Toolstation has joined forces with British Heart Foundation (BHF) and committed to training all 5,000 of its employees in CPR through before the end of the year.
Through the partnership, Toolstation and BHF will raise fund, and provide tradespeople with crucial information about cardiovascular disease and their risk factors, while also equipping them with CPR skills, helping to protect both their own heart and that of their colleagues and families.
Lakhvir Sanghera, Managing Director of Toolstation, said: "Tradespeople can face unique and invisible pressures. Long hours on the job and the stress of managing projects can make it difficult to prioritise heart health. Many of our customers work in isolation or remote locations, which makes them particularly vulnerable when an emergency strikes.
"By partnering with British Heart Foundation, we are taking direct action to help support them. We have committed to training 5,000 of our colleagues in RevivR, British Heart Foundation’s CPR training tool, which means our stores across the UK will be staffed by colleagues with lifesaving skills. Alongside this, our teams will be fundraising to support BHF’s vital research, helping to protect the hearts of the tradespeople who do so much for our communities."
Dr Charmaine Griffiths, Chief Executive at the British Heart Foundation, said: “Cardiovascular disease doesn’t just happen in hospitals. It happens everywhere including building sites, in vans and in homes up and down the country. Nearly two thirds of tradespeople know someone else in the trade who’s had a heart problem, so it’s clear this is an issue that can’t be ignored. Through our partnership with Toolstation, we want to make heart health a part of everyday safety — just like hard hats and high-vis.”
The partnership comes as two in three UK tradespeople (63%) say they know a colleague who has been affected by cardiovascular disease or had a heart attack or cardiac arrest, according to new research from the Toolstation and the BHF.
Despite this, nearly half of tradespeople (49%) say they have never spoken to a doctor about their own heart health.
The survey of 500 tradespeople found although three quarters (76%) rate their health as good, more than half (54%) want to eat more healthily, one in five (20%) want to lower their blood pressure and almost four in ten (38%) say they want to better manage stress.
Crucially, many say the nature of the job itself makes healthy choices harder. Almost four in ten tradespeople (39%) say their work makes it more difficult to build healthy habits - more than double the number who say it makes healthy living easier (17%).
