The Beast From The East is back, and he isn’t pulling any punches. Temperatures are in the minus degrees, and you can’t put two feet out of the door without falling over. If you aren’t a safety inspector, all of these things should mean a quiet day indoors with a pair of slippers, a mug of hot chocolate, and a few marshmallows for good measure.
It’s tempting when the world seems to have ground to a halt to do much the same. Yet the benefit of our shiny online age is that the world’s knowledge is at your fingertips, even when you can’t make it down the road. Instead of idly tapping through Facebook or Instagram again, here are five brilliant eLearning courses you can try to make this a productive snow day.
Qualsafe Level 1 Fire Safety
What better way to stay warm than to learn about fire? Sure, you’re ideally learning how to avoid things catching alight, but the principles are still the same. With the abundance of heating in winter months, fire safety is an even more pressing concern than usual – making this knowledge timely in every sense.
Qualsafe L1 Fire Safety students will learn about the key principles of fire safety, methodologies for preventing fires in the workplace (and indeed at home), and what to do in the event of an emergency. Like the weather, you’ll be cool under pressure – but you’ll do it all in two hours from the comfort of your sofa.
Level 1 Food Safety
A day spent at home is a day to experiment with cooking. It would be cruel to subject the takeaway driver to those conditions, after all – and the food might turn up cold anyway. Fire safety is relevant here too, but to make sure you aren’t stuck at home for other reasons, you’ll want to keep your food prep as hygienic as possible.
The L1 Food Safety course is here to help. With details on cooking temperatures, safe storage, food prep, and precisely why you should never wash a chicken, you’ll learn everything you need for a grounding in food safety. Best of all, the course only takes 90 mins – meaning you can secure a certification before you even start making dinner.
Level 2 Principles of Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH)
Don’t try and say that with a mouthful of food. Our COSHH course is ideal if you’re doing another classic snow day task – cleaning the house. Put down that cloth and bottle of antiseptic spray, and learn about the substances that we use everyday, but that can potentially damage our health.
From cleaning to healthcare to manufacturing, many of us use hazardous substances on a daily basis. What few realise is that the risks don’t just come from touching these substances, but potentially from inhaling them. You’ll learn all about the different types of hazardous substance, their nature and how to use them safely – principles that you can apply throughout your life.
Licensing Law Awareness
Mulled or otherwise, there’s nothing for a warm evening in like a good glass of wine. If you’re the one selling the product rather than enjoying it, you may want to brush up on your responsibilities as a licensee, and the best ways to deal with your most difficult customers. For this purpose, we suggest the Licensing Law Awareness course.
This four hour course covers the fine details of the Licensing Act 2003, and everything this means for your responsibilities as a seller of alcohol. You’ll learn about the effects alcohol has on the body, how to tackle underage drinking and drug use, and how to de-escalate situations with problem drinkers. Whether you apply these to your own life is entirely up to you.
Environmental Awareness
If you listen to the scientists (and we do), the Beast of the East is at least partly down to global warming. We won’t be teaching you much about weakening jet streams and areas of low pressure, but you can learn about environmental issues as a broader issue. With any luck, you’ll be able to apply this to your life and business to mitigate these climatic mishaps.
With the Environmental Awareness course, you’ll cover the personal and social responsibilities of environmental control. You’ll learn how our use of energy and various pollutants impacts the environment on a local and global scale, and learn to implement best practices to minimise the damage. You’ll be learning something as valuable as any of our courses: how to maintain the boring British weather that we all love to complain about.