The Gap Between Health and Safety Policy and Practice 📋➡️🏗️

Health and safety policies are often well-written. But what happens when they meet the reality of a live construction site? 

Jimmy Webb speaks with Beth Slade, Founder of Beth Slade Safety Ltd, about the gap between health and safety policy and everyday practice across construction. 

The conversation covers: 

• Where paperwork and compliance fall short on-site
• Why culture, behaviour, and communication matter
• The risks that accreditations and tick-box systems can miss
• How health and safety is experienced day to day in construction

This episode of the UK Construction Podcast, produced by UK Construction Blog, offers practical insight for anyone responsible for safety, people, or site operations.

____________________________________________

🚀 Watch, Like & Subscribe to our YT channel for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@UK_Construction_Blog

🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an episode

Thank you to our sponsor for this episode, WebMotion Media:

https://web-motion.co.uk/

Special shoutout to our dynamic host Jimmy Webb of Construction Cogs: https://constructioncogs.com

 ____________________________________________

Follow us for other industry updates, thought leadership, house building/DIY tips and the occasional crossword puzzle!

► Website: https://ukconstructionblog.co.uk

► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uk-construction-blog

► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uk.construction.blog

► X: https://x.com/UKCBlog

► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UK.Construction.Blog

► Threads: https://www.threads.net/@uk.construction.blog

► Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ukconstructionblog.bsky.social

Transcript

From groundbreaking projects to game-changing innovations, the UK Construction Podcast brings you face-to-face with the industry's brightest minds and boldest thinkers. Each episode features candid conversations with construction leaders, architects, engineers, and on-site experts who share their hard-won insights and behind-the-scenes perspectives. We cut through the noise to deliver actionable intelligence on market trends, emerging technologies, and the forces shaping British building.

Jimmy: Hello everyone, joining me today is Beth Slade. Beth is on a mission to make health and safety less about paperwork and more about people. With years of experience across construction, she helps businesses stay compliant whilst building stronger, safer cultures. She's just launched Safety Shift, a new programme tackling psychological risks head-on. Today is 12 October 2025. Thank you very much for joining me on this Sunday, Beth. How are you?

Beth: Hello, it's so lovely to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to having a chat with you.

Jimmy: Good, good. Yeah, it's great to have you on. So let's start off by telling us about you, what you do. We've given listeners a bit of a summary, so let's delve into that. Expand on what you do for construction companies.

Beth: I set up Beth Slade Safety Limited a little while ago now, and it was born out of an idea to make safety simple but meaningful. I have spent about 20 years now in health and safety across various high-risk industries, but my roots are very much in construction.

Over the last few years I've been working a lot with smaller construction companies who really want to do the right thing when it comes to health and safety, but they don't always know what that is. They just need that support and that bit of guidance to make things simple. We all understand that health and safety is quite a difficult topic. There's a lot of legislation out there, so what I do is just support businesses with really understanding what the requirements are when it comes to the law, and making it really simple.

It's about meeting people where they are on their journey and supporting them and empowering them to have the confidence to understand it more. That's all about just breaking it down, making it simple, meeting them where they are.

Then the other side is making it meaningful. You can have lovely policies, risk assessments, and all that documentation, but ultimately if you want to prevent accidents on site you need to bring your team along on that journey with you. That's the meaningful bit. So it's about culture and transforming culture so that we don't just tick a box with compliance—we're actually making a difference and keeping people safe on site so they get to go home at the end of the day.

Jimmy: Brilliant, love it. So you mentioned it's mainly smaller companies. Do you work for the tier one companies at all?

Beth: Previously before I had my consultancy I was working with a lot of smaller businesses who were making that move into using consultants, but they weren't always getting what they needed out of it. That's where I saw that I could really make a difference and help people. But yes, my client base is very, very mixed. I work across all different sizes of businesses. Again, it's just about meeting them where they are and supporting them on their journey.

Jimmy: Right, okay. Interesting. So can you give a couple of examples of what a company would contact you for?

Beth: That's a really interesting question. If I'm totally honest, what you tend to find is that you don't get called in until something's gone wrong, which is always a challenge because that's not when you want to be called in. It changes the focus a lot when there's an accident on site or the client has discovered something that's not quite right when they've come to do a visit. That's not great for the contractor at all to be told by a client there's a problem.

That tends to be when people will make contact, or it could be that a business is going for a large-scale tender and there's certain thresholds they need to meet with their health and safety. They at that point realise they need some support, so we can support businesses through that process to make sure they've got everything they need in place to be able to be successful in submitting a tender.

It really varies. Then we've also got that other end of the scale where you've got the newer start-ups who maybe have been running things themselves for a while and have just been muddling on through. They've got to a point in their growth where what worked before doesn't work anymore and they need more in-depth support to really understand those risks and what's going on maybe with bigger teams. They might need more training and elements like that. So it's a real big mix of at what point we would get contacted, which is lovely because it keeps it really interesting.

Jimmy: Yeah, so how would a company find you then? How would they even know where to look for that sort of thing?

Beth: We have a presence online, so you can find us at bethsladesafety.co.uk. You can find us on LinkedIn, you can find us on Facebook. We're quite easy to find. If you go onto the website you can get more information around the exact support and the different industries that we work with. We should be quite easy to find, I would hope.

Jimmy: Okay, good. But what would you search for? Like if I was a company wanting some help, what would I actually search for?

Beth: I think what people tend to search for is health and safety consultants, health and safety support, tendering support, competent person advice. Those kind of things tend to be what people tend to search for. Obviously with the world we live in now with AI, AI is pretty good. It points you in the right direction when you start asking questions. Companies like us will pop up as well.

Jimmy: Sure, yeah. So in your 20 years of experience, what's the biggest change you've seen in the health and safety culture in construction?

