Hi

We currently pay our first aiders an annual £150 responsibility payment.  I want to review this as we are looking to appoint Mental Health First Aiders and I think we need to be fair and consistent in our approach to both types of first aider.  My personal view is that we should not continue with this payment as we are providing first aiders with a valuable life skill that they can take with them if/when they leave the company, and we don't provide a smilar payment to employees who take on other safety roles (eg fire marshals). 

I'm looking to benchmark against what other organisations do, so I would appreciate if you could let me know

- Do you pay a responsibility allownace to first aiders?

- If you have Mental Health First Aiders, do you pay a responsibility allowance to them?

- Do you operate in the  Private / Public / Third sector ?

Many thanks in advance for your assistance.

Sam

Edited by user 27 March 2017 15:35:03(UTC)  | Reason: adding name to end of message

1. Yes

2. N/A

3. Private

 I have always considered the payment as a thank you for the first aiders to offer their service and take responsibility in an accident to tend to the injured. My clients pay it 1/2 yearly.

As previously said, take it away and you may not get volunteers; Also I found it anabled us to select the best people, who wanted to do it.

As mentioned dangerous path to remove tokens such as you have described as a "responsibility payment".

Private sector new FD cancelled the annual payments and the backlash was having to source and train ten replacements as all incumbents were unhappy at losing their £100 FAAW and £100 Fire Marshal money just before Christmas. Some people unfortunately know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Also be careful if your staff are unionised as normally such payments would have been set in agreement with the union.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Some people unfortunately know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Excellent. I think I might get that quote put on a t-shirt.

Oh and...

1. No

2. N/A

3. Private

Agree with previous posters regarding taking the money away. That valuable 'life skill' has a very limited shelf life.

1. No.

2. N/A

3. Private

At least that's the situation with my current client. The £150 payment you mention is coincidentally the same figure that i've seen at two clients in the past - I now wonder where that figure orginated!

It's never easy taking something away - please let us know your final decsion.

Hi

Thanks for your responses so far.   I agree it could be difficult to remove the £150 we pay to existing first aiders and to be fair it's looking unlikely that we will do.  But I think you either pay everyone or pay no one, so we need to explore both options, including whether we could introduce some other means of thanks/recognition for people taking on additional roles.  

In this particular organisation there are also some assertions that first aiders aren't making themselves available to respond to calls for assistance (ie not answering the "hunt" telephone call and assuming another first aider will respond).  This leads me to wonder if the fact there is a monetary amount associated with the role means people volunteer to get a bit extra cash and a few days out the office training but with no interest in actually doing the role.  If we removed the payment and introduced some other means of recognition then we may get volunteers who actually want to do the role.  All the existing first aiders have been in place since before I came on board (relatively recently) without any formal process/procedure in place for recruiting, which is something I will be addressing. 

Sam

Well, this is a bit different for us because 1st Aid is one of our core activities, as is 1st Aid training. We also have in house psycho-social support, so:

1 No

2 No

3 Voluntary sector,

John

1. Yes

2. Yes

3.Public

Only fair IMHO

1. Yes

2. N/A

3. Private sector.

I was coerced into becoming a First Aider several years ago - The payment was £30 per month! I still didn't want to do it, though... I only chose to do it because we needed an additional First Aider and nobody else would step up.

I agree with the others who have said that the removal of a payment would be a bad thing. It might only be £100 a year or so, but the "life skill" of First Aid is no more of a perk than being trained as a Fire Marshal. Some people will readily take on these skills and responsibilities, but many won't. I worked for one company who struggled to get First Aiders simply because there was no incentive other than the "life skills" element.