Cover, agency staff and unfamiliar work
A talk for holiday cover: people doing jobs they do not do every week.
This is a DRAFT for a competent person to review before anyone uses it in a talk. It is not legal advice and it does not make a workplace compliant.
What happened
In holiday season the person who knows the machine is away. Someone else has a go. They are capable, and they are also missing the one quirk that regulars take for granted.
Why it matters
Unfamiliar work is when guards, isolation and the 'do not touch that' rules get missed. A willing person without a briefing is not a trained person.
What we do differently
No one uses a machine, a knife station or a vehicle they have not been shown on this site. The briefing is specific: how to stop it, what to wear, what the last near miss was. If we cannot brief them, the job waits. Agency staff get the same induction, written down if they will be here more than a day.
Discussion
- Which job must not be handed to cover without a proper showing?
- What is the one quirk of our equipment that a new person would not guess?
- Who signs that the briefing happened?
SafeMonday helps a workplace keep a record of near-miss reports, toolbox talks and who attended. That record can support evidence of instruction and consultation. It does not, by itself, make a workplace compliant with the health and safety law that applies where you operate.