Employee Fire Safety Training: Who Needs It, How Often, and What It Should Include

Many companies only think about fire safety training when a fire inspector announces a visit or when an insurance adjuster calls after a minor fire. In both cases, the same question will be asked sooner or later: when did you last train your employees on fire safety, and how can you prove it? The answer “we have OHS training” won’t hold up at that moment—fire safety training is a separate activity with its own content, its own deadlines, and its own documentation.

Let’s go through who the training concerns, why the category of activities performed matters, how training for employees, training for managers, and the professional training of fire prevention officers and fire watch patrols differ, what the training should include, and how to manage a thematic plan and attendance records so they can be relied upon even years later.

Why it all starts with the category of activities performed

Fire safety regulations divide performed activities into three categories based on the level of fire risk: without increased fire risk, with increased fire risk, and with high fire risk. The obligation for regular fire safety training applies to the two higher categories—and so does the obligation to establish fire watch patrols and ensure their professional training. We discuss in detail how categorization works and what documentation is associated with it in the article on fire safety in a company.

A simple sequence follows from this for training:

• Without increased fire risk — typically smaller administrative offices or minor services. Regulations do not require regular fire safety training here; however, basic fire safety topics (escape routes, fire extinguishers, reporting a fire) belong to OHS training, which applies to every employer.
• With increased fire risk — many manufacturing companies, warehouses, and larger operations fall into this category. This creates the obligation for regular training of employees and managers, and usually also for the professional training of fire prevention officers and fire watch patrols.
• With high fire risk — the strictest regime; training and professional preparation are typically handled by a professionally qualified person here.

Practical consequence: before you start dealing with how often to train, you need to have demonstrable categorization of the activities performed. Without it, you’re only guessing about the scope of training—and an inspection in practice starts precisely with the question of what category you fall into and based on what.

Three different activities, three different deadlines

Fire safety regulations do not work with one universal “fire safety training” but with several separate activities. Each has its own audience, its own content, and its own maximum repetition interval:

The stated deadlines are the maximum and are based on fire safety regulations; paragraph references can be found in the linked article on fire safety in a company. Internal fire safety documentation may set more frequent repetition—typically where there is high turnover, shift work, or riskier technologies. In addition to regular repetition, employee training is also conducted when there is a change of workplace or job assignment, if this changes the fire risk they come into contact with—transferring an accountant from the office to the dispatching area in a flammable liquids warehouse is a new situation from a fire safety perspective, even if the employment contract remains the same.

At first glance, it seems strange that managers have a longer interval than regular employees, even though their training is broader in content. The logic is that managers are responsible for organizing fire safety in their section continuously—making it all the more important that their training is not just a signature on the same sheet as their subordinates.

And who is often forgotten during planning:

• part-time workers and temporary workers — they work at the same workplace and with the same fire risk as permanent employees,
• agency workers — at the user’s workplace, they are practically included in its training system,
• external persons performing activities in the operation — service technicians, cleaning staff, long-term present suppliers; for activities with increased fire risk, familiarizing them with the risks is also expected in practice,
• people ensuring fire safety outside working hours — security, reception, night shift; they need to know what to do in a building where no one else is present at that time.

Employee vs. management training: same topic, different depth

A regular employee needs to know what to do when they spot a fire: how to raise the alarm, which way to exit, where the nearest fire extinguisher is, and what not to use it on. A manager needs a second layer on top of that—how to organize fire safety in their assigned section:

• what follows from the fire safety documentation for their workplace (fire safety rules, fire alarm directives, evacuation plan),
• how to continuously check the condition of the section: clear escape routes, accessible fire extinguishers and energy shut-offs, compliance with smoking bans and rules for working with open flames,
• how to proceed in the event of a fire: evacuation of subordinates, reporting, cooperation with firefighters, recording the event,
• what to do with identified defects and where to record them.

In practice, it is therefore a mistake to “train” managers together with regular employees according to the same syllabus. During an inspection or after a real event, the difference is quickly apparent: a manager who does not know their own alarm directives is a weak point for the company, regardless of the signature on the attendance record.

Professional training: fire prevention officers and fire watch patrols

The third type of activity is no longer training in the usual sense but the preparation of people who have a specific role in fire safety.

Fire prevention officer performs preventive fire inspections of the operation and records their results, typically in the fire logbook. Their professional training therefore aims at what they should be able to recognize during an inspection: pallets stacked across an escape route, a blocked hydrant, extension cords under a carpet, expired deadlines for fire extinguisher inspections.

Fire watch patrol is established in areas where activities with increased or high fire risk are carried out—usually where at least three employees work in that space. The task of the patrol is to supervise compliance with fire safety regulations and, in the event of a fire, to take necessary measures: help with evacuation, summon help, and attempt initial intervention if it is safe.

