Once upon a time I was trapped in a stuffy council meeting room in Eastleigh, Hampshire listening to an overly chatty first aid training provider talk about how close he lived to other first responders. It was a beautiful day and this same chatty man had promised us that we would be finished by 3 o’clock which, as he rambled on, seemed to become more and more of a pipe dream. I think it is fair to say that there are certain types of training which feel like necessary evils, I have never met anyone excited to attend an emergency first aid at work course but the country is full of people who now know how to perform the Heimlich maneuver which is, when you think about it, strangely comforting.
Not all training is created equal of course and alongside the requirements of law there are plenty of exciting training opportunities that you might want to send yourself, or your staff, along to. Providing great training opportunities is an excellent way to demonstrate the fact that you value your employees and the better skilled your staff are the better they can work for you – whether you want to ramp up your social media presence, better train your sales assistants in upselling, or ramp up your visual merchandising skills to create a shop window worth of Liberty the courses are out there for you.
We’ll be sending around a survey soon to gather members views on exactly what they want a skills top up in with options from basic book-keeping to conflict resolution but in the meantime if you have any ideas then please do get in touch with us. I once worked with a woman who was sent on assertiveness training, something I never would have known existed otherwise. I can’t promise that if you need to train up your waiting staff in origami napkin folding or teach your security team defensive martial arts we will be able to help you but if you think you have a suggestion with potential mass appeal then by all means put it on the pile.
One of the benefits of being part of a BID is that you have access to the communal purchasing power of hundreds of other businesses and we are about to put that power to work to deliver cut price training courses for our members so next time you’re at the end of a long day of emergency first aid at work training at least you will be happy in the knowledge that this life saving knowledge is being given to you on the cheap.
What better benefit could there be than a half price Heimlich maneuver?