When I was interviewed for the job at Monoux I had admitted I knew nothing about health and safety. But I was willing to learn. So, in 2008, I was booked on a four-day course in West London to learn something about it.
Like a lot of courses it was held in a hotel in a posh area near Green Park. The people on it were a very mixed group – people starting out on careers, one man who was a chauffeur to a very rich businessman and people from small firms that were doing it to cover that area in addition to other duties. A lot of people were concerned as it featured a one-hour exam on the last day – most had not done an exam for years. It had been 28 years for me, since the awful final chartered accountancy exam.
The instructor was a very personable guy and a good teacher. At one lunch break I spoke to him about what I had to do at the College to pass probation. One thing was to outsource the College’s disastrous cleaning service. Instinctively I was opposed to this, but, despite paying the highest cleaning wages in East London we had over 50% vacancies and a poor service. My predecessor had left a woman called Carol on the College staff to oversee the service. She worked 9am to 3pm. The cleaners worked 6am to 8.30am and 4.30pm to 6.30pm. Her management of this was not ideal.
Carol eventually took a voluntary severance package, though far later than I would have liked to have offered it to her.
The instructor said that he knew a woman who had recently set up her own cleaning company. She had spent her life cleaning and now she was 50 she was fed up working for men who had no idea what the work was like. I took her details and when we tendered the contract Maria Stallward’s company, Accelerate, was on the list.
We short listed two companies based on the tenders. Their responses were very similar so we agreed that both firms would meet the cleaning staff and they would choose which one to take over as they would be transferred across to them. They chose Accelerate, because Maria knew what they did.
Accelerate have retained their contract and their work has been brilliant. It was very early in their history and they could only afford to take the contract if the College paid its invoices in advance of Accelerate paying staff. We agreed to that as we were cash rich. We have also insisted that the outsourced staff still get the London Living Wage. It is possible to outsource without being horrible. What Accelerate give us is procurement power and expertise in cleaning that we could not have in house. This is how we run all our outsourced contracts.
I spent the night before the exam cramming. It turned out I still had it. 23 minutes and 100%.
Health and Safety is regularly derided by free marketers as a barrier to “flexible working”. Health and Safety in dangerous work environments saves lives. The real problems are people who use it as an excuse not to do things that they do not want to do.
Most people do not have the knowledge to call bullshit on people using health and safety as an excuse. If you work in industrial environments or with dangerous chemicals or electricity then health and safety is what saves your life. The people who use it as bullshit are hurting the people who work in dangerous places.
I Gotta Feeling
Five Miles Out 