Case Studies

The company saw turnover increase by 4% to £16.2 million, and employee numbers grew in readiness for the next phase of a three year multi-million pound investment and expansion plan. However, that was not all. 2015/16 was also when Ronnie passed and graduated with his NEBOSH National Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety.

When you look at Ronnie’s background as well as his position, it’s perhaps a little surprising that he should ever have set out to achieve a high level professional health and safety qualification. Before becoming Bells’ Managing Director, he was the company’s Finance Director, so you might imagine he would only be concerned with the financials. However, for Ronnie, financial performance and looking after people goes hand in hand.

“Despite always working with accounts, I’ve always been people orientated,” he told us. “Health and safety at work isn’t a privilege, it’s everyone’s right regardless of where they stand within the hierarchy of the company. Everyone should be safe at work. I also sussed out quite early that caring for employees and training them well, can really help a business to improve financially.”

These were the reasons why Ronnie took his NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety back in 2007: “I basically took on overall responsibility for keeping people safe at Bells and straight away thought, hang on a minute, it’s all very well to maybe make the odd mistake on a balance sheet or a cashflow, but if I make a mistake with health and safety… well.”

Taking the NEBOSH National General Certificate gave him the knowledge he needed, and he now believes the qualification is perfectly suited to the modern Managing Director: “First and foremost, when you mention NEBOSH people recognise it,” he explained. “It’s also transferrable, it’s something you have for life. In addition, we need to recognise how the business environment has changed. If you look at some of the horror stories with health and safety, there are huge sums and huge costs involved and I personally believe that senior people, whether it’s MDs or directors, need to be absolutely aware of the dangers of ignoring health and safety.”

He added: “The more I progressed with my studies with NEBOSH, the more I began to think, yes we need to spend more time in this area, and allocate more resources to the points raised. So I think it’s important, at the very least, to hold the Certificate.”

Of course Ronnie took things one step further by following up with the NEBOSH National Diploma partly due to peer pressure from colleagues at work. The company’s Operations Director and Depot Manager took the qualification at the same time and all three graduated together. Several others, at various levels at Bells, have also taken their NEBOSH National General Certificate.

“Where I think the Diploma has paid off has been in encouraging others to take NEBOSH qualifications,” said Ronnie. “Overall that has helped us take health and safety to a whole new level here at Bells, which has had a major impact. We’ve reduced accidents, near misses and even our insurance costs have gone down dramatically on the back of the qualifications we hold.”

He concludes: “By far my biggest thing with health and safety is that I sleep well at night. If some-thing does happen and someone has an accident, then hand on heart I know we have done our absolute 100% best to avoid it. Oh and there is the wee swagger of having the NEBOSH Diploma, especially when you go into a health and safety meeting!”