Beth: That's a really good question, and I'm glad you asked that actually, because I think it's really important that we reflect back. You're probably like me—you've seen a lot of change in the industry over the years.

Dare I say, about 20 years ago, I started my career as a building surveyor, and there weren't very many women around. It was very different back then, and there was a lot of harassment and things going on. It's really nice to see that there's been a big increase in the number of women in construction.

But we've also gone through a lot of changes with legislation as well. Back then was when things were happening like the smoking ban came in, and we had the CDM works being created. So it was a really big change. I think over the years we've got a lot better at controlling risks on site, especially some of the really big ones.

It's really interesting because I think back to that time, and there's stuff that would happen then that you just wouldn't dream about now. Like segregation of pedestrians and plant and transport on site, or our approach to asbestos. Back then, people that were doing apprenticeships weren't really taught about health and safety. My husband included—I know a lot of people back then that were exposed to asbestos during their apprenticeships, and that's mad.

To me, that doesn't feel like 20 years ago. I still think I'm really young, but yeah, it's amazing really how far we've come in those years. We've come so far, definitely with how we manage health and safety and people's perceptions of safety on site, and what we would deem okay to do now. We wouldn't go and rip off an asbestos sheet roof now like we would have done 20 years ago, and not even thought twice about it.

Jimmy: Yeah, I have to admit, it's something I've done myself, working for a one-man band. You just crack on and do these things, don't you?

Beth: You do, yeah.

Jimmy: Yeah. And that's the thing—a lot of these companies, especially the big companies, they've got people who can regulate that and keep an eye on that and say "Look what you're doing," but these smaller companies don't. So it is important to implement that culture of safety where it filters down to smaller companies.

Beth: Yeah. It's hard though, isn't it? It is, and I think it's like starting any new business. You wear so many hats, and you have to learn very quickly how to be a jack of all trades. My thing is IT. I am absolutely useless at IT in my business. Although I've been amazed at what I've been able to achieve with the support of AI myself, you get to a point where you have to outsource something. You have to get that external support in, and it's tough for those smaller businesses in construction because you don't always have the budget to be able to get that support.

That's where things like the monthly subscriptions that you can pay for a library of a suite of all the health and safety documents you might need that you can just go in and download—that's where that becomes very appealing to those smaller companies. And that's great if you've got someone in-house who understands how to do a risk assessment and to risk assess on your sites and within your business.

But when you don't have that, that can actually be more damaging. You don't have the budgets for training and training is a huge part of that culture shift on site. We all know there's lots of pressures in construction and your time is money at the end of the day.

That's one of the biggest barriers we face in construction in changing the culture and bringing people along on the journey—we don't necessarily have the budget or quite often the time to be able to get teams sat down in front of a computer or sat in a meeting and actually doing that hands-on training to make sure that everybody's staying on top of their skills and their knowledge. So yeah, it's a real big challenge. I think that's the challenge with smaller businesses.

But as you get to bigger businesses, there's still challenges there of why we can't necessarily get it right all of the time.

Jimmy: Yeah, you make a really interesting point there about budgets. For a smaller company to approach someone like yourself, is there any funding that is available for them in terms of grants or anything like that?

Beth: No, there isn't, sadly. But I think it's one of those challenges, isn't it? Health and safety, even at a large scale—even a tier one company, for example, in construction, they'll have a health and safety department, but they will still have challenges around budgets because I've been in those situations before. I've been heading up health and safety for large businesses, large scaffolding companies, and you have very similar challenges because you don't make any money in that department. You're not making the revenue there. So you're seen as a cost.

The challenges remain no matter where you are. But ultimately, it is seen quite often as a necessary evil. I think the businesses who really do get it right and invest well are the ones that see it's not all about money. It's about that bigger picture of risk and reputation and all of those things need to be thought about as well.

It can be challenging. But I think as well, at the same time with consultants—there's some out there that give us a bad rep, but we're pretty good people and we're always able to support. Even if a client came to me and they couldn't afford to have me on a retainer, I would still support them and point them in the right direction, signpost them to where they can get that help that would fit their budget.

There's also people who offer pro bono work, who offer reduced rates. So I would always say it's always worth having a conversation with a consultant, even if you think you can't afford it, because you don't know until you try. There's always things that can be done and other avenues that can be explored. So don't ever just completely shut it down. Go and have those conversations because we'll always do our best to support any business that comes to us, because ultimately this is about improving safety across the industry and it's much needed.

If there's something that I can do to help or the team can do to help, we will 100% do that.

Jimmy: Sure. But why would they give you a bad rep?

Beth: I think some consultants have a bit of a bad rep. I think that's probably because it's twofold. It's probably a mix of old school health and safety, which you would come across in your time, I'm sure, as most people probably have. There's definitely a shift towards how we approach health and safety in the industry now.

But there are some people that probably have quite an old-fashioned approach still to it. That works great in some areas, but it doesn't necessarily work for everybody. So I think that's probably one of the challenges, definitely.

I also think it's probably a bad analogy, but it's the only one I can think of off the top of my head. If you were running a construction project, you wouldn't go to a heating engineer or a plumber who didn't have a gas safety certificate or their certificate had expired. You wouldn't go and use them for your project.

It's a bit like with consultants. There are a lot of us around and we all have different expertise. So I think sometimes we don't necessarily go to the right consultant for what we need.

If I give you an example, 20 years ago at the start of my career, the first thing I learned in health and safety was how to be a fire risk assessor. I used to do hundreds of fire risk assessments. I don't do them anymore. I have trusted people in my team that do them for me. The reason I don't is because there's been so many changes in legislation, particularly around Grenfell and what came out after that, that my level of competence in that field isn't as strong as it was back 15 years ago.

