Becoming a Forklift Trainer

If you have a lot of employees, all expected to operate forklifts, or a high turnover of staff, training all your staff and keeping them in date with refresher training can be costly.

Many businesses however have seen the value of having a fully trained forklift instructor in house. Investing in your own forklift trainer could be the ideal solution to reducing costs and ensuring you have someone capable and competent to take control of all training issues.

Becoming a forklift training instructor is much more complicated than becoming an operative, so before you commit to the time and cost expenditure, it’s important to assess your requirements.

If you want to become a forklift training instructor, you need to know as much about forklift trucks as possible. Consider reading these three articles once you’re done with this to to brush up your knowledge.

The Advantages

Our forklift instructor course takes approximately 10 to 12 days, with a 3 or 4 day refresher training course every 5 years. Forklift operative courses on the other hand, last on average 2 to 5 days, with 1 day refresher training. So if you train in excess of 5-10 employees every year, the time you lose getting your instructor qualified, could be well worth the time you’ll save sending your employees off site for operative training.

Similarly, the cost of getting all your operatives trained to the appropriate levels by a training centre will far outweigh the cost of getting one forklift instructor trained and qualified.

An additional benefit of having an instructor trained on site will be the increased knowledge they will bring to your operations. With full training, they will be more aware of potential health and safety issues and how to resolve them, as well as the functional capacity of the lift tucks and how best to utilise them to meet your operational requirements. They can also manage all training to alleviate pressure from your administration or managerial team.

Eligibility for become an instructor

Choosing your forklift instructor is the first step. Obviously you’ll want to choose an experienced and trustworthy member of your team – someone who has proven their abilities in relation to forklift operation.

You may also want to consider the level of authority your instructor will have. On completion of the training their opinion on health and safety matters will be invaluable to you, and you will want to ensure they have the authority to stop unsafe working practices, resolve any issues and encourage trainees to work safely and efficiently.

There is however another element to choosing the right instructor and that is their eligibility for the training course. Here at HST we have strict entry criteria to ensure we only train suitable and capable instructors:

• Must be a lift truck operative, with a recommended minimum 6 months experience
• Must have strong written skills and verbal communication skills
• Must have completed the Basic Operating Skills Test on a counterbalance or reach truck in the previous 12 months

Becoming an Instructor

The training involved with becoming a forklift instructor is very in-depth, and has to be to ensure the instructors attain a level of knowledge and skill that will allow them to become fully certified and registered with RTITB.

At the end of the training course, all delegates will have to pass a 3-part test that covers:

• Basic operating skills
• Practical instructional ability
• Instructor associated knowledge

All successful delegates will then be registered on the RTITB National Register of Instructors, ‘The Professional Register’, for a period of 5 years. After the 5 years, they will need to renew their registration with a refresher course, which we can also supply.

Health and Safety Training Ltd

The team at Health and Safety Training Ltd have been training operatives and instructors for many years, so if you need any advice on the best training solutions for your business just get in touch today. We can provide tailored training to suit individual or business requirements, and can deliver the majority of our training at your site for your convenience.