Health and safety good for business
Students from the new South Wiltshire University Technical College (UTC), MG Cannon’s Community Group of the Year 2015, visited MG Cannon this month to learn about how good health and safety is good business.
Nearly 50 students and their lecturers attended the two 1.5 hour sessions at MG Cannon over two days.
The sessions included a talk on what MG Cannon do, the common risks a business has to manage and examples of how MG Cannon manage their own health & safety policies for the safety of staff, clients, business partners, customers and the local community. The talk concluded with a tour of the workshops and a Q&A session.
Robert Snook opened the talks by advising the students, ‘In my opening day talk last month, I said ‘attitude is everything’ and health and safety is no different – your attitude toward it is everything. It cannot be a program of the month’
The students learned about how businesses manage fire regulations, waste disposal, electrical safety, COSHH, PPE, manual handling, visitors to site, equipment maintenance, calibration and the monitoring of the welfare of staff in a business.
Robert concluded the talks by stating, ‘You have all chosen to enrol at the UTC because you believe it will give you the best chance of a good career in a good business. Well there is no such thing as a good career in a good business with bad health & safety. If you want a good career in a good business then good health & safety will be the minimum standard in that business.’
South Wiltshire UTC principal Gordon Aitken explained how vital inputs from supporting businesses are, ‘The key difference in a UTC is that everything the students learn is linked to practical applications. You could teach health and safety from a manual but the students gained enormous added value by seeing for themselves how much health and safety matters to a top quality local business such as MG Cannon. We are looking forward to working closely with the company to bring students’ learning to life across a wide range of curriculum areas.’