The professional training for both roles is repeated at least once a year and, besides theory, should also have a practical part—patrol members should know their station, assigned equipment, and tasks in the specific hall, not just a generic presentation. It pays to keep an up-to-date list of patrol members: after two people leave a three-shift operation, the patrol may only exist on paper, and this is discovered at the worst possible moment.

What the training should include

The fire safety training syllabus is based on fire safety documentation and actual operations. In practice, it generally covers:

1. organization and provision of fire safety in the company and obligations arising from fire safety regulations,
2. fire risks of specific performed activities—what really burns in your facility: flammable liquids, dust, charging stations, welding,
3. familiarization with documentation: workplace fire safety rules, fire alarm directives, fire evacuation plan,
4. location and use of fire extinguishers and other material equipment—the training is directly followed by annual fire extinguisher inspections and their records,
5. method of raising a fire alarm and summoning help, including the fire reporting point, if established,
6. escape routes, exits, and the assembly point after evacuation,
7. workplace specifics: welding and other work with open flames, charging stations for handling equipment and e-bikes, flammable liquid stores, lithium batteries.

The most common weakness of training is not a missing point in the syllabus but generality. A presentation downloaded from the internet that doesn’t know your alarm directives or the location of your equipment has formally “taken place”—but it won’t help anyone during a fire or an inspection. Good training works with the floor plan of your premises, with your directives, and with the risks of your technologies, and ideally includes walking the escape route and a live demonstration of a fire extinguisher.

Documentation: thematic plan and attendance record

For fire safety training, two things are documented in practice: what was taught and who underwent the training.

Thematic plan and time schedule describes the syllabus of individual types of training and professional preparation and the time devoted to individual topics. It is prepared separately for employee training, management training, and professional training—this is where it becomes apparent whether the company truly distinguishes between the three different activities or has one document for everything.

Training record (attendance sheet) should make it possible to link a specific person to a specific training session. A usable record contains:

• date and place of the event,
• type of activity (employee training / management training / professional training),
• syllabus or reference to the thematic plan and duration,
• name, qualification, and signature of the person who led the training,
• list of participants’ names with their own signatures,
• method of verifying knowledge, if conducted,
• date of the next training.

Common errors from practice: a single “OHS + fire safety” sheet without distinguishing content and time allocation; managers signed on the regular employee sheet; a sheet without a date or without the trainer’s signature; a new employee waiting half a year for a “group session” but working in the operation from day one. Documentation can also be kept electronically—the essential point is that it should be possible to demonstrate who completed what, when, and to what extent.

It pays to keep track of deadlines just like with inspections: a simple table with the type of activity, the date last performed, and the maximum next deadline takes just a few lines and saves arguments about whether the two-year deadline for shift work might have already passed last year.

Who can train—and who will arrange it all for you

Who can perform individual activities depends on the regulations on fire safety, based on the category of activity and the type of activity. In simple terms: the higher the category and the more specialized the activity, the more qualified the person. For management training and professional training, a professionally qualified person or fire safety technician is expected; regular employees can typically be trained by their manager after that manager has been trained. Determining the exact setup for your operation is one of the things determined together with the categorization of activities.

A small or medium-sized company usually doesn’t put this together on its own. An external fire safety provider categorizes the performed activities, prepares thematic plans, conducts training and professional preparation, issues documents, and monitors deadlines—and stands next to you during an inspection, not against you.

Fire safety training is commonly combined with OHS training into one session—the syllabi overlap on evacuation and first aid. We describe how to set up the OHS part in the article on OHS training for employees. The condition for a combined session is that both parts have their own block in the syllabus with their own time allocation, and that documentation can prove each separately—one universal sheet titled “training” proves neither.

Sources for this article

• Fire safety – SOHE service for companies.
• Fire safety in a company: what documentation, inspections, and deadlines await you – categories of performed activities, mandatory fire safety documentation, and paragraph references to the Fire Protection Act and the Decree on Fire Prevention.
• OHS training for employees – intervals, content, and documentation of occupational safety training, with which fire training is often combined.
• Fire extinguisher inspection in a company – deadlines and records for material equipment that training follows up on.
• The breakdown of activities and the maximum deadlines are based on fire safety regulations—the Fire Protection Act and the implementing Decree on Fire Prevention—as currently amended.

The text is for informational purposes and does not replace a legal opinion. The specific scope, deadlines, and training syllabi must be set according to the actual operation, categorization of performed activities, and fire safety documentation.

Don’t know what category you fall into, who should form your fire watch patrol, and when someone’s deadline expires? We’ll set up fire safety training from categorization through thematic plans to attendance records. Send us a non-binding inquiry or email us at info@sohe.cz, and we’ll arrange the scope according to your operation.