So I have people in my team now who live and breathe fire safety and that's what they do all the time. They're the people that will go out and do that work for our clients. I guess that's the point really—with some consultants, it's about making sure that they are competent to be able to deliver what you need.

Do they have the right experience in your industry or in the particular work that you're doing? Do they have the qualifications needed within that industry? Have they worked for similar construction businesses as you? Those things are really important. Sometimes I think if you don't pick the right consultant, you're not necessarily going to be getting what you need. I think that's the other side of the coin of where potentially we can get a bit of a bad rep.

Jimmy: Sure. Yeah, I suppose it's like anything really. It's any kind of trade. There's good and bad. The bad ones are kind of known or remembered more than anything else. I'm sure you don't please everybody in your work.

Beth: We try.

Jimmy: Yeah. But there's always somebody that's going to be not happy with something or other. So that's what gets remembered, isn't it? But yeah, it's a good point. So I think you might have answered what the next question is. Has there been a moment or incident on site that's taught you a valuable lesson?

Beth: I learn every day, and I think we never stop learning. That's so important for us to be able to grow and to be able to move with the times. I think probably one of the things that stands out for me, and it wasn't like a massive incident on site, it was something that taught me about the importance of how you communicate and the language that you use.

I was working with a client a few months ago, and I had gone to site. I'd met the senior managers many times, but it was my first time going to site. I was talking to a supervisor, and they asked me a question to which I responded and gave them an answer. They just looked at me, and I wasn't sure where the conversation was going to go.

They looked at me and said, "Thank you." I was like, "You're welcome." And they said, "I've been trying to get an answer to this question for about two or three months now. Our in-house compliance team couldn't give me an answer. Our previous consultant couldn't give me the answer. I've met you and known you for less than half an hour, and you just explained it to me in a way that I understand, and I can now take away and give that answer that the team need."

That was a really good lesson for me, because I'm sure those other teams had probably said something very similar to me, but they hadn't said it in a way that landed with that person for them to really understand it. For me, I talk to a lot of different levels within the industry, but it's how you communicate those messages that is really key to that understanding.

Jimmy: Yeah, I imagine it's trying to keep everything in really simple terms, isn't it?

Beth: Yeah, and again, that comes back to the whole motto of making safety simple, yet meaningful. There is definitely—and I think, again, that's another change in the industry—everybody wants to do the right thing. They just don't necessarily know what that looks like, and it's our job as the professionals in health and safety to be able to really explain those complex things in a way that people just get.

Jimmy: Yeah, because there's a lot of buzzwords flying around, and there's a lot of technical terms. I suppose there's a lot of people who want to look better or sound cleverer than what they are and stuff like that, maybe a little bit of ego involved. It's important just to keep everything—that's why when my website, my blog and stuff, I'll put information out there, I'll get a lot of feedback saying to me, "Jim, that was so easy to read, it's so simple."

Beth: Yeah, yeah, it's because I just do it how I talk. I don't use big words. So yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, I like that. That's so important.

Jimmy: When you first walk onto site, what's the first thing you look at that tells you how strong the safety culture is there?

Beth: Maybe call it intuition, I don't know. I'm an auditor for ISO 45001, which is the health and safety standard. For most of my 20 years, I've been auditing and inspecting sites. You could maybe call it from that background, or maybe it's intuition to an extent.

I can spot a mile away what the culture is, before you even get to site. The conversations you have ahead, how the process goes of actually arranging a site visit, how it goes when you get to site, how you're inducted into site, the conversations you have—it's very telling early on. How people engage in conversation, how they show up in those conversations. You can tell if a show is being put on for you.

But one of the things I really like to do, as I'm going around and asking questions and being guided to the setup, I quite often like to touch on emergency procedures. I'll ask questions about what the process is and what's the approach if this happens, or this happens on site, what happens. Quite often I'll be told, "Oh yeah, we've got a process for that, this is what we do."

What I'd like to do at that point is just say, "Okay, when was this last tested?" They'll either say, "Oh yeah, it was very recently," or "Oh, it's been a little while." And I'll say, "Okay, well, let's test it now." So I like to put them on the spot and be like, "Let's just do it now."

Then see the reaction is always really interesting. Are they open to it? Are they like, "Oh, well, I'm not too sure." I'll try and coax them when they're not too sure and be like, "What's the worst that could happen? Should we just give it a go, see what happens? We're not going to do any damage. Let's just see what happens."

That's always really telling as well, because nine times out of ten, the process they've just told you—"This is what would happen"—you test it and it doesn't happen. But it really helps people then get into that mindset of what we've got in writing doesn't actually happen on site. That's the thing I see time and time again—we've got great processes, we've got a health and safety policy that might be great, we've got risk assessments. But actually what is happening on site isn't what's in those documents.

That's that tick box culture really. At the end of the day, you can have all the documents in the world, but if the people on site don't understand those and aren't working to them, then it's absolutely pointless and it's not going to prevent something from happening.

Jimmy: Yeah, that's really interesting. Actually, when I'm at work, sometimes you kind of know when there's like a visit sometimes, because everyone's on edge. There's more management around than you think, "Oh, what's going on here?" Then sometimes I might get on the radio, "Jim, I know you do a good job and just do what you do, but we've got people walking around today." I say, "Okay, yeah, no worries." It's like an Ofsted visit at school. They all just get really panicky and everything's all prim and proper.

Beth: Yeah. And that's what I try and avoid. It's quite difficult in construction to do unannounced visits. If I can, I will. But yeah, I try and avoid that whole "We're on edge."

What I will quite often do is I will quite often get invited to maybe the briefing in the morning or a toolbox talk first thing. I will actually always ask if I can just have a couple of minutes to talk to everybody, just to kind of let everybody just breathe and just be like, "We're on edge because there's a health and safety person here." It's like, "No, just relax. I'm here to just observe and support you, answer your questions. I'm not auditing you. I'm not inspecting you. I'm literally just here as a support. Come and talk to me."

