Health & Safety Induction Failures Cause Concern

Many businesses taking chances with their Training: Health Safety Courses provision is inadequate

Research conducted by 3Gem* on behalf of Health & Safety Consultants Citation revealed some worrying statistics about the state of Health & Safety Training in the workplace. Our Health Safety Courses delivered through eLearning could help…

  • 10% of employees don’t feel safe at work
  • Potentially more than 4 million employees don’t know where their fire assembly point is located
  • Employees aged between 18 and 24 were least likely to know where to congregate
  • Those aged 55+ are the most likely to know what to do

Exposed to fines

  • Three in 10 employees say they’ve never seen their workplace’s written Health & Safety policy

This is a legal requirement for businesses with five or more employees and puts the business owner in line for potentially hefty fines.

  • 40% of employees admitted they’ve never laid eyes on their Health & Safety handbook – an important part of ensuring businesses’ safety standards.

Automate your Health & Safety Training to ensure nobody misses out

If your Health and Safety Induction and Fire Safety Training is still delivered in periodic classroom sessions, then it’s easy for new starters to fall through the cracks. Miss a session by a month through joining at the wrong time and then a further session through illness or work commitments and suddenly that person may go 6-months or more without the necessary training.

WorkWize from VinciWorks is a system designed to automate the delivery of eLearning.  Combine this system with our Health and Safety Pack containing 30 eLearning Courses and we can help you create a complete closed-loop compliance system.

*The research questioned a nationally representative sample of 2,000 working adults aged 18 and over between 11th and 14th July 2017: Read more about the research here.
Looking for in-depth and engaging health and safety training? Explore our comprehensive eLearning library and try any of our courses for free. 

Online Sexual Harassment: HR and the use of Technology at Work

Employer Responsibility for Online Sexual Harassment

The recent Financial Times investigation into the men-only Presidents Club dinner has become the latest in a string of sexual harassment scandals. Another FT investigation found that technology is fuelling harassment. So can HR  do more to control the use of technology at work?
In an interview with HR Magazine Employment Solicitor, Orla Bingham from Payne Hicks Beach stated:

“Employers owe employees a duty of care to protect them from such behaviour in the workplace, but it is more problematic when this takes place through social media or technology; not least because it can be harder to detect.

Robust social media and technology policies that strictly prohibit harassment through digital means should be disseminated and the consequences of this behaviour made clear. As evidence of online behaviour is more traceable it should be collected and relied on to discipline the offending employee(s) where appropriate.

However, this evidence is not always easy to access. Close monitoring of employees’ technology use is therefore a necessity to tackle this problem, but this must not be excessive or overly intrusive. Where a clear and legitimate reason exists, for example to safeguard workers, monitoring is likely to be justified as long as the workforce are made aware of it, which in itself may be a deterrent.”

Where does the policy audit trail go cold?

Having a robust social media and technology policy is positively the first step.  However, the missing piece of the puzzle is often the resources within an HR team to ensure that the policy is distributed to everyone, collate proof that everyone has read and understood what it means, and finally, a signature which closes the loop and creates an audit trail to ensure they have agreed to it.

How can you close the compliance loop?

WorkWize from VinciWorks offers a complete solution to the problem of distributing policies and managing compliance.

  1. Upload your existing policies and procedures
  2. Automate the distribution of them to all employees
  3. Add a test to each to confirm understanding

WorkWize not only keeps a record of the test but also collects a digital signature to confirm acceptance.

Add in our Business Protection Pack which contains 16 CPD certified eLearning courses covering the major HR Policy issues, and you are in a position to educate your teams on everything from GDPR and Cyber Security to Code of Conduct.

GDPR Myth #3: You can’t send marketing emails anymore

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Will continuing to send marketing emails put your business at risk of breaching GDPR?

Do the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) mean you can’t send any more marketing emails?

JD Wetherspoons, the UK’s largest pub chain, hit the industry headlines last year when it decided to delete its entire marketing list. GDPR has injected a sense of impending doom into email marketers worried that carefully cultivated lists will need to be trashed come GDPR day.

This is not the case. GDPR does not prevent direct marketing taking place, nor does it mean your lists have to be deleted and collected again from scratch. However, it does mean marketers have a greater responsibility in processing personal data, and some issues around consent to market may have to be looked at.

Read more 

VinciWorks adds Subject Access Request module to GDPR course

GDPR Myth #2: GDPR requires you to delete all of a person’s data if they ask

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VinciWorks Bid to Improve Governance Standards in Business by Launching CPD Accredited Training Pack

VinciWorks has successfully achieved certification for their Business Protection pack of 16 eLearning Courses from The CPD Accreditation Service.

