Initial Support Training should act as a 'survival kit' until the rep can attend a 3 day introductory course. The rep is given a simple task of mapping their workplace or area of responsibility and at this stage is not expected to undertake much industrial work without significant support from the Branch and Organiser other than recruitment.

This course is designed to ensure that new reps can deal effectively with simple grievances and disciplinaries (normally only those of misconduct). They should be able to resolve straight forward health and safety problems or at least begin to process them on behalf of the members. The course should also build upon their ability to recruit locally.

This courses aims to help reps improve their formal writing skills and covers letter writing, reports and note taking. It looks at punctuation, letter layout and content, with practical exercises on note taking and report compilation.

At this stage, reps could be expected to deal with a wide range of disciplinary/ grievances, and problem solving covering basic employment issues. They should also be able to participate in local negotiations and to organise the workplace, actively recruiting and monitoring membership potential.

Following this course, reps should be competent to deal with a wide range of safety issues, including involvement in safety committees and risk assessments. Their knowledge base of legislation should enable them to prepare the groundwork for more complex problems.

This course is a follow on to the % Day H&S Course and takes reps through the rights and practical implementation of quarterly health and safety inspections. By the end of the course reps will be drawn up their own inspection checklists for use back in their workplaces.

Work still in progress on this course - due for release early 2006

This advanced course is for reps who have completed ALL their basic training and have had practical experience of industrial relations in their workplace. It should equip reps with skill and tactic so that they can prepare, plan and negotiate on behalf of their members on a wide range of issues.

Click here to see a flow chart of workplace reps training and a downloadable PDF copy (14k).