This is what I always say—I want to talk to as many of you as I can. Please, if you see me during the day, come and if you're free, just come and say hi. Let's have a conversation because we're really not scary. We're really not. It's human beings at the end of the day.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. And it's breaking down that barrier. That's really important because we're not going to get anywhere if there's going to be a barrier there.

Beth: It's breaking down that barrier is really important.

Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about the point system. So from what I understand, companies secure a lot of their contracts through the point system. So the more points they have, the higher chance of getting. What do you think of that?

Beth: So I'm going to give you a really raw, honest answer. We've touched on a few things as we've already been talking. We've talked around the tick box approach to health and safety.

My feeling is that actually you're probably familiar with the SSIP accreditation process.

Jimmy: No.

Beth: Oh, you're not. Okay. So most large-scale clients now and a lot of the smaller clients actually will require a contractor to have an SSIP accreditation to actually get through the first stages to be actually approved to tender for a project.

What that means is SSIP accreditations are things like Constructionline, Safe Contractor. I don't know if any of these are ringing a bell. There's a number of accreditations which sit under the umbrella of SSIP. What that's been set up for—it's Safety Schemes in Procurement. The idea of that programme is that if you hold one of these accreditations, your health and safety approach has been audited against a standard that's recognised within the industry. It gives you a nice big tick in a box to say that you have everything in place that you need from a health and safety perspective.

When the client is scoring your tender, if you've got one of those SSIP accreditations, it's going to get a tick in the box. So you can move on to the next stage, a bit like the point system you were just talking about.

Now, that can actually do—in my opinion, that has done more probably damage than good in the industry in relation to health and safety. Because those accreditations can be, in some instances, quite easy to achieve with the very generic health and safety documentation.

So it drives that culture of just having a document in place more than actually stopping and making people think, "Actually, hang on a minute. Do we have the right competence in place? Are we actually assessing the risks on our sites and within our business?" That message is still getting lost within that process.

I understand why there is a point system, and there does need to be a point system. However, that is not really a good indication of where a company is at with regards to their health and safety management process.

Jimmy: So do you think the accreditation should be made much harder to achieve?

Beth: I think some of the accreditations are stronger than others, and I'm not going to name them because that wouldn't be fair. But some of them are harder to achieve. 

You know, they will look at things like, do you have a health and safety policy? Do you have risk assessments and method statements in place? Do you have emergency procedures in place? Are you training your staff in a debate? Do they have the relevant training that they need to be able to deliver the work? But it's very high level, very, okay, you've got this document, you've got this document. Okay, tick in a box, you're on the right lines. 

But that's not really judging what's going on on site or what the culture is. There's so many loopholes in that process of, okay, you might have had asbestos awareness. That might be relevant six months ago, but it's now expired. So you haven't got it anymore. So it won't pick up those things. And it doesn't really go into detail looking at like your accident or your incident data. So a lot of the industry is still driven in that process around how many accidents you've had. 

But actually, what's really important is how many near misses have you had? Because the near miss is a gold dust in really understanding what's going on on site. And there's something called the bird's triangle, which shows again, I don't know if it's something you've heard of, but every so many near misses that you have, the likelihood of you having an accident on site increases. So if you're not capturing those near misses and learning from them, you're not going to be preventing an accident on site. So that's why it's really, really key to report those near misses so that the health and safety team can really understand what's going on on site. 

Now, I can guarantee there are near misses going on on every site every single day that go unreported. So again, it's that culture of making sure teams understand that that is so important to capture that information, because if we can prevent somebody from having a serious accident on site, and potentially someone could be left severely disabled or worst case scenario could die, we've got all of this information is available to us, we're just not using it. 

So that's why it's really, really key. And I do a lot of work with my clients around near miss reporting. But again, we don't need to make that complicated because we know we're all busy people in construction. So there's really, really simple ways we can do that reporting process. So it's not putting a lot of pressure on those people on the ground in the trades that have already got so many other pressures on them. You know, it's about how we make that easy for them and make sure it's an easy way of reporting those near misses.

So we're really driving that data and really understanding what's going on. 

Jimmy: I'm really glad you brought up the reporting. I've spoken to a few people that have had some quite major incidents. So I'm wondering if the point system is designed to encourage people to not report incidents and near misses because they don't want to lose their points? 

Beth: Yeah, absolutely. So in one of my previous roles, we had a subcontractor model. So my team used to do the vetting on the onboarding. So as soon as we onboarded a new contractor, we had like our own accreditation process that I designed. And it was really, really interesting because one of the questions on there was around how many accidents have you had? How many near misses have you had? How many reportable incidents have you had? And go back to over a five year period. And you could guarantee everybody would just put zero, zero, zero in every single box. And I would always make sure if it wasn't one of my team, it would be me. I would be picking up the phone to that company and saying, hey, you just reported no near misses for the last five years. Don't believe you. And actually, that's a red flag. That would be a red flag for us. And that would get flagged during that process to say, that says to us straight away, you're not managing your incidents and your incident reporting process on site successfully. 

And then what we would then do is work with that contractor as part of their induction process and be like, hey, this is why this is really important that you report these near misses and just bring them on that journey. And through that process, what we actually saw was before we had that induction process, the level of near miss reporting across the network of subcontractors, which was about 300 to 400, was very, very low. And then we improved that induction process and did a lot of campaigning around the importance of near miss reporting. And then we actually got the near miss reporting up to a really sort of good level where we could really understand what was going on on site. 

And then we could make sure that we were training and giving out that support to the network around changes to our process, our policies, our risk assessments, our method statements, all those little tweaks. So most people will say they'll only review a risk assessment once a year, but throughout that process and that near miss reporting, we were updating our RAMs probably once a quarter as we were seeing those trends that were happening. And that was nationwide as well. So we could pick up on those trends on site of what was happening and then just update and tweak our processes. 

