The Challenge
When Rob Dunmore, Director of Finance and Estates (more commonly
known as Bursar) took up his job at Nottingham High School two
years ago, he found that there was no HR Manager or anyone with
professional Health & Safety knowledge on the staff.
In his previous job, he dealt with an external HR provider so
his Bank Relationship Manager’s suggestion that he consider using
Mentor made sense.
"We had no particular issues," Rob says, "We just wanted HR
advice and assistance should we get involved in anything leading to
a tribunal."
Stephanie Pote was appointed Mentor HR Consultant for the school
and produced staff contracts and an employee handbook covering
relevant procedures. She also dealt with long-term absence and some
redundancies. When Rob discovered that Mentor also offered a Health
& Safety service, he signed up for that and Casey Allen was
appointed as H&S Consultant.
The Solution
Casey did a compliance audit to identify any Health & Safety
weaknesses and immediately identified the school’s educational
visits as an area needing attention.
"Being an independent boys' school," Casey says, "there were
lots of sport trips, visits to London or Paris as well as more
extensive trips all over the world, visiting rain forests or rugby
trips to New Zealand.
"Their procedures were good but their notification and approval
process were not."
As the school governors represented the employer, Casey gave
them a presentation about the school trips to get them involved.
She then designed bespoke forms for the school to use for planning
the trips as well as providing the information needed by the Head
Teacher.
This was followed by a training session for all staff involved
with educational visits, run by Casey, on how to prepare for the
school trips and how to do a risk assessment on them.
“We also did some general risk assessment training with
departmental heads,” says Casey, “so that they were implementing
H&S in the school as well, particularly in areas like science,
PE and design and technology.”
The Outcome
Rob is delighted with Mentor. “It’s costing us a lot less than
employing our own HR Manager and we’re not having to develop that
person ourselves. We can tap into all the information we need.
We’re also getting access to people who are out and about all the
time and know what changes are happening. We can benefit from
Mentor’s breadth of experience.”
Health & Safety now appears on most meeting agendas and the
governors are also taking it seriously.
The school has often made use of Mentor’s Telephone Advice
Service, which connects with all types of advisers. Since joining
the service they have made over 350 calls.
“We’re getting more practised at things,” says Rob, who often
recommends the service to other Bursars. “We can now do more
ourselves without consulting Mentor, but when we do we know that
we’re using people who are properly trained rather than just doing
an amateur job ourselves.”
Dealing with Mentor means that you get access to a wide range of
knowledge, up-to-date procedures and the latest legislation. You’re
also tapping into a substantial amount of relevant experience,
which will stand you in good stead.
If
you would like further information on how
RBS
Mentor
can support your sector please click
here.
For details on
how
RBS
Mentor could
help your business in situations like this and many
others, contact
us today. If you already subscribe
to Mentor, please call the Advice
Service.