MAC SST: Making the Refresher a Recurring Pillar of Your Training Offer

In most training fields, every sale must be won anew. France’s workplace first-aid scheme works differently: the SST certificate (sauveteur secouriste du travail) is valid for 24 months, and keeping it requires a 7-hour refresher session known as the MAC (maintien-actualisation des compétences). In other words, recurrence is written into the scheme itself. For an authorised provider, the MAC is not a side product: it is the economic engine of the SST activity. Provided you organise it as such.

What the scheme says about the MAC

The MAC follows the same national rules as the initial course, set by the reference document of the INRS and the health-insurance occupational-risks network:

• Duration: 7 hours, versus a 14-hour minimum for the initial course.
• Frequency: every 24 months, before the current certificate expires.
• Certifying content: the MAC updates competencies (technical and regulatory developments, feedback on practice) and includes assessments; it leads to a new certificate valid for 24 months.
• Identical framework: authorised entity, up-to-date SST trainer, session declared and certificates issued in FORPREV — the full circuit is described in our FORPREV walkthrough.

One commercially useful point: trainees are not required to take their refresher with the organisation that trained them initially. Every certificate expiry, wherever the initial course took place, is therefore an opportunity for your organisation.

Why the refresher is no formality

One might see the MAC as an administrative constraint. Research says the opposite: first-aid skills erode quickly without maintenance. The randomised trial by Woollard and colleagues, published in 2006 in the journal Resuscitation (see the study), measured the loss of CPR and defibrillation skills among volunteer responders depending on the interval between refreshers: skill degradation was markedly greater at 12 months than at 7 months. The SST scheme’s 24-month cycle is a regulatory maximum, not a pedagogical optimum — and nothing stops your clients from organising practice drills in between.

That makes a two-stage sales argument: the MAC is mandatory to keep the certificate, and it is pedagogically well-founded. An employer who lets their SSTs lapse loses on both counts — the compliance of their first-aid arrangements and their teams’ real capacity to intervene.

Building the refresher machine

The MAC’s potential does not materialise on its own: deadlines slip, clients forget, certificates lapse. The difference between an organisation that endures and one that capitalises comes down to four mechanisms:

1. The expiry register. Every certificate you issue carries a date: its 24-month expiry is a sale to schedule. Consolidate those dates in your CRM as soon as each session — initial or MAC — is closed.
2. The two-horizon reminder. A first reminder several months before expiry (time for the client to plan and, if needed, assemble a funding file), a second as the date approaches. Send it to the right person: HR or the prevention lead, not only the trainee.
3. The grouped offer. Companies rarely train a single SST. Offer MAC sessions grouping employees whose expiries are close, and synchronise a team’s certificates to simplify the following cycles.
4. The safety net. For latecomers whose certificate has lapsed, steer them towards a recovery refresher without guilt-tripping: a client caught up is worth more than a client lost.

All of this obviously requires being authorised and having a trainer up to date on their own trainer refresher (21 hours every 36 months) — the full pathway is described in our article on the SST trainer.

Answering clients’ classic objections

Selling a refresher always runs into the same objections. Prepare your answers:

• “We’ll see later, it’s only a refresher.” No: past the 24-month deadline, the certificate is no longer valid. The employee no longer counts among the company’s SSTs, and the PSC1 equivalence attached to the certificate falls with it. The MAC is not a nicety — it is the condition of validity.
• “Seven hours is long for a revision.” The MAC is not a revision: it updates competencies against the scheme’s developments, re-drills the techniques — which research shows erode within months — and includes certifying assessments. A new certificate is at stake, not a memory jog.
• “Our SSTs have never had to intervene.” All the better — which is precisely why their skills have not been maintained by real practice. A first aider who has never been called on is the one who most needs to train.
• “Only train the new hires, the veterans already know.” Blending initial courses and refreshers in one planning logic, yes; exempting veterans from the MAC, no: the scheme does not allow it.

Every objection cleared early is a session that does not get negotiated in a rush, three weeks before the deadline.

MAC and funding: don’t lose the sale at the last step

Many companies have their SST courses — initial and refresher alike — funded by their OPCO (sector skills body). In that case your authorisation is not enough: you also need Qualiopi certification, the gateway to pooled funds. An authorised but uncertified organisation will see the sale collapse at the funding-file stage. If you are working towards certification, the traceability the SST scheme imposes (sessions, certificates, trainer qualification) feeds your evidence directly — map it against the framework’s 32 indicators.

Take action

The MAC turns every trained trainee into a recurring client: it is the strongest economic argument for the authorisation. To understand the complete scheme — authorisation conditions, FORPREV, trainers — see our SST authorisation page and download our step-by-step guide.