So we knew that we were preventing accidents further down the 

Jimmy:Yeah, you're really putting yourself out there then. It's good. Yeah, it's so important, isn't it? 

And I think when you have a platform like that, where you're working with a lot of different companies across the industry, you've got to be really, really sensible with that platform and make sure you're using that in the right way, because you have the ability then to make a very big difference and a big impact on the industry. So that's really, really important. 

Jimmy: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned about the pressures that a company might be put under. So that's another good point. Do you think there's a danger of companies being put off by compliance because of getting lost in all the paperwork and stuff like that? 

Beth: Yes, I think. I think there's synergies across lots of different industries with regards to pressures and demands and why people probably might not be able to achieve full compliance or maybe not take health and safety as seriously as they should. But I think in particular with construction, there is such a time as money ethos. And there's some things that are very, very specific in construction that probably hinder that. And like we sort of said earlier on, health and safety, if you look at the HSE and the legislation and the guidance, they do a fantastic job of producing a lot of wonderful guidance documents. 

But in construction, that is so overwhelming for somebody because there's so much information there. And that's why really it's so important to have access to either an in-house team, if that's something your business requires, or an external support network or just having somebody that can really make it simple for you and cut through. I mean, something I've seen as well, which always makes me smile, is when I review sort of, I review hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of health and safety documents over the years, thousands over the years. And one of the things which always makes me smile is health and safety policies. 

So, the amount of contractors who I've spoken to who I'll have a look at their policy, and it'll be 200 to 300 pages. And they are really, really proud of it. So, obviously, I don't want to go in with the wrong approach, but I'll sort of say to them, that's great. Someone spent that time doing that. But I always follow up and say, who's actually read it? Because if nobody's read it, and this is always the challenge as well.

So, when I come in, and I'm like, okay, I'll review health and safety policy for you, and it's 300 pages. I'm like, I'm not going to read it. I'm not going to sit there and read 300 pages.

And health and safety is my bag. So, who in your company has actually read that document? And again, this is where it comes back to that old tick box thing of health and safety doesn't live in paperwork, it lives in your team. So, we know it's not an interesting subject for most people.

So, if you're not going to expect someone to read a 300 page health and safety policy, you're setting yourself up to fail immediately. 

Jimmy: Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, people don't even read terms and conditions, do they? Properly, like to scan for it. Yeah, they do. So, yeah, 100%.

I mean, when I get a lift plan, when I go into a job and I have to sign a lift plan, and the book's like that, and it's just like, some people just go, just show me where to sign, please. Like, show me the back and you do that. So, yeah, that's a good point.

Beth: You just hit the nail on the head right there. Like, you know, people are just going to sign at the back and go, yeah, where do I sign? 

Jimmy: Yeah. 

Beth: And it's really interesting, because one of the things that I always do with the risk assessments, you know, it's those little tweaks.

So, what quite often I will do with clients is that we'll have a risk assessment, and then on the first page, we'll have like that point of work risk assessment. So, we've got the risk assessment we've done. So, we know, take scaffolding, for example, we know what the main hazards are going to be when you go to site.

But when you get to site, because a week or two may have passed since we've done that risk assessment, we will ask the supervisor on site to say, okay, when you get to site, just look and see if anything's changed on that site. And that point of work risk assessment I've seen sometimes sits at the back of the main risk assessment. People aren't going to look at that.

So, what I will say is, let's move back to the front. So, it's the very front page. So, it's the first thing they look at when they get to site. They see it. It reminds them that they need to do that before they move on. It's those little things that really help to engage the team.

And there are very small nuances that will be different for every single business. So, that's why it's really important that you really understand how that business works and how those individual teams work as well, because you can have disparity across teams. And then just making sure that whatever you're putting in place works for them on the ground.

Because, you know, a great 300-page document is brilliant. But ultimately, if the people on the ground doing the job that are the ones that are facing those hazards and those risks on site, if they can't use it easily, it's absolutely worthless.

Jimmy: Yeah. But do you find the policies are pretty generic anyway throughout the companies? 

Beth: Yes. And I think, again, it comes back to that whole train of thought that we have access to a suite of documents online. We pay every month for it. And then we'll just pull the information off that we need. Those kinds of systems are great and they have got a place.

But you've got to have somebody looking at that information and making sure it reflects what's happening on the ground. You know, otherwise, it's just that tick box. And it's not going to stop an incident happening on site. OK, you might be able to rely on that document and present it as a defence in court, maybe. But it's not. It's got no real value, and I think.

That's one of the things I always keep at the front of my mind and I say to the team as well is that you've always got to think about what value are we adding here? And that's what I say to clients as well. When I'm reviewing information, I'll say, OK, well, what value does this bring? What's it bring into your business? Because if it's not bringing any value, why are you paying for it? Why? What's the point? And again, it comes back to that education piece as well and the understanding, I think. 

Jimmy: Absolutely, absolutely. So, I mean, obviously, it's really important, but all of this embedding the proper procedures across the field. Do you find that the real smaller companies are harder to reach? 

Beth: I think, actually, over the last few years, I think that there's been a definite shift with the smaller companies. They definitely want to be doing the right thing. Because I always think at the end of the day, like construction is a hazardous industry. It's not like you guys wake up in the morning and think, yeah, I'm going to go and do a job today. I'm not going to really worry about falling from height or injuring myself.

Of course, you think about those things. So there's definitely, I see a lot of positives in the industry right now. Definitely. I've seen that, especially over the last 20 years, but even more so in the last few years, that people really do want to get it right. It's just accessing that information to understand what is right. 

Jimmy: Yeah. So, I mean, could you list some of the factors that could make a company not comply? 

