It’s every employer’s responsibility to protect the health and wellbeing of their staff. To make sure everyone returns home safely after each shift. It’s why the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 require every organisation to provide adequate and appropriate first-aid equipment, facilities, and people to step in should any injuries or illnesses occur in the workplace. 

In 2019/20 alone, 693,000 workers sustained a non-fatal injury in the workplace, showing just how critical this guidance can be. Whether an injury is caused by work or not, if it happens on-site, it’s critical for you to have the personnel and resources on-hand to provide immediate care or escalate urgent cases.

The people element is where it can get a little tricky. Not only do you need to delegate qualified first aiders, but you must also be able to organise and monitor your first aiders to ensure your employees are always safe and protected.

Sounds easy enough, right? Not exactly. A common question we hear from our clients is how best to manage their first aiders. After all, if you have tens of thousands of staff across hundreds of locations, keeping first aiders up to date on training and ensuring someone is on-hand at all times can quickly become a logistical nightmare. Here are some common challenges you might encounter, as well as our guidance for overcoming them.

Organisational oversight

If you operate over multiple sites, you might struggle to effectively oversee your organisation’s first aid. With so many locations to keep track of, it’s simple enough for one site’s first aid to slip under the radar.

Do you have measures in place to ensure there’s always a first-aid-trained employee to hand? That if one were to leave, you have someone to pick up the first-aid role in their absence? If not, do you have the means to quickly identify and train someone? You need to stay aware of how you handle any turnover when it comes to your first aiders.

Identifying qualified first aiders

If you ever identify a gap in cover at a specific location, you want to be able to immediately identify suitable first aiders you could bring in as a replacement. Messy paperwork or disorganised, inaccessible digital systems are going to make this ten times more difficult.

With your current set up, can you clearly visualise all of your first aiders, as well as their most up-to-date qualifications?

Sharing information

Health and safety guidance is constantly changing, and it’s crucial that all first aiders are kept up to date with what’s expected from them. Just look at COVID-19 as an example.

Normally, information sharing across organisations is done by department or job title. But first aid doesn’t fall into any of these categories. So how can you ensure all information is being seen by the right people?

Knowing who wants/needs future training

While some members of the team will be content knowing the basics, others may want to continually learn and develop their first aid training. With this in mind, it will help you if you can keep on top of who wants or needs extra training. This way, you can ensure your first aiders remain engaged and your workforce stays as protected as possible.

It’s also a good time to mention that it’s a first aider’s responsibility to audit the first-aid equipment on a regular basis. So this would be something like a first-aid box. They would have to ensure it’s up to date and order anything that needs replacing. Make sure they know this is part of their role.

What can you do

When it comes to oversight, the right reporting technology allows you to visualise all locations and identify whether they have first-aid-trained individuals on site. It should also allow you to highlight gaps in cover and book in additional training or temporarily relocate staff.

For identifying qualified staff members, you want to create and keep up-to-date, organised files on all first aiders that clearly outline who’s qualified and to what level. Anyone with first aid qualifications should have this stored in their digital profile, including the date of their course completion, the provider of their training, and any certification uploads.

Finding a way to group your first-aider information together will help you in the long run. If you want to message them all, then you can in seconds, provided you have the tools to do that. This would also allow you to easily see who wants additional first aid training. Then, you can invite all relevant members of the team to training events. You can also get managers to invite on their staff’s behalf or allow individuals to apply to attend training themselves.

First aid is a critical way you can keep your workforce safe, protected, and your organisation running smoothly. But with first aiders spread across the depth and breadth of your business, identifying qualified members can be difficult to keep up with. 

If you want to do all of the above on one platform, Inform People can help.

Inform People makes managing your first aiders easy. With a seamless way to organise qualifications and training, visualise qualified members of staff across all locations, easily invite staff to further training, you can ensure your workforce is always protected and safe. To find out more, get in touch with us via email or on +44 (0)161 713 4104.