Which Course Should we Book?
Open course vs. group booking
When making a booking for training, you have a few options open to you; the first of which is whether or not you require a group booking or you only need one or two people in your workforce to be certified.
There is something to be said for each of course, but if you were hoping to have members of staff trained at the same time then an open course may not be the best option. This is because there is no guarantee that there will be enough spaces on any given date. Group booking eliminates that issue, and it comes with several benefits too. Bonus.
When making a group booking, you should also consider making it an offsite booking. There are several reasons why you may want to take this route, as opposed to having a trainer coming to your workplace.
· Logistics. You may not have the room for a trainer to attend and train several people at once. For instance, your business may not have meeting rooms, training rooms or any similar kind of space where this type of training can take place. There's nothing with that, there are not many businesses that do have enough space.
· Disruption. Even if there is enough room, there may not be enough space between the training and your business operations. The last thing anybody wants is for your business to be disrupted, or for the training to take longer than it should because people keep coming in and out of the training space for whatever reason. Neither scenario helps anybody.
· Team Building. You could take this as an excellent team-building opportunity. Every company can benefit from this as it helps to boost morale, interpersonal relationships and productivity. Getting everybody out of work, so to speak, to build on these aspects and gain qualified first aid personnel is a win, win.
The pricing factor
Group bookings are always cheaper than open course bookings, with delegate rates being significantly reduced for group bookings. If yours is a company with a workforce of several dozen staff and you are looking at your first aid provision you are going to need several fully qualified first aiders. For example, it is recommended that at least one first aider for 5-50 members of staff and one for every 50 people after that.
The problem is that many people misinterpret that and end up in trouble. The guidance is one first aider on shift for every 50 members of staff. So if you have 5-50 staff member, you cannot have just one first aider because they are not always going to be on shift. So, one first aider for every shift for every 50 members of staff.
If yours is a 24hr operation then that could mean up to a dozen or more first aiders are needed to comply with the law.
Group bookings allow your company to save a significant amount on the training costs. When you factor in the benefits of the team-building point above, then group bookings do make a world of difference. You will also be able to learn about our other deliverables too, such as fire safety and food hygiene training.