Beth: Yeah. I think we've probably talked about some of this already. I think with the smaller companies, it's always about money and not having the budget to be able to necessarily have that support.

I mean, smaller businesses don't necessarily need somebody in house to manage their health and safety. But they don't necessarily have that budget to be able to have sort of a consultant on board where they might not think they've got the budget. And I think as you get into the bigger companies, who probably do, who would usually have those health and safety teams, their challenges are probably at the other end, which is around money to an extent, but it's more around you're not making us any money.

And I would say with the larger companies, a lot of it comes down more to that training piece. And that perhaps that disconnect between health and safety team in an office and the team out on the ground. And actually, are those teams coming together and really, really understanding what's going on on the ground? And are we investing in the right type of training? Because I think sometimes with the companies, it's very, very easy to rely on online training.

And toolbox talks are great, but as we know, toolbox talks are very short. So they're fantastic as refresher training. But when it comes to things like manual handling, for example, it's huge in construction.

And you're not going to engage people by putting them in front of a screen and getting them to watch a video. And I think there is a place for that training. But I think in construction, it's quite limited.

And I think what we need in construction is that time, which again, is that pressure is the time to be able to have that physical hands-on training that is very relevant to your site and what you do. Because again, that varies across the industry. And I think sometimes that is a challenge for the bigger companies and the smaller ones to an extent.

So again, we're coming back to it's that culture and changing that culture on site and bringing those people on the journey. And I think we still have that disconnect between office and on the ground. 

Jimmy: Yes, I'm going to bring that up later, actually. But yeah, that's a good point with the training and videos themselves, particularly like site inductions and that. The amount that I've been on, and I just stick a video and I walk out and look around and everyone's on their phone or they're trying to stay awake. And it just needs to be a lot more interactive, doesn't it? 

Beth: Exactly. Yeah. And that's what we do. We've just been developing a big programme in psychological safety, safety shift. And I'm smiling because on my desk right now, I've got elements of the training. So we work really hard to make everything interactive. So I've actually got some Lego on my desk at the moment, which is part of one of the training bits we do.

And we're always like, how do we make it engaging? How do we make it interactive? How do we make it interesting? Because health and safety on the whole, unless you're a geek like me, is not interesting to most people. So it's how do you bring how do you bring that in? And case studies as well are a really good, good way of engaging people, because there's a lot of like very well-known disasters that have happened in our lifetime and slightly before that time that people are aware of that people can really relate to. And so, you know, bringing those in and talking about those and what I really like to talk about is Piper Alpha, the oil rig.

And there's lots of lots of different things to bring in. But yeah, you're absolutely right, is sticking a video on, like you say, it's not going to engage people. And if you want to make that long lasting change on site, you need to engage people in a process.

So so yeah, I'm not discounting like we said, you know, that there's a place for that online training and those videos. And it's a good way of mixing up the different training genres and things. But yeah, ultimately, it's people to people that that's how you know, in a room that that's how you get the most out of training.

Jimmy: Yeah. And it's about picking the right people to deliver the training as well. I think that goes back to communication as well. I think it reminds me of a site manager I worked with once in Manchester. Every time so we worked on nights. So everyone was like tired and not really up for it.

And every time you I didn't even know who the guy was for the first two weeks. I just thought, who is this dude coming in? Every time he was just like a presence. And it's just like, whoa, he was just there. And it's like energy, energy, energy. And I just thought it was amazing. And you should take the piss out of each other.

And that was only like a couple of weeks later, someone said, he's like one of the top bosses. I was like, Oh, wow, okay. But he said, like, he's in his site inductions, he just gets so involved and picks people out and does things and, you know, tasks and stuff like that.

And that's just the way to do it really is. 

Beth: Absolutely. And we all have different ways that we learn best. There's not a one size fits all. So that's the other thing that we always do is that when we sort of work with the client, initially, we'll talk a lot about what training have you done previously? What's worked? What hasn't? And, you know, let's get a real understanding of the team. And then we then know how to structure that training to make sure that it lands right.

Because, you know, like we said, ultimately, that's, that's how that's how you move things forward. And that's, that's how you make sure you've got those safe sites is by engaging the workforce and, you know, making sure that they, they understand it. And, you know, and totally get why it's important.

Jimmy: Yeah, yeah, it's got to sink in. It's got to sink in. Are there any policy changes or emerging trends in health and safety that companies might not be aware of? 

Beth: Ah, so, um, yes. So it's always difficult, though, how you just worded that, that they might not be aware of. And I think what I've probably learned over the last sort of six months as we've been doing safety shift is that there is not an awareness around the requirements around psychological risk management. And so about six months ago now, I posed a question around mental health and psychological risk on site.

And that was, what if we started treating psychological risk the same as physical risk? And what if we started reacting to mental health on-site and actually started preventing it? Because there's lots of figures that get banded around with regards to mental health. And we know psychological risk is very high on the HSE's agenda now. It has been for the last couple of years.

And I think the one statistic that really got me and has stuck with me is the fact that we lose two workers in construction every working day to suicide. And that, even when I say that to you now, that is, I find that really difficult. And that is just the situation in construction is four times worse than any other industry.

And that's not OK. But we've got to, we've really got to do something fundamentally different to what we are doing now. And so that's six months ago, where I was at with things.

And I've spent the last six months developing safety shift. And so safety shift is about and tackling the psychological risks within construction on site before they impact on people's mental well-being. Now, we can't change people's lives and mental health and well-being is impacted by lots of different things.

We can't change people's home lives. But what we can do is we can design out the issues within construction that are having a negative impact on people's mental health and well-being. So that's what safety shift does.

It's a 12 week programme where we start off by looking at a risk assessment, a psychological risk assessment. So we spend a lot of time. We go in and we work with those construction businesses.

