Hostile Environment Safety training: Preparation of High-Risk Travel

When you are on duty in crisis zones, conflict regions or unstable areas, you can only hope that things will go well, but that is not enough. Hostile Environment Safety Training – sometimes abbreviated HEST, HEAT, or HET – has become an essential course of training among journalists, aid workers, researchers, and corporate employees working under difficult conditions around the world.

What Is Hostile Environment Safety Training?

Hostile Environment Safety Training courses equip a person with skills to identify, prevent, and react to threats that they may encounter when visiting or working in high-risk areas. These are not theoretical classroom lessons with PowerPoint presentations. Rather, they interlace practical exercises with real life situations, which provide the participants with practical experience that can literally help them save their lives.

The training is usually very broad in terms of situations, including natural disasters and medical emergencies, kidnapping, detention, and armed conflict. They teach the participants how to evaluate risks prior to travel, how to have situational awareness on the ground, and how to make critical decisions in pressure situations.

Who Needs This Training?

Initially designed to help military personnel and war correspondents, HEST courses have been opened to anybody whose job brings them into potentially dangerous scenarios. A number of the visitors are journalists that work in the conflict zones, but you will also see humanitarian workers, researchers, expedition leaders, and corporate employees that travel to unstable areas regularly.

These courses have proved to be of value even to gap year students who intend to spend extended time in developing nations and adventurers who intend to go on long distance cycling trips. The training may be tailored to the particular risks that each group is at risk of.

Course Formats and Duration

The courses of HEST are available in different duration based on the level of coverage needed. One-day courses provide a foundation of travel safety principles and are commonly used by organisations desiring to offer a basic training to their employees. Two-day programmes have more practical exercises and provide participants with an opportunity to work through various situations.

The five-day courses are a full immersion into material, and the balance between theory and practical exercises and group discussions is well considered. The longer programmes allow participants time to repeat their new skills, gaining confidence and muscle memory which they will use in the field when they are actually in the field.

What You’ll Actually Learn

The finest HEST courses do not fear the worst case scenarios. During the training, teachers who have experience in the field take trainees through real-life scenarios, such as checkpoint interactions and crowds of hostile people, to medical emergencies in isolated areas.

Practical components usually involve role-playing activities in which individuals need to discuss their way out of tense situations, first aid in case of traumas, and survival skills such as hypothermia. The psychological side of working in stressful conditions and the ability to help colleagues who have suffered trauma is also taught in many courses.

Much attention is paid to vehicle safety since road traffic accidents result in the greatest number of injuries and deaths among international workers than other factors. The participants are taught defensive driving skills, how to act in case their convoy is attacked, and how to get out of a vehicle in a short time.

The Significance of Training that is Context-Specific.

There is generic safety advice and then there is generic advice. The dangers that a documentary filmmaker in Cairo is going to face are dramatically different than those that an aid worker in rural Afghanistan or a business executive visiting Lagos is going to face. Quality HEST providers tailor their training to the real destinations and scenarios that their participants will experience.

This implies the investigation of country-related risks, local cultural sensitivities, and offering a realistic recommendation that is applicable on the ground. Teachers ought to respond to certain questions concerning the areas that participants will be visiting.

Beyond Individual Skills

The contemporary HEST programs are aware that individual safety is not solely a matter of individual capabilities. The training may also involve advice on selecting trustworthy security companies, knowledge on what travel insurance entails and organisational policies on employee safety.

A lot of organisations are now offering regular staff refresher training to keep the safety knowledge up to date as global events evolve and new threats are introduced. Others use a combination of face-to-face training and online learning and webinars to access employees in different countries.

The Value of Experience

The background of the instructor is very important when selecting a HEST course. The best trainers are those who have real experience of operating in hostile conditions themselves – as journalists, military personnel, security consultant, and humanitarian workers. This practical experience enables them to give insights and background that extends far beyond textbook situations.

The participants always state that the training becomes much more believable and memorable when they learn to navigate such situations by a person who has actually gone through them. Good teachers are able to provide an insight into what really occurs during crises, and not what should occur based on procedures.

Is It Worth It?

Any person who has gone through quality hostile environment training would respond the same way: yes, absolutely. Even seasoned travellers state that they have learnt useful things that they had never thought of. The training is not only minimising risks, it is giving real peace of mind to both the employees and the organisations which expose them to difficult circumstances.

Probably more to the point, participants tend to find that with adequate training, going to challenging areas does not feel more scary, it just feels easier. It is much less stressful to learn how to react to possible dangers than to travel in a state of anxious ignorance.

To any person whose job requires traveling to remote, unstable, or perhaps dangerous areas, hostile environment safety training is not a luxury or a box-checking affair. It is a vital investment in making it home safe.