Top Tip Tuesday - Young People at Work

Y – YOUNG PEOPLE AT WORK

Having a young person at work can sometimes come with its challenges. But, managing a young person in a positive, progressive, and structured way will allow you to shape and mould a model employee in the future.

The health and safety at work regulations 1999 has a specific section relating to young workers and the allowances we need to afford these workers to keep them safe in the workplace.

What do we need to consider:

• Inexperience – Younger workers will not have the experience a more senior employee has and has not experienced life in a busy workplace.
• Risk awareness – We all remember being young and invincible, we would all take risks we wouldn’t even dream of taking now.
• Maturity – A young worker may still be maturing physically and mentally; we need to consider this when setting certain job tasks.
• Physical capabilities – A young worker may not have the physical capabilities that a more senior employee may have.
• Influences – A young worker will learn from the more senior members of your workforce; the quality and content of this learning will be the key to how well the individual develops.
• Hazards – Specific hazards may pose a more significant risk to a young worker. Exposure to noise, vibration, and some chemicals at a younger age can have drastic implications later in life.

How to equip our young workers with the necessary knowledge:

• Risk assessments – Conducting risk assessments in the workplace is an essential ingredient in health and safety management. Prior to starting employment, a risk assessment on all workplace processes factoring in all the considerations that are necessary for younger workers will allow for extra controls to be implemented to prevent an accident to a young worker.
• Training – Training is one of the best tools an employee has to create a good worker, the more training received and knowledge obtained by a young worker the better, but it is always best to keep the training relevant to the workplace and tasks to be carried out.
• Supervision – A mentor system, including close supervision especially in the early stages of employment is essential. But choosing the right mentor can be the difference between a young worker adopting a positive culture or negative culture.
• Instruction and information – Give the young worker as much detailed instruction and information relevant to their work.

Finally, it is always worth considering that we were all young once and we were all new to the workplace. The question we should pose ourselves is how did I learn and how could it have been better?

Need more help on this? Contact us as we are happy to advise and guide you.