We’ve just launched a new course – Health and Safety for Detailing Businesses – and those who like to just arrive at a customer’s house and wash cars may be wondering; It’s £75 and a day out of work – How could a detailing safety course possibly help me and my business…?
Health and safety, when mentioned, is generally followed by a slight eye roll, and grudging recall of conker games being banned in school playgrounds because of the potential risk. But whilst there are always 10 stories of “health and safety gone mad” there are hundreds of untold stories of “that rule stopped me getting a concussed/blinded/digit avulsion (don’t Google that one)”…
What this course won’t do is make you directly better at your job – that is, the day to day manual labour of washing polishing and perfecting. That’s reserved for our other courses, such as advanced machine polishing. It will, however, make you better at your business.
How help me on business and compliancy? How will it protect my professional investment?
Three scenarios below:
Business clients.
You are contacted by a large business park with the opportunity to complete on-site valeting work for the occupiers. It’s big enough that you can take on an extra employee and another van, and grow your business. The perfect opportunity. But large companies have health and safety officers who need to be satisfied you can carry out work in a safe manner which will keep them complient and insured against loss or damage.
The issue: the business park will need, as part of their due dilligence, a risk assessment, an environmental assessment and policy risk minimums in order to assess your suitability. How do you compile it?
Private clients
You are working on a clients driveway with your vehicle parked on the roadside. A member of the public trips on a hose line running to the property from your van. What steps should you have taken to avoid this incident and protect your company from liability?
The issue: How do you show your insurance company that you have completed due dilligence and put in place steps to have prevented an avoidable accident so they do not repudiate the liability claim and leave you with a large lawsuit to settle? What steps should you have taken?
Personal safety
All the information you need to make a correct decison on chemical usage is detailed on an product’s SDS document you carry. But it’s not laid out in an easily navigable manner if you don’t know what to look for. What are the hazards you need to wear PPE for? What symptoms could you develop if you’re using a chemical incorrectly? What reactions are you likely to get from a chemical when sprayed on different materials. SDS sheets tell you this and we teach you how to read them quickly and easily.
The issue: You have just got home and notice your hands are dry and cracked, you have been cleaning interiors all day and have another day of it tomorrow – what could be causing it and what PPE should you have been wearing to prevent recurrence?
These are just three issues you will undoubtedly come across at some point, and there are hundreds more which can be anticipated, and either managed or prevented, with the correct knowledge and information.
Health and Safety laws are written in blood – That is, in order for the rule to have come into effect, something had to have gone wrong for someone else. The rules are there to prevent you becoming another inspiration point in a future HSE manual, so learning and following them seems a smart move for any business.