We really like we hold focus groups. So we literally go into that business and we talk to everybody. And, you know, we we really work really hard to really understand that business and understand what is going on in that business and what are those psychological risks that are going on and that are causing an issue. We then work with that business. We come up with an action plan. We work with that business to support them with putting much like you would a normal risk assessment.

So putting control measures in place to control those risks. And then we work to build a well-being team. And that's the in-house peer champion support teams. We train them to be mental health first aiders. And I'm working with one of the top mental health companies in the UK. And so we train them.

We support because we know at the minute that mental health first aid, as great as it is, is not working long term. It's not having an impact. And I was in a call the other day where the HSE was saying, even in general, health provision and construction is not where it needs to be.

The death, the number of deaths a year is not where it needs to be. We've still got a real systemic problem. And we know that a lot of people, so it's around 90 percent of organisations now, invest in mental health first aid training. But what happens is you've got these people who go into the training. They're really energised and they really take the role very seriously. They go back to site. They don't have support. It's not embedded. And it doesn't have the impact that we thought it was going to. So we take it much further. 

So we train those champions, but we also train them to be a bit like the traditional health and safety rep for mental health. So as soon as there's a policy change or I don't know, a process change or a change in how shift patterns work or any change, those champions are the voice of the teams and they're able to to have those conversations in the right way with the decision makers to say, hey, actually, I don't think you thought about this from a mental well-being perspective. These are our thoughts. 

You've got that whole consultation. So you end up with this whole embedded psychological risk management strategy for long term sustainability. And then we also have so we provided like a 12 month add on wraparound support. We track the return on investment because we know that around 51 billion a year is wasted and is lost to sickness with regards to mental health and all these things. So we look at that return on investment. 

We monitor it for KPIs. We follow that journey. And then we also offer other bolt on packages to that. It's a bit like health assistance programmes, but that's relevant for construction and what people instruction would actually want. And so I think that is probably an answer to your question. 

The biggest issue at the minute that I don't think the industry really fully understands and the HSE are very, very clear that psychological health and well-being is right up there with the physical risks and psychological well-being and mental health sits within the Health and Safety at Work Act and the management of health and safety at work regs. 

The HSE have started investigating claims where psychological risk isn't being managed correctly. So it's only a matter of time before we see those first prosecutions coming through. We've also seen going through the courts, many civil claims that have been successful for hundreds of thousands of pounds. So this is a really, really big issue that companies need to be really understanding and ensuring that they're managing those psychological risks more effectively. 

Jimmy: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So this has been rolled out. You've been doing this, this course, yeah? Okay. 

Beth: No, sorry. We are literally, we launch in a few days time. Right. 

Jimmy: So has it been trialled or piloted at all? 

Beth: Yeah. So we've had quite a lot of interest. It's been a very interesting time. Obviously, I can't say loads of details at this stage of the programme, but we've had a lot of industry support and with some different associations. We've had like a lot of sort of focus groups and talks around the design and the development of the programme, making sure that we've considered different parts of construction because I mean, scaffolding, I always see scaffolding as like, although it sits within construction, scaffolding has a very unique set of demands and ways of working that is probably quite different to traditional construction. 

So we've designed it very much with those things in mind. It's been designed in such a way where we can roll it out on a site basis. We can roll it out for the larger tier ones on a branch area of the country. So it's nationwide. So yeah, we've taken in a lot of feedback. We've talked to a lot of different people because we really want to make sure that we are set up for success. And ultimately, it's about ensuring that long term sustainable solution that comes from inside the business. So whilst we're there and we're on that journey with those people, we are setting them up for longer term success on their own.

For me was that price wasn't a barrier for any business within construction so we have three tiers of packages that we offer to get around that and our higher package offer is fully compliant with ISO 45003 which is the standard for psychological risk management. 

So yeah we've done it in a way that we want to be able to reach as much of the industry so anybody who comes to us and wants to do this we've hopefully developed our packages so that everybody can benefit. 

Jimmy: I think that's really important actually yeah yeah definitely yes because I mean I've thought about doing stuff for mental health myself in the future and the things that have been going through my mind are do I make this free so that more people can do it but do I need to make money how do we do this so that's really important but can you name some of the psychological risks? 

Beth: Yes and just before I go on to that question I just wanted to say as well we will have an initiative where the bigger companies can pay it forward right so because we know like when you start a business in construction it's such a stressful time even more so than it we know it's a stressful industry but it's even more stressful and that that is when your mental health in particular could be impacted even more so that's why we want to do the pay it forward initiative. 

So there's large companies can invest in the companies that maybe perhaps can afford the the foundations package but they want to move on to our blueprint but they can't quite get that budget together and so yes that's why the pay it forward initiative is really important as well. 

Jimmy: Yeah that's a brilliant idea I like that that's great yeah so you described safety shift as a not a workshop not a poster campaign but a management system can you unpack what that means in practise? 

Beth: Yeah so a little bit of like what we've sort of talked about already so we start with the getting to know the business so it's we can do we do sort of focus groups surveys sort of we come all in that's a few of us so so we come in and we're like we really want to get to know you all so we start at the top obviously obviously with with the the directors the board whatever that setup looks like and we have those initial meetings with them at their level to really understand things. 

And we do a bit of a site readiness assessment so that's to make sure really that that we think you're in the right place to to be able to start this this journey with us. And it might be that we say there's a few little bits and pieces that you need to have in place first so we'll say get those things in place and then we can start the programme. We then go on and we start meeting everybody and we come to site we observe see what's going on talk to as many people as possible and we'll have those conversations around what's the best way to do that for that particular site so what works what works that site. 

What doesn't because we we want to get that real honest raw feedback so we do all of that initially and then that's when we start to really put that psychological risk assessment together so we're looking at all of those things in the business how you work and what the relationships are like what's your staff turnover rate what's your sickness absence rate. That's related to mental well-being and how those relationships working. 

