Risk assessment update for small and medium sized enterprises
Safe and Healthy Working (SHW), an occupational health and safety service for all employees and employers in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Scotland and part of NHS Health Scotland, is using expertise from TATA Interactive Systems (TIS), to make its website more 'interactive' and so motivate more people to learn and apply the vital office-based health and safety advice it contains.
TIS, a global leader in e-learning, has built five virtual environments - reception; a manager's office; general office; kitchen, and copying/filing room - for SHW's 'Office Hazards' programme, each one of which contains potential health and safety hazards for users to identify.
Having identified the hazards, users are given further information about specific office-related risks. They are then able to complete risk assessments - which are required by law - and learn more about risk avoidance.
"The programme - which is available online or via CD-ROM - is designed to help users identify the various hazards that can be found in offices," explained SHW's Nuala Healy. "It also provides suggestions on how to deal with these hazards in both practical and legal terms, as well as offering further information on all the topics covered.
"By their very nature, SMEs can concentrate so much on doing their work that they have few 'spare resources' left to devote to their statutory obligations of ensuring a safe and healthy workplace. This programme - made more interactive and engaging by TIS - should encourage and motivate employers and employees to take up its challenges and, in the process, become more aware of the law's requirements as well as how to operate a safe and healthy working environment," she said.
Ann Halliday, of SHW, commented: "Originally, the 'Office Hazards' programme comprised basic, scrollable text which, although accurate, provided few incentives and challenges to encourage users to make full use of the wealth of information and advice it contains. With TIS's expertise we have transformed the programme into something that is also visually attractive.
"We hope that it will play an important part in helping to keep Scotland's offices a safe and healthy working environment," she added.
Commenting on the completion of TIS's first major project in Scotland, Sambit Mohapatra, the head of TIS in the UK and Europe, said: "We are delighted to have been able to help SHW to raise understanding of the key issues of safety and health at work.
"In order to be effective, any piece of e-learning must arouse the users' interest, engage their attention and motivate them to learn. TIS's learning materials developers are dedicated to achieving this - and over 600 completed projects are testament to their ability to achieve this consistently."