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Occupational Licensing: What TCs Need to Know

Unfortunately, serious injury and sudden illness in the workplace is not an unusual event. For the ill or injured person, promptly and correctly given emergency aid can often mean the difference between a quick or lengthy recovery, a temporary or permanent disability, and sometimes – life or death. Consequently, the goal of emergency care training is to help students develop or refine the necessary knowledge, skills, and confidence to properly respond to a serious, unexpected incident and to minimize its outcome.

A secondary, but equally compelling goal of emergency care training is compliance with federal and state regulatory requirements. Although compliance with OSHA requirements relating to first aid in construction, maritime, or general industry plays an important role, state governmental occupational licensing requirements related to emergency care training are also pervasive.

Occupational licensing is government permission to work in a particular trade or profession, and typically requires the worker to document having received specific training and certification. Due to its vital role in helping safeguard public health and safety, emergency care training and certification is frequently prescribed in state licensing regulations. Currently our ASHI and MEDIC First Aid emergency care training and professional continuing education programs are accepted, approved, or recognized as meeting the requirements of more than 5,200 state and federal regulatory agencies, occupational licensing boards, national associations, commissions, and councils in more than 550 occupations.

Properly structured and reasonably enforced, occupational licensing requirements help protect consumers by assuring minimum educational requirements for licensed workers. Occupational licensing requirements can also help workers find employment and advance their career.

Conversely, regulations should be subject to periodic review and reassessment to determine whether they are truly necessary in order to achieve the regulating body’s stated goals, or whether they have become too burdensome for their affected industries. Current efforts at the state and federal level to identify, consolidate, or eliminate burdensome occupational licensing regulations will help ensure a regulatory environment that supports competition and innovation, and reduces barriers to job creation.

When licensing regulations are enacted to protect public health and safety, emergency care training and certification often play a vital role. Accordingly, ASHI and MEDIC First Aid Training Centers, authorized instructors, and instructor trainers must be completely familiar with the state occupational licensing requirements of persons to whom they offer training and certification. Training Centers and authorized instructors and instructor trainers should not advertise, represent, or otherwise promote that their courses will meet specific regulatory requirements unless and until such is confirmed with the licensing authority and/or HSI.  If you have questions or concerns, just give us a call at 800-447-3177.

Identify Customer Pain Points to Market Your Training Center

What is it about an ad or other piece of marketing collateral that makes it click with us? A compelling image and succinct copy are important, but those alone might not be enough to really pull a potential customer in. One way to grab someone’s attention is by demonstrating that you “get it” about what they need, and nothing shows that more clearly than when you directly address a customer’s “pain points.”

Pain points are the issues a customer needs to fix, and your job in promoting your Training Center is to show them you have the solution. To do that, you need to understand your customers well enough that you can bake those solutions right into your advertising messaging.

In the emergency care training business, typical customer pain points may include:

• The need to provide required certification training but not having the in-house staff to do it
• Ensuring the training they’re arranging for their employees will be acceptable to the regulating body that governs that customer’s industry
• Reducing the administrative burden of tracking down employees and sending them their certification cards

If your marketing message articulates the problem your potential customer needs to solve and then immediately demonstrates how your TC can solve that problem, your advertising moves from simply broadcasting your offerings and services into more of a conversation between you and your customer. It’s easy to ignore a shouted message; it’s harder to ignore a conversation where you are a participant.

A blog post at Tempesta Media suggests three questions you should ask yourself about your customers before creating any type of marketing material:

1. What problem is your product or service solving?
2. What need is your product or service filling?
3. What value does your content provide?

Customers tend to seek out CPR, AED, and first aid training because of a compliance requirement. They need to know that your ASHI or MEDIC First Aid training classes will provide certification that will satisfy that requirement. If you missed it in the April issue of the newsletter, check out our in-depth look at how our Regulatory Compliance tool can help you ascertain which of our programs have been approved for training in your area or your customer’s industry. When you plan to target a particular audience, verify that you can fulfill their requirements, and then, in your marketing, let your customers know up front that you know what they need and that you offer it.

OK, so you’ve shown them you understand the issue, but how do you deliver what they need? The Tempesta article lists “responsiveness” and “reassurance” as common customer needs. That holds true for a TC’s customers, too. Make it clear in your marketing materials that you understand your customers don’t have time to wait for certification cards to come in the mail and then waste even more time resending them out to their employees. Because ASHI and MEDIC First Aid allow you to provide cards on the spot after the successful completion of a class, you’ve taken that burden off their plate. That’s a great selling point!

And what about a multi-purpose marketing piece? Is there any additional value-add for your customer in your collateral, other than simply to tell them about your TC offerings? What if your marketing piece is a flyer on how to do chest compressions? Or an infographic with statistics on sudden cardiac arrest that they can hand out at their next safety meeting? Be creative!

To get you started, log in to your TC portal to download a customizable version of HSI’s SCA infographic, with a space at the bottom to add your TC name and contact info.

