National Learning at Work Day

Leading first aid training provider, the British Red Cross, is encouraging businesses to use National Learning at Work Day (22/05/08) as a chance to provide more employees with life saving skills.

Learning at Work Day, run by national charity The Campaign for Learning, will focus on a number of areas promoting sustainability within the workplace, one of which being the importance of encouraging employees to learn skills for life.

To mark the day, British Red Cross First Aid Training is organising a series of free sessions throughout the UK to teach first aid. These events will offer the chance to learn essential skills such as CPR and how to treat an unconscious casualty, which could be used to save a life, either in the work place or in the wider community.

As a leading provider of first aid training for the workplace, the Red Cross recognises that providing your employees with the ability to save a colleague's life is a skill which has far reaching benefits, for employee, organisation and the wider community.

Anna Brown, Head of Customer Services for British Red Cross First Aid Training explains, "Ensuring that your employees learn first aid is so much more than just complying with your health and safety obligations. Encouraging people to learn a life skill, such as first aid, shows your commitment to the employee and also to the well being of your whole team. The confidence and motivation that it can give to these individuals is invaluable both in and out of the working environment."

Figures gathered during Red Cross research into the benefits of first aid seem to agree; 97% of respondents said that they now felt confident within themselves, 93% felt more confident in their daily lives with the knowledge that they now possessed life saving skills and 97% felt more confident in their working life.

Interestingly, 100% of delegates surveyed believed that first aid is a vital skill that everybody should know, with 93% feeling that they were equipped to play a wider role in the community given the knowledge and confidence to deal with an emergency situation.

Providing first aid training for your employees, therefore, not only teaches them a valuable life skill but also adds to the resilience of our communities by increasing the chance that you will receive prompt attention from a trained first aider in the event of an accident.

Further information about first aid at work training can be found at www.redcross.org.uk/faw or contact:

Lydia Mottershead
lmottershead@redcross.org.uk
0161 888 8952

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Notes to editors
The National Customer Services Centre will be available to provide more details of free training sessions throughout the UK and can be contacted on 0844 871 8000.

National Learning at Work day is run by the Campaign for Learning as part of Adult Learners Week (17 – 23 May). For further details, please see www.learningatworkday.com

The British Red Cross helps people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are. We are part of a global voluntary network, responding to conflicts, natural disasters and individual emergencies.

We enable vulnerable people in the UK and abroad to prepare for and withstand emergencies in their own communities. And when the crisis is over, we help them to recover and move on with their lives.


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