The NEBOSH International General Certificate is a qualification that gives you the tools to apply health and safety principles in your organisation at every level. You’ll gain various skills that enables you to think out of the box and see problems that others might overlook.
You will learn how to conduct risk assessments using a five-step approach and plan actions to control hazards. You’ll also be trained on how to look pragmatically at your organisations existing controls and decide about how well they’re working. If your organisation could do more to control hazards, NEBOSH gives you the authority to recommend how to reasonably strengthen the control and keep everyone safer.
Why the NEBOSH Health and Safety Certification?
The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health (NEBOSH) is an UK-based examination board that offers General Certificate and Diploma qualifications in occupational health and safety.
The first step in your NEBOSH health and safety journey is the General Certificate, which is an A-Level qualification equal to the National Senior Certificate in South Africa. Your next step afterwards would be NEBOSH International Diploma. The certificate is also recognised, by various world professional membership bodies, including but not limited to:
- International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM)
- Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH)
- Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM)
- Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA)
The General Certificate course will train you on how to effectively manage health and safety and learn to identify and control common workplace hazards. NEBOSH health and safety training shows you how to correctly measure your health and safety performance, which is useful to compare your organisation internationally and against competitors.
The NEBOSH International General Certificate is a widely respected and well-known gold standard in health and safety. World-class health and safety experts have built and consistently review all the course contents. The syllabus reflects every organisation’s needs, so the skills you learn are immediately relevant regardless of the industry you work in.
The course has been designed for various levels of expertise including if you’re a manager, supervisor or have any occupational health and safety responsibilities at work.
The True Price of Accidents and Death?
One of the biggest reasons for investing in NEBOSH International General Certificate training for your organisation is simply the cost of an accident. In the end the cost of any accident is the organisations profits. It’s illegal for an organisation to budget for accidents or a death as you’re expected under the Health and Safety Act of South Africa to avoid accidents and death.
There are many uninsurable costs in accidents such as legal costs including your defending lawyers and all the losses in your organisation if production is down. This leads to the threat of your organisation not being able to meet the terms of your contracts, paying overtime, or employing more people to help catch-up with production. All these costs come out of your organisation’s profits.
Aa a NEBOSH health and safety expert you can directly help avoid these losses. The cost on investing in the certification will be returned by saving the company these profit and reputational losses.
Our Comprehensive NEBOSH Training
Our in-person NEBOSH health and safety course will give you an in-depth training that allows you to conduct risk assessments and come up with a health and safety management system that protects all employees and the organisation. The Certificate does not require that you renew it.
What You’ll Be Learning
Your NEBOSH course has eleven elements, each element has its own chapters which expands each element into every aspect of occupational health and safety you can think of.
Here is an overview of the eleven elements, what you can expect to learn and how NEBOSH certification can benefit you and your organisation:
Element 1: Why We Should Manage Workplace Health and Safety
You will be competent in demonstrating why occupational health and safety is important and how to apply basic tools to your workplace and unfamiliar working situations.
Element 2: How Health and Safety Management System Work and What They Look Like
After this element you will be competent in working within a Health and Safety Management System and recognise what effective general policies and arrangements should look like.
Element 3: Managing Risk
Managing risks have multiple chapters covering:
How to effectively do a general risk assessment in your own workplace conduct risk using the five-step approach:
- Inspect the workplace and profile and prioritise risks.
- Identify all hazards in the workplace.
- Evaluate risks and describe current controls.
- Recommend further control measures.
- Plan actions to control hazards.
You’ll also be recognising a range of common hazards, taking account of current controls and recommend further control measures.
Recognise workplace changes that potentially have significant negative health and safety impacts and effective ways to minimise those impacts. You’ll also learn how to positively influence the health and safety culture and behaviour in your organisation.
Element 4: Health and Safety Monitoring and Measuring
You will be able to take part in incident investigations and be able to check your organisations Management System effectiveness through monitoring, audits, and reviews.
