Providing supervision

You must provide an adequate and appropriate level of supervision for your employees:

• Supervisors need to know what you expect from them in terms of health and safety. They need to understand your health and safety policy, where they fit in, and how you want health and safety managed
• Supervisors may need training in the specific hazards of your processes and how you expect the risks to be controlled
• New, inexperienced or young people, as well as those whose first language is not English, are very likely to need more supervision than others. Make sure workers know how to raise concerns and supervisors are familiar with the possible problems due to unfamiliarity, inexperience and communication difficulties
• Supervisors need to ensure that workers in their charge understand risks associated with the work environment and measures to control them
• Supervisors will need to make sure the control measures to protect against risk are up to date and are being properly used, maintained and monitored
• Make sure you have arrangements in place to check the work of contractors is being done as agreed

Effective supervision can help you monitor the effectiveness of the training that people have received, and whether employees have the necessary capacity and competence to do the job.

Find out more

• New to the job
• Young people
• Health and safety training: A brief guide (Leaflet INDG345)