Internal First Aid School Management Model

First Aid as the Foundation of Trust in HSE

Safety training is often perceived by employees as a mere formality. Implementing a corporate culture is best started with topics that carry obvious personal value. In her presentation, Vera Konshina explains why first aid courses are the ideal entry point. This is highly interactive training that breaks down barriers between HSE specialists and workers. By showing how lifesaving skills can be useful in everyday life, the company builds loyalty: after first aid, employees are much more willing to engage in learning other, more specific rules for safe work execution.

Selection and Stress Testing of Internal Trainers

A key problem in corporate training is the lack of engaged instructors. Using her company as an example, the speaker shows that for the role of an internal trainer, it is not necessary to look for a ready-made expert with perfect knowledge of regulations. It is much more important to find an employee who is genuinely passionate about sharing knowledge.

To train such specialists, a proprietary multi-stage methodology was developed. It includes:

• Train-the-trainer sessions: teaching tools for retaining attention, working with group dynamics, and handling difficult questions. This turns a dry lecture into an interactive process.
• Stress exams (final courses): the candidate conducts a class in front of a panel of experts who intentionally act as undisciplined listeners — arguing, asking uncomfortable questions, and disrupting the flow of the lesson. This is necessary so that the trainer feels confident in any unexpected situation in a real classroom.

Program Matrix: From Theory to Practice in the Dark

The audience of a large company is diverse: office employees, warehouse workers, engineers. Creating a single face-to-face course for everyone is inefficient. The presentation details the approach to dividing programs:

• Basic online course: a mandatory stage for all employees. Moving theory to an online format (segmented video lessons with demonstrations) saves days of in-person training and provides a unified foundation.
• Practical modules with situational tasks: in-person sessions where participants are divided into "rescuers" and "victims". To reinforce skills under stress, final tasks are practiced in complete darkness (simulating a building power outage). This builds strong muscle memory.
• Refresher courses: short review sessions after a year or two. Thanks to the high quality of the basic training, the attendance rate for these voluntary courses reaches 75%.

Attendance Management and Group Communication

Even the highest quality course is useless if people do not attend. A standard email with the date and location leads to a loss of up to 80% of the audience, especially in distributed teams. To solve this problem, a group chat is created two weeks before the start. Short teaser videos are sent there, the value of the course is explained, and the instructor is introduced. This audience warm-up increased attendance to 95%.

During the training itself, instructors use physiological experiments to retain attention. For example, to explain the importance of tilting the victim's head back to open the airway, participants are asked to try swallowing saliva with their heads tilted back. Practical experience instantly reinforces the theoretical rule.

What you will learn from this webinar:

• How to build a system for training internal instructors from current employees without taking them away from their core duties?
• How to use stress testing to check an instructor's readiness to work with a difficult audience?
• How to combine online theory and in-person practice to reduce training time without losing quality?
• What communication tools before the course help increase employee attendance to 95%?
• How to calculate the optimal number of internal trainers depending on the size of the enterprise?