Whether you are the head of a garage or run a pet shop in a mall, you are legally obliged to ensure that all of your staff and those who use your services are safe while in your place of business.
This will obviously include having fire extinguishers, first aid kits, and, depending on the type of work that you do, ensuring that cables and potential health hazards are out of the way of customers. But there is no point having a first aid kit in most cases without also having your staff trained in basic life support.
While it may sound like an additional and expensive hassle, there are some very real-world benefits to ensuring that all of your staff are up to speed when it comes to life support training in your place of work.
This article aims to set down some of the best reasons why this is an area you should invest in, irrespective of your field of business or the size of your staff team.
It Can and Does Save Lives
The first and most obvious reason to consider is that even basic life support training saves lives, especially in the workplace. It gives your staff the confidence and the skills to react immediately if there is an illness, injury, or incident in your place of work. In fact, it is unrecorded how many people have been saved with CPR simply because there are so many! In the workplace, CPR given in the right time frame is not only critical but also lifesaving. Therefore, it is well worth investing in this skill set to keep your staff and potential customers safe from harm. This is especially important if your clientele are vulnerable people or those who are older.
It Reduces the Number of Accidents
If you have a younger staff team, they can be a bit overconfident in their abilities and may think they are invincible. However, by sending them on a life support training course, you can help teach them to be more aware of safety in the workplace. This will help to reduce the number of accidents and injuries while also minimizing the risk to your workers and decreasing workplace incidents for everybody.
It Makes Your Business Safer
The majority of larger-scale businesses will give first aid training and life support training as part of their basic employee training. This is an ideal approach, even for small businesses, as it ensures that all of the employers are able to give first aid and life support if needed. This will obviously make your company a safer place to work. Not only do these courses ensure that your employees are practicing conscious safety from their first day on the job, but it also ensures that they are all trained and able to look after each other, even when you, as the boss, are not in the workplace.
It Reduces Recovery Time and Staff Sick Days
As mentioned earlier, for most life support training, there is a crucial time window for more extensive or serious injuries.
So, if a member of your team becomes injured on the job and is unconscious, there will be a window of time between them falling down and the ambulance arriving. Rapid reaction not only saves lives but will also reduce the recovery time of the patient if it is administered correctly. Therefore, should a member of your team become injured or sick on the job, if another member of your team is able to diagnose and treat their injuries quickly, this will reduce the number of days that they will take off following an incident and will also ensure that they have a quicker return to work, which will impact less on your business.
While it may seem somewhat tasteless to associate accidents on the job and loss of earnings with your business, this is a real concern that you should have, especially if you are a smaller business owner.
It Keeps Your Team Safe Outside of Work
Your team has a life outside of work, and when you ensure that they are trained in life support training and first aid, they have those skills for life, especially if you ensure that these skills are up to date and that your staff are undertaking ongoing training courses. This means that they can treat themselves, their family and friends, and the public outside of the workplace, which could then link back to your business. So, it’s good PR!
