How Many Workplace First Aiders (SST) Should a Company Train?

“How many employees should we train as SST?” is one of the first questions a client asks an authorised training organisation. The honest answer has two parts: French labour law sets a precise but limited minimum, and the Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (INRS, the national occupational-safety research institute) recommends going well beyond it for real coverage. Understanding that nuance lets you advise clients accurately — and turn it into a genuine commercial argument.

What French labour law actually requires

Contrary to a persistent belief, no text sets a global SST quota per headcount. Only two articles frame the obligation, and they are more targeted than most people assume:

• Article R4224-15 requires a minimum of one employee trained in first aid in every workshop where dangerous work is carried out, and on any construction site employing more than twenty people for more than fifteen days.
• Article R4224-16 sets a broader duty: organise first aid within the company, whatever its size. A three-employee micro-business is not exempt — it must simply show it has put in place an emergency response suited to its activity.

Both texts sit within the general safety-of-result duty that Article L4121-1 places on every employer: take the measures necessary to protect workers’ physical and mental health. It is this general duty, more than any numeric quota — which the texts do not set — that pushes most companies to train well beyond the strict regulatory floor.

The ratios recommended by INRS

Beyond the legal floor, INRS proposes ratios that labour inspectors and prevention officers use as a reference to judge whether coverage is sufficient:

Activity risk level	Recommended ratio
High risk (industry, construction sites, manual handling)	1 SST per 10 to 15 employees
Moderate risk (retail, services, offices)	1 SST per 20 to 50 employees
Any activity, general rule of thumb	10 to 15% of headcount trained

In practice, a 50-employee company at moderate risk should aim for 5 to 8 trained SSTs — not just one, as the regulatory minimum might suggest. This ratio is not arbitrary: it aims to guarantee that a first aider is available at any time, on every site and every shift, rather than concentrated in a single team.

Why the legal minimum almost never suffices in practice

Three factors quickly erode a coverage calculated too tightly:

• Shift work (2x8, 3x8): an SST present only in the morning does not cover an emergency arising on the night shift.
• Predictable absences: leave, sick days, training, travel mechanically reduce the number of SSTs actually available on a given day.
• Turnover: an SST-trained employee who leaves without being replaced drops coverage below target, sometimes without the employer noticing until an inspection or an accident.

That is why an SST training plan should be thought of as a continuous flow — regular initial sessions and a refresher (MAC) every 24 months — rather than a one-off campaign.

What an under-covered company risks

Failing to meet the first-aid duty is not just a theoretical risk:

• A report from the labour inspectorate, forwarded to the public prosecutor, for a breach of the safety duty — the same enforcement logic described in our article on AIPR and the employer’s duty for another prevention scheme.
• A finding of inexcusable fault against the employer before the social division of the judicial court if a workplace accident occurs without adapted first aid on site, with a significant increase in the compensation owed to the victim.
• An aggravating factor during a certification audit for training organisations themselves, or more broadly a weakness flagged during a labour-authority check or a quality audit at major-account clients.

The scientific literature backs the case for training more first aiders rather than sticking to the bare minimum: a meta-analysis by Song, Guo, Lu, Kang, Song and Gong, published in 2018 in the Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine and covering more than 232,000 patients, shows that cardiopulmonary resuscitation performed by a trained bystander nearly doubles the chances of survival of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The more employees able to intervene in the first minutes, the higher the odds that a trained bystander is present at the right moment.

Turning the diagnosis into a commercial argument

For an authorised SST organisation, explaining these nuances to a prospect changes the nature of the sales conversation: instead of selling a single session, you offer a coverage diagnosis tailored to the client’s actual headcount, shifts and sites. In practice:

1. Map headcount and risk: number of employees per site, per team, activity risk level — close to the needs analysis logic you already run on the Qualiopi side.
2. Cross-reference with INRS ratios to propose a target number of SSTs to train, site by site.
3. Build a multi-year plan: initial sessions to reach the target, then a refresher every 24 months to maintain it — a far more stable recurring flow than a one-off sale.
4. Declare every session in FORPREV and issue the corresponding certificates; our FORPREV walkthrough details the procedure.

This approach turns an obligation perceived as an administrative burden into a value-added advisory service — and keeps the client on the refresher cycle rather than a one-off order.

Take action

Building a solid SST offer requires mastering both your organisation’s authorisation and the regulatory case you make to clients. The Kit Certif Complet (€297, 14-day guarantee) provides ready-to-customise Qualiopi procedures and evidence to secure your certification, and the ebook “Create Your Training Organisation in 30 Days” (€67) walks through the full journey from activity declaration to your first offer — both are bundled in the complete pack at €347.