With Sexual Harassment, Modern Slavery, and Data Security in the news on an almost daily basis, training employees to understand these issues is a challenge that many organisations are struggling to meet.

From MP’s in the House of Commons to Hollywood moguls, through to the owner of a bed factory supplying high street shops jailed for Modern Slavery. When failures occur, the penalties in terms of reputational and financial damage can be severe.

The eLearning courses are designed to address the full range of Risk and Governance issues faced by organisations in today’s highly legislated environment. The 16 topics covered by the pack include key issues like; GDPR, Fraud Prevention, Modern Slavery, Cyber Security and Equality & Diversity.

Each of the courses lasts around 30-minutes with a mandatory test at the end. The courses are SCORM 1.2 compliant, for use in any standard Learning Management System. Organisations can edit and customise the content using the WorkWize Author tool to add additional content or align them with their corporate brand.

With over 1000 Institutes and Professional Bodies in the UK now seeking to provide Continuing Professional Development for their members, the demand for training which not only informs but can be

counted towards a CPD target is rapidly increasing. Couple this with constantly evolving legislation and organisations are looking for smart ways engage their employees and keep them up to date.

Courses from VinciWorks are regularly reviewed and updated by a dedicated team of researchers and instructional designers. This means they provide ongoing assurance that the advice given will be aligned with best practice. This alleviates the strain on internal HR and L&D Teams to continuously write and update internal courses.

Looking for in-depth and engaging business protection training? Explore our comprehensive eLearning library and try any of our courses for free.

New guide to the gig economy warns businesses of compliance risks

The Gig Economy Banner

VinciWorks has published an e-book warning businesses about the dangers of the gig economy.

Compliance Risks and the Gig Economy takes businesses through the potential legal minefield of using gig economy apps for business purposes. From renting a room through Airbnb, buying a service on UpWork or hailing a ride on Uber, when a business interacts with the gig economy, it can have a knock-on effect across compliance areas from employment law to equality to modern slavery. Most recently, already-under-fire Uber has recently been exposed for concealing a massive global breach of the personal information of 57 million customers and drivers in October 2016.

Prime Minister vows to crack down on those taking advantage of workers

Theresa May recently promised to overhaul the rights of millions of workers in the UK. The crackdown, regarded by one business group as “the biggest shake-up of employment law in generations”, includes the PM’s pledge to clamp down on firms using unpaid interns, quadruple fines for non-compliant organisations and launch a “naming and shaming” list of the worst perpetrators.

Millions of brits working independently

With around 14 million Brits taking part in some form of independent work, whether traditional freelance or through a new gig economy app, the potential compliance risks range from equality and discrimination to tax evasion, modern slavery, and even data protection.
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GDPR Myth #2: GDPR requires you to delete all of a person’s data if they ask

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Does GDPR require businesses to delete all data upon an individual’s request?

What is meant by “The Right to be Forgotten” under GDPR?

The right to be forgotten is one of the key innovations of GDPR, but it’s not exactly a new right, nor is it absolute. It developed in European law in the aftermath of an important court case known as the Google vs Spain ruling. In 2010, a Spanish citizen complained about an outdated court order against him appearing on Google search results. The European Court of Justice agreed this infringed on his right to privacy and ruled that individuals have the right, under certain conditions, to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them where the information is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive.

The right to be forgotten has been enshrined in GDPR as the right to erasure. This is slightly more encompassing than the original Google vs Spain rules, giving an individual the right to have their personal data erased and prevent it being processed in specific circumstances.

Read more: what should a GDPR compliant privacy policy include?

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New micro course – protect your organisation from the next ransomware attack

2017 saw a rise in the number and scope of ransomware attacks, with the highest profile attack, WannaCry, affecting over 230,000 organisations worldwide and causing the NHS to cancel appointments and operations. VinciWorks’ new interactive micro course on ransomware helps users understand exactly what ransomware is and how to avoid being the next victim of such an attack. Ransomware is part of VinciWorks’ cyber security suite that has recently been updated to include six new interactive apps and Phishing Challenge 2.0.

The course covers:

  • Understanding what ransomware is and the dangers such attacks present
  • Key definitions related to ransomware, such as “phishing”, “spear phishing”, “malware” and “Bitcoin”
  • 2017 ransomware attacks and how they happened
  • Visual examples of how attacks happen
  • Guidance on how to avoid being the target of ransomware attacks
  • What to do in case of an attack
  • Assessment to review what has been learnt

Demo ransomware micro course