

Supervisors need to:

  • know what you expect from them in terms of health and safety
  • understand your health and safety policy[4], where they fit in, and how you want health and safety managed
  • ensure that workers they are responsible for understand risks associated with the work environment and measures to control them
  • ensure the control measures to protect against risk are up to date and are being properly used, maintained and monitored

They may need training in the specific hazards of your processes and how you expect to control the risks[5].

You should also have arrangements in place so supervisors can check the work of contractors[6] is being done as agreed.

Workers who may need more supervision

Some workers may need more supervision than others. These include:

Make sure workers know how to raise concerns and supervisors are familiar with the possible problems due to unfamiliarity, inexperience and communication difficulties.

How supervision can help you monitor your work

Good supervision can help you monitor:

  • the effectiveness of the training people have received
  • whether employees have the necessary capacity and competence[10] to do the job

Link URLs in this page

  1. Overviewhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/training/index.htm
  2. Decide what training and information you needhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/training/decide.htm
  3. Include workers with particular training needshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/training/needs.htm
  4. health and safety policyhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/policy/index.htm
  5. control the riskshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/risk/index.htm
  6. contractorshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg368.htm
  7. young peoplehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/young-workers/index.htm
  8. workers who are new to the job or inexperiencedhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/vulnerable-workers/new-to-the-job.htm
  9. those whose first language is not Englishhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/migrantworkers/employer/help-with-language-issues.htm
  10. competencehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/gettinghelp/index.htm
  11. Previous page Include workers with particular training needs https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/training/needs.htm
  12. View a printable version of the whole guidehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/training/print.htm
  13. Health and safety training: A brief guidehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg345.htm
  14. Health and safety basics for your business https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-Health-Safety/index.htm
  15. Training of health and safety representativeshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/involvement/training.htm
  16. HSE Health & Safety Traininghttps://www.hsl.gov.uk/training.aspx

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Updated: 2024-03-28