80% workers wouldn’t fight blaze
Four-fifths of British workers would not feel confident enough if confronted with a small fire at work, new figures suggest.
Theses are the findings of a UK-based fire risk assessment company, which found worrying numbers of workers in offices, industrial settings and the retail sector completely untrained in basic fire safety.
According to FireUK.co.uk, up to 95% of staff claim to have had no training in what to do if they encounter a fire in the workplace, with many not even knowing which extinguisher to use on different types of fire.
According to figures obtained in face-to-face polling of workers from a cross-section of working professions:
- 79% of workers said they wouldn’t have the confidence to fight a small workplace rubbish bin fire
- 95% said they had never been trained in fire safety
- 83% didn’t realise the need for different extinguishers to fight different types of fires
- 16% didn’t know where their nearest fire exit to their work area is
FireUK.co.uk is convinced that the only way that companies can address this potentially dangerous gap is through staff training, both for new staff and employees who have been there some time and think they’ve seen it all.
The company says that even the most experienced staff freeze when faced with a fire emergency, simply because they’ve never been told what to do.
“It doesn’t cost the Earth to train your staff in fire safety and procedures. And in the end it could save lives, and quite possibly save your business.”
