Work placement
Students and staff are sometimes required to undertake a period of work placement within another institution, commercial sector employer or other organisation as part of their course of study or employment with the University. Such activities are extremely valuable but can expose the participants to risks that are not under the direct control of theUniversityofGlasgow. Despite this the University retains a significant amount of legal and moral responsible for the safety of its students or employees during such work.
The safety of the individual during a work placement is dependant on the standards operated within the organisation in which they are working and although many organisations will operate to extremely high standards of safety, some may not. To ensure that staff and students working within third party organisations are adequately protected it is necessary to ensure that mechanisms exists for approval of placement providers, for monitoring of safety during placements and for obtaining feedback from participants. These arrangements will vary widely depending on the nature of the placement and the organisation involved and whether the placement is University arranged or “self-found”. In all cases it is important that those involved are provided with sufficient training and information to allow them to recognise when standards are reasonable, to know when they are not and to know how they should respond to this. The UCEA document linked below provides a useful framework for management of placements.
Note that the Finance Office will require notification of work placements.