Must I do a Short Course or a Qualifications in Health and Safety – They often say that 'time is money'. The decision to go away from the all-important job to attend classes to acquire knowledge puts many between a rock and a hard place. But opting for attending classes for a qualification over participating in various short courses will make more financial sense in the long run.
To be aware of what is happening in a fast evolving society, it is important that professionals stay informed and tuned if one wants to make a career. Many will experience that along with a new promotion at work also comes a new set of skills that need to be mastered. The market understands this need and offers many short-courses that claim filling the knowledge gap in a short period of time. But in health and safety nothing is supposed to come easy, so claims like this should be scrutinized carefully.
Education comes in many different ways, and much is dependent on the basic knowledge level and flexibility of the student. Short courses have the advantage that they can cater for a large group of people as the course can be repeated often. But the limited time available to do the tutoring actually means that there is little time left to discuss the content in-depth or, more worrisome, attend to students who unfortunately fail to understand the content.
Attending a course for a qualification, on the other hand, provides students with more comprehensive information and in-depth knowledge than a combination of short-courses can provide altogether. Professionals opting for doing various short-courses over pursuing a qualification will often find an overlap in content in courses that are related as each course requires a basic introduction and explanation. This is often repeated for every individual course again. The effective value for money is, therefore, limited. And students claiming that the relatively long time-span of a qualification puts them off, should also be re-considered as this begs the question how dedicated a student will be.
Where to put my money?
It is difficult to say which option is best. Some information doesn’t require extensive tutoring, while other important knowledge needs to be tutored and discussed in-depth. Certain employees will have a limited time-span or ambition, while others prefer to suck up as much information as possible and take the corporate ladder by storm.
The decision which option to take should, therefore, be taken on an ad-hoc basis. But before doing so, one should also investigate the impact of a finished short-course or certification. The various SETA's, and the HWSETA in particular, focus on qualifications in particular. The quality of short-courses or training programmes is often left to the discretion of the provider. Although the SETA's are pushing hard, training providers can, if they prefer so, remain off the HWSETA radar. While their courses and training programmes on offer look impressive at first sight, the value of attending remains to be seen when courses have not been validated.
At MAKROSAFE there are a wide variety of short-courses and qualifications on offer. Each programme has been put together with the challenges and aspirations of students in mind. Both the programmes and the organisation have been scrutinized by the HWSETA, thus ensuring that the quality and standards are met. Upon completion of the full course the student will receive a statement of results from HWSETA. More importantly, each student will be completely up-to-date with the latest changes and updates in the industry and ready to add value to the health and safety practices of all employees at their employer.
In our next edition we will discuss the latest Health and Safety certification MAKROSAFE offers.
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