The use of computer based training (CBT) offers several advantages in providing training particularly in organisations where:
· a large numbers of staff need to be trained,
· the training is very specialised,
· those needing to be trained are spread over a wide geographical area.

However additional care is needed in selecting and using such training when the subject matter is related to health and safety. When issues of statutory duty are involved, as they are in health and safety training, issues of competence, diligence and liability means that he purchaser need to be sure that the CBT is being provided by those who can be considered competent to do so and that the product can be used effectively in practice. Care needs also be taken to be sure that the contents of the CBT supports the detailed health and safety policies and procedures that may be specific to the organisation.

Health and Safety Policy issues

Health and safety polices in particular need to be borne in mind when buying and implementing certain forms of CBT because of the status and importance of training and competence within the statutory duty and compliance framework.

In most organisations health and safety policy and procedures will set out key compliance related training targets and these will embody expectations that assume more traditional and easily monitored training methods. Most people will expect to receive health and training in a face to face or mentoring situation and to have their competence assessed by suitably qualified person and the health and safety management systems may well assume the validity of training on that basis. The audit trail of training and competence must not be compromised by the introduction of other methods and the expectations of competence must still be capable being demonstrated and justified. Therefore integrating health and safety related CBT successfully requires that any training objectives considered to be essential/ relevant, such as completing core modules successfully, are not frustrated by the more flexible and less formal aspects of CBT use.

Though many health and safety policies are phrased in a sufficiently general way to be unaffected by the introduction of any specific training technique, including CBT, they do set out the basic health and safety commitments and expectations that all training must prepare staff to meet. This has consequences for both the content and coverage of the CBT and the way it is made available to staff.

Most well written health and safety policies will set out commitments to:-

All good health and safety policies will commit the organisation to developing and maintaining appropriate competencies, this in turn implies expectations about the level of skill that is captured within CBT, suitability of training opportunities provided by it and the level of access to such training provided for all relevant categories of staff.

Any CBT that is implemented must provide for at least the same range and level of competencies as previous training techniques. This cannot simply be assumed and the level of skill transfer needs to be audited to ensure that the change of technique has not resulted in either lower competence in general or a loss of competence in particular groups of staff.

The expected level of competencies may also be changed by the introduction of CBT either by altering the coverage or detail of the training materials and information that staff sees to or by reducing access to training. This is most likely to occur where the organisation has little previous experience of CBT.

Ensuring that the supporting technology and mentoring is available can be a significant undertaking particularly for small organisations and those where the staff involved is working away from central offices. However all target staff must have access to the necessary technology, with sufficient ease and for sufficient periods of time for them to successfully achieve the required level of skills, if CBT is meet statutory requirements for training.

The time period to complete CBT based training may well be longer than expected if staff are unaccustomed to this type of training, and where their educational background has not prepared them for self paced and managed learning. In this situation management support is vital.

As appropriate health and safety training is a key part of risk management the introduction of CBT can raise new concerns and, in some cases, additional constraints for management. Management need to accept the changes that come with CBT, including maintaining access to the technology, to ensure that commitments required by the health and safety policy is maintained. This may be a particular issue in companies where access to computer technology is less easily achieved for some staff.

Health and Safety Procedures

Health and safety procedures are central to compliance and are generally written to ensure three key duties: -

1. Safe system of work
This covers provision of and access to equipment, scheduling of work, environmental safety and staff and management competence.

2. Risk management
This covers the maintenance of the safe system of work over time including completing formal risk assessments where required.

3. Structure of responsibilities
This addresses who is responsible for providing and maintaining the safe system, the conduct of staff and the maintenance of necessary safety disciplines.

Each of these requires effective skills development in key groups of staff. Developing these skills will generally require adequate provision of training and so may be affected by any move to CBT. The unfamiliar format and informal structure of much CBT may make this a particulate issue amongst certain groups of staff, for example those with little workplace exposure to computer technology.

When integrating CBT into training strategies a review of health and safety procedures may be necessary to answer the following questions:-

1. Who will purchase it?

Procedures may need to be extended to make clear who will have the task of identifying suitable CBT packages and make the final decision of which one will be used where there are several options. This is more of an issue where training will be PC based rather than intranet based. Collaboration between health and safety professionals and IT professionals is likely to be necessary when buying CBT as neither group will have all the skills necessary to decide on which sort of application should be bought and how it will be supported.

2. Who quality controls it and how will it be audited and monitored?

As with conventional training CBT needs to be assessed for suitability and effectiveness before it is deployed and its performance audited on a regular basis.

With traditional training techniques providers can be vetted for domain knowledge and can work on an ongoing basis with health and safety professionals or HR to ensure that the required degree of competency is achieved by all delegates and that those who fail or cause concern are followed up. This is much more difficult for CBT in general and particularly for CBT material that is PC based and/or under the control of local management. In these cases additional monitoring measures may be necessary to ensure that effective transfer of knowledge is taking place.Health and safety procedures may need to be amended in advance to:-

3. How will CBT be supported by other forms of training or procedures?

In some situations CBT will need to be supported by other training or procedures if it is to be successfully and to make sure that the overall risk management process continues to work effectively. This is certainly the case where the CBT is targeted at delivering or supporting risk assessment training, particularly for risks like Display Screen Equipment where self-assessment procedures are often used.

Procedures may need to be extended to ensure that other measures are triggered where there is any reason at all to assume that the CBT has failed for any individual, group or situation. It may also be necessary to amend and/or develop procedures to ensure that local managers do not simply respond to complaints, or negative risk assessments, by assuming that training has been ineffective and simply repeating it without further investigation or action. These support measures may require additional face to face training or skills evaluation.

In situations where very practical or manual skills are required CBT techniques may not be sufficient for developing or evaluating practical skills; in these cases, for example with manual handling, additional hands on training or supervision may be needed. Procedures may need to be amended in these cases to ensure that staff are not considered to be fully trained until both types of training have been successfully completed.

4. Can you provide equality of access time and availability of equipment?

Procedures may also need to be amended to ensure that all target staff get enough access to the CBT and the supporting technology and that they are allowed the time necessary to complete the training. In many cases this time will need to be factored into personal objectives and deliverable if the completion of CBT is not to increase working hours unacceptably or become an additional source of stress or This may need to be stated explicitly as an organisational and management responsibility in procedures.

The need for a special policy

Where it is intended to make large scale use of CBT, and where there are significant health and safety or special skills issues, a separate training policy may be needed targeted at remote training. For most organisations this will not be the case, but changes to existing training policies may still be needed. Considerable thought will need to be to be given about how the use of CBT will affect the commitments made to competency and risk management, how this will affect the diligence and risk management audit processes and how training will be kept relevant and up to date.

Conclusion

Extending CBT into any areas where risk and compliance are issues raises issues not generally applicable in more traditional training schemes. The introduction of CBT into areas where health and safety may be at risk will require changes in how individual training objectives are tailored and audited, and these changes may well have implications for training budgets. Particular care needs to be taken with :
· evaluating the competences captured in the CBT;
· matching packages to both the need and the target audience;
· auditing skills transfer and the resulting competences.

However introducing CBT can provide a useful opportunity to review health and safety training strategies over all, and to review how well all the training strategies used are delivering against the expectations set out in health and safety policies and procedures.