Element 5: Physical and Psychological Health
You’ll be capable of producing a risk assessment of a workplace which considers a wide range of physical and psychological hazards. These include noise, vibration, radiation, mental ill-health, violence, and substance abuse in the workplace. You’ll also be able to demonstrate the negative health effects associated with each aspect and appropriate short- and long-term control measures.
Element 6: Musculoskeletal Health
You’ll be competent to conduct a risk assessment on the work-related upper limb disorders (WRULDs), work processes and practices that may give rise to work-related upper limb disorders and appropriate control measures. Load-handling equipment and the hazards and controls associated with all equipment and the requirements for lifting operations.
Element 7: Chemical and Biological Agents
You will be competent and able to complete a general risk assessment in your own workplace regarding hazardous chemicals. You’ll learn to identify which chemicals and biological hazards can cause damage to employees through inhalation, absorption through the skin and ingestion.
Element 8: General Workplace Issues
You’ll be able to complete a general risk assessment in your own workplace regarding:
- Working at heights.
- Safe working in confined spaces.
- Lone working.
- Slips and trips.
- Safe movement of people and vehicles in the workplace.
- Work-related driving.
Element 9: Work Equipment
You’ll learn to complete a general risk assessment regarding the general requirements for work equipment, hand-held tools, machinery hazards, control measures for machinery.
Element 10: Fire
You’ll be learn how to complete a general risk assessment in your organisation when it comes to:
- Fire principles.
- Prevention of fire.
- Fire spread.
- Fire alarms.
- Basic fire fighting.
- Fire evacuation.
Element 11: Electricity
You’ll be able to complete a general risk assessment in your own workplace when it comes to electricity hazards, risks, and control measures.
After each week you’ll be required to complete and submit an exam that requires you to demonstrate what you’ve learned and your competency.
What to Expect from Your Exams
At the end of your first week, you’ll be taking an open book exam. You’ll have 24 hours to complete it, but normally the exam takes five to six hours. You can use all the materials, diagrams, eBooks, and notes from the course to complete your exam.
After your second week’s training, you’ll have to complete a Risk Assessment Project. This is a 20-to-24-page exercise that’s been split into 4-parts. Don’t be intimidated, your facilitator will help you through the entire process and you’ll be completing your project through the second week.
We’ll help you understand what to do in both your exams and will provide you with various documents, flowcharts, booklets, and videos.
Adding Value to Your Organisation
After the training, you’ll have plenty of things you’d want to change and implement in your workplace. Some of the positive changes your organisation can expect from you once you have your certification is that:
- You’ll be able to encourage an active health and safety culture, where everyone is working together to make the working environment free from harm.
- Your organisation will have fewer accidents because every staff member follows a health and safety process.
- You’ll be able to review your organisation’s commitments, policies and procedures and advise how they could be improved. Advise your organisation on how management could save money.
- Analyse your organisation’s accident data pinpoint patterns are and which small changes can have a massive impact.
- Take an overview of the accident stats and make small changes to reduce injuries.
- Look at the bigger picture of the organisation, risks and create an occupational health and safety management system that works.
- NEBOSH health and safety course will also equip you to describe and implement an ideal health and safety culture and demonstrate how it improves performance.
- The steps you take to reduce risk and control hazards minimises the chance of accidents, limiting sick and injury-related leave.
- Ensure your organisation is fully aligned to international standards and the health and safety Act in South Africa.
NEBOSH gives you a safer perspective of your organisation at every level and you’ll see health and safety in everything you do. As much as NEBOSH makes a cultural change at work, it’ll impact your personal outlook for the better.
Interested in learning more about our NEBOSH International General Certificate course? Send our sales consultant Minkie Mabaso a WhatsApp message on 072 670 1013 today. Alternatively you can also send us an email at admin@wwise.co.za or give us a call on our main line at 012 644 0142.