As Tempesta put it:

Get Discounts for Your Professional Liability Insurance with Lockton Affinity and HSI

Did you know that your HSI-affiliation means you can get preferred rates on your professional liability insurance when you choose Lockton Affinity? We’ve relied on Lockton for many years to provide comprehensive and economical liability insurance options to our instructors and Training Centers.

As a professional in an instructional environment, a vital component of your success is protecting your most valuable personal assets: your reputation and your financial security. A single claim, justified or not, can take significant time away from work and cost thousands of dollars to defend against. With professional liability insurance offered through Lockton in partnership with HSI, you get the financial protection you need if a claim is ever made against you.

To learn more and get a free quote, visit Lockton Affinity’s website at: http://locktonmedicalliabilityinsurance.com/hsi/

Training Center Profiles

Meet Your Peers

Discover what your peers are thinking about the emergency care industry, the challenges their TCs face, and the solutions they’ve found in their quest to make their workplaces and communities safer.

TC Name: Survival Group

Brand: ASHI

Director: Dan Carmody

City, State: North Haven, CT

Website: www.survivalgroup.biz

Type of Training Center: External (Training for individuals or organizations for a fee)

Business Structure: For-profit corporation

How long have you been in business?

15 years; 2 years or less as an ASHI TC

What is the biggest challenge for you and your business?

Expenses, and recognition of ASHI and MEDIC First Aid training programs

How do you market your business? (ranked in order of importance)

1. Website
2. Email marketing
3. Online advertising
4. Ads in local publications
5. Speaking as an emergency care expert at public events
6. Trade shows

What strategies or investments have proven to be a waste of time and money?

Trade shows that do not target our primary market

Based on what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself when you were starting out?

Focus on what you do best -- You may be a great instructor, but you need to take more business classes.

Where do you see your business and the emergency care training industry in the next 5-10 years?

Small TCs are going to have to merge with larger TCs to survive. Instructors working from the trunk of their car will not be able to meet the changing regulations.

Of your business or training investments that cost less than $500, what has given you the best return?

Membership in our local Chamber of Commerce for great networking opportunities

Where do you go to stay current with the latest industry information and knowledge?

I like conferences. I get more when I can interact with trendsetters.

What are some of the most common misconceptions or mistakes you have seen/heard in your career?

"I am a great provider/instructor so I can run a training business." Chances are you will have difficulty with the administration side of the business.

Can you share a favorite Good Samaritan story about your students?

One of our instructors is a sudden cardiac arrest survivor that was saved by another of our instructors. (For the complete story, watch for an upcoming ASHI & MEDIC First Aid blog post.)

 
TC Name: Gila River EMS

Brand: ASHI

Director: Grace Watson

City, State: Sacaton, AZ

Type of Training Center: Internal (Training for employees/members at no charge)

Business Structure: Government

How long have you been in business?

45 years, 10+ years as an ASHI TC

What strategies or investments have proven to be a waste of time and money?

Written advertising

Based on what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself when you were starting out?

Scan every roster, test, and evaluation after monthly reports to stay on top of documentation

What are some of the most common misconceptions or mistakes you have seen/heard in your career?

“You must do ventilations” and “You must crack a rib”

Where do you go to stay current with the latest industry information and knowledge?

NAEMT, NREMT, AZ DHS, conferences

Is emergency care (or other workplace safety) training your primary job function at your organization?

Yes

What is the biggest training challenge at your company?

Budget

What has your company done to make safety part of the day-to-day culture?

We have a Compliance Officer and Infection Prevention Officer. We also teach summer safety to hundreds of kids at the end of every school year.

Please share a success story about how you increased corporate leadership buy-in and support for your emergency care training efforts.

Our corporation has a website, and our community members are always commenting about when they have done something that they learned in our classes.

What is the most difficult part of managing an internal Training Center? (Choose all that apply)

Buy-in from management, and working within a limited budget

 We want to hear from you!

Share your wisdom with your TC peers by completing one of our 15-minute profile surveys.

If your TC provides training for individuals or organizations for a fee, click the "External TC" button. For those TCs that offer training for employees/members at no charge, choose "Internal TC."

How to Ensure Your Instructors Receive Emails from HSI

HSI sends emails to our ASHI and MEDIC First Aid TCs and instructors regarding new programs, upcoming deadlines, special offers, and other important information. If your instructors are not receiving these emails, they may have unsubscribed from our communications in the past, such as our blog at https://www.hsi.com/blog.

In order to receive emails from HSI’s email marketing system, simply forward this resubscribe link to your instructors:  https://www.hsi.com/resubscribe. There they’ll find a text field to enter their email address to test whether they are subscribed to emails from HSI. If they’ve opted-out of emails, a red button will appear, directing them to click to resubscribe.

After completing this process, if they are still not receiving emails from us, please call us at 800-447-3177 or email customerservice@hsi.com to resolve the issue.