DSE Training: 5 Things the Regulations Actually Require
Search for display screen equipment training and you will find a large market of courses, certificates and assessor qualifications, most of them presented as though the law requires them.
The law does require training. It does not require any of those particular things, and the distinction matters because organisations routinely buy a certificate and still fail the duty, while others assume that because no course is mandated, nothing is.
Five things the regulations actually require.
1. Training on the workstation, and again when it changes
The core duty, and it is narrower and more specific than a general awareness course.
Regulation 6 of the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 requires every employer to ensure that users are provided with adequate health and safety training in the use of any workstation upon which they may be required to work.
Two features distinguish it from what most organisations provide.
It is training in the use of a workstation, not general ergonomics awareness. Somebody who has watched a video about posture but does not know how to raise their own chair, adjust their own backrest or position their own screen has not been trained in the use of their workstation.
It recurs on modification. The regulation requires training to be provided whenever the organisation of the workstation is substantially modified. A move, a fit-out, a change from assigned desks to hot desking, or the issue of different equipment all qualify, and almost none of them triggers training in practice.
2. Information is a separate duty from training
The provision most often collapsed into the first, and they are distinct.
Regulation 7 requires every employer to ensure that users are provided with adequate information about all aspects of health and safety relating to their workstations, and about the measures taken by the employer in compliance with the assessment, workstation, daily work routine and eyes and eyesight duties.
So users are entitled to know not only how to set up their workstation, but what the organisation has done about the duties it owes them. That includes the eye and eyesight entitlement, which in most organisations exists on paper and is unknown to the people who could use it.
An information duty discharged by publishing a policy on an intranet nobody visits is a duty discharged in form only.
3. There is no statutory DSE assessor qualification
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The point that saves organisations money and causes the most confusion.
Nothing in the Regulations creates a role called "DSE assessor" or specifies a qualification for it. What the Regulations require is a suitable and sufficient analysis of workstations, and what the general framework requires is competence.
Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires the appointment of competent persons to assist in complying with statutory duties, and regulation 13 requires the employer to take account of employees' capabilities when entrusting tasks.
Two consequences follow, and they cut in opposite directions.
A commercially available assessor course is a perfectly reasonable way to establish competence for straightforward office assessments, and many organisations use one sensibly. It is a means, not a requirement.
Equally, holding a certificate does not by itself make somebody competent to assess a complex case. Multi-screen trading configurations, laboratory or hardware environments, and cases involving a health condition or a reasonable adjustment need more than a one-day course, and knowing where the limit of your own competence sits is part of being competent. HSE's guidance on DSE assessment sets out what the analysis involves.
4. What training has to cover to be adequate
The regulation says adequate rather than listing content, so the test is whether it equips the person to use their workstation safely.
In practice that means five things. How to adjust their own chair, desk and screen, demonstrated rather than described. What good positioning looks like and why, including screen height, keyboard and mouse position. How to recognise discomfort early and what to do about it. What they are entitled to, including assessment, equipment and the eye and eyesight provision. And who to tell, with a route that produces a response.
Two additions for how people now work. Training should cover the setup they use at home as well as in the office, because for a hybrid worker the home configuration is usually the worse one. And where people hot desk, it should cover how to adjust an unfamiliar position quickly, because the alternative is that nobody adjusts anything.
A short, practical session covering those points, delivered by someone who can demonstrate on the actual equipment, satisfies the duty better than an hour of e-learning and takes less time.
5. Records, and the population you have not trained
The evidential half, and there is usually a gap in it.
Record who was trained, in what, and when, alongside the information provided and the assessments carried out. That record is what demonstrates the duty was met.
Three populations are routinely missing from it. New starters, where training happens at induction if at all and the workstation is assigned later. Hybrid and homeworking staff, who were trained on an office setup they use two days a week. And senior people, who skip induction sessions and frequently spend more time at a screen than anyone they employ.
Where the record shows a training date years old and the organisation has since moved, refitted or changed its working pattern, the modification trigger in point one has been missed.
The five, in short
| Requirement | Common position | What is needed |
|---|---|---|
| Training in workstation use | General awareness video | Practical, on their own equipment |
| Retraining on modification | Never triggered | Move, fit-out, hot desking, new equipment |
| Information | Policy on the intranet | Users told what they are entitled to |
| Assessor competence | Certificate assumed mandatory | Competence, with known limits |
| Records | Partial | New starters, hybrid staff and senior people included |
The second row is the one that quietly puts organisations out of compliance, because it is triggered by events everybody celebrates rather than by a calendar.
For international employers
Training and information duties on screen work exist across the European Union, deriving from the same directive, and the mechanism varies more than the principle.
Several jurisdictions covered in this series run the equivalent through prescribed instruction regimes with their own records rather than through a general training duty. Lithuania operates defined categories of instruction with a register entry required immediately on conclusion of the employment contract. Romania requires an individual training record on a prescribed model. Poland requires initial training before an employee may be admitted to work. Estonia and Finland route screen work through health checks and occupational health services respectively.
A group e-learning module translated into local languages will not satisfy those, because the requirement is about the artefact and the register rather than about the content. Holding training records, assessments and entitlements across every entity in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits establish whether the local record exists in the form the local inspectorate expects.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite treats display screen equipment as a complete duty rather than as a course to buy, which is where most organisations have spent money without closing the gap. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with finance and banking, IT and software and legal organisations, where effectively the whole workforce meets the user definition.
Our DSE assessment service covers the analysis, and our health and safety training covers the training and information duties alongside it. Where offices span several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current. HSE's display screen equipment guidance covers the British baseline.
If your last DSE training predates your current office, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