How do how do you manage things like if somebody raises an issue if someone raises something around bullying and harassment or how's that being dealt with all of those things and then we create the psychological risk assessment we create an action plan and then at the same sort of time as we're doing that and Jo who's my partner on the mental health sort of training and support for the well-being team she starts to get that well-being team ready. So it's okay who have we identified people already that would be interested in being in part of the well-being team, how do we recruit those people?  

So that that's where she comes from and her team and build building that that team together and we then work on the action plan from the risk assessment so we fully support that process of making that change and changing that culture and bringing people on that journey which is really key. We set up the KPIs that what we're going to monitor to monitor that return on investment and then we do a session with the with the champions and building that team that's very fun and interactive.

And this as well can be delivered in whatever way works because obviously there is that pressure in construction about time away and time being money so we can structure that to suit that construction business it is really bespoke in that way. 

And then we do the two-day mental health first day training with that team and then we do some follow-up training reflection sessions and other bits and pieces with the champions and support them so it's sort of longer term we then do company-wide training and that's when we really get that buy-in from everybody so everybody understands what this is all about and we talk about all the findings from the risk assessments where we're at what we're doing we get sort of the the leaders of business in so they're talking so that so that the people on the ground really understand that this is embedded and it's really important to everybody and so we build that buzz in. 

And then we let the champions then do their thing and start having those talks and having those meetings and we just provide that support to see how things are going and check in with them and then we can just monitor how things are going and the support package at that point is bespoke depending on what's needed. 

And then at the end of that programme we do like an evaluation and next steps and we look at where we want to take things from there and there's various different ways we can move forward together but yes that's like the main 12 weeks but we will not walk away until we know that team that well-being team are really confident in what they're doing and we will always be there as needed to have that reflective time or if something's happened and and those champions are really struggling it's okay what support do you guys need what do we need to be able to give you so it's fully supportive but yeah I the idea is that we we take the business on that journey and get them to a point where they've got a full sustainable model in-house with support from us as and when they need it. 

Jimmy: Yeah cool regarding the peer champions, what would happen if one of them sort of moved on to another company? Would they just sort of contact you to retrain someone else? 

Beth: So yeah really really good point and that's really important so from an outside perspective that's great because it means they're taking those skills and that programme onto another business within construction and so we're getting that message out further of this different approach to to managing sort of the psychological well-being on site. 

And that as well is why we train a minimum of 10 percent of of the business to be part of that well-being team or a minimum of five depending whatever whatever number's bigger and to make sure that you have always in business got that cover and they've got that that team there. 

And the other thing I would say as well is that the champions aren't there to be the be-all and end-all of the programme. They are there to support to nurture the programme to I guess empower people and lead the way and so the programme will not break down if somebody if a champion leaves. It's embedded in such a way that the impact of one champion or two champions leaving it isn't isn't going to be significant, but it will have that obviously that long-term knock-on impact within the industry as they move on.

Jimmy: Absolutely yeah that's good that's good you mentioned some of the things that could affect the mental health as well like sort of get what you said now bullying and a couple other things what other factors come into play? 

Beth: I think we know a great deal of what the issues are like we have a really good understanding and and if we just if we just focus on construction at the moment we know that payment terms are a big issue within the industry that there's a there's a big divide between contractors and subcontractors. 

And we know there's a lot of demand for working away from from home and working very unsociable hours and with tight deadlines working weekends all week not not getting breaks and we also know and we have a big issue across the board in this country of loneliness. And what's really sad is that that's becoming a big issue in the younger generation so that generation of younger people that are going to be coming in and doing apprenticeships a large proportion of them are going to be are going to be really struggling with loneliness and Jo who is who I mentioned earlier who is is my partner on the programme she talks so she could talk to you about this a lot better than I could but we we know as well now and she told me this I couldn't believe it but it was one of the statistics that stuck out for me was that in families where you have a parent working away from home it's that wider effect not just on that worker but the family and there is a much higher instant rate of teen pregnancy when when a parent is working away a lot. 

So it it's it's has such an impact across families and that loneliness thing that's really it's really sad that we've got a generation now a young generation that are really really struggling with loneliness 

Jimmy: Yeah I never thought about that actually that's a really important point yeah yeah I mean I mean everyone gets lonely at some point don't they but yeah it's a good point you mentioned timescales and stuff like that earlier I did a post the other day on LinkedIn. I don't know if you saw it about people falling behind you I see it all the time like subbies going behind on projects and stuff like that which does happen. Like I said it's sort of like it it creates this sort of thing where they they try and squeeze more work out of people cut breaks down and watch over and sort of time how long things are taking and stuff like that and I think that has a big impact as well ruins morale and gets people down.

Beth: Absolutely and and we know we've got a big issue with stress and we we we know that stress has this massive impact on how people show up whether that's in their home life or in their work life. And there's something that Jo explains very very well and I'm going to try and explain it but I won't do a very good job but I'll try and do her proud. So we we know a lot of the workforce are suffering from chronic stress and there's a thing called the amygdala hijack and so so basically when we're under that that chronic stress and pressure all of the time our body goes into the fight or flight response yeah now when that happens our body has this really clever capacity to shut down the systems in the body that aren't needed for flight or flight fight response. 

So it will shut those things down but when you're in that chronic stress phase and you're feeling stressed all the time it means you're constantly in fight or flight and those systems have been shut down. Now those systems are really important for functioning especially in construction in a hazardous area because those functions that are getting shut down are the things that help your cognition and help your critical thinking and help your risk perception and helps you with your decision making. And it's your immune system what keeps you healthy. 

So all of a sudden you've then got people who are sat in this fight or flight mode who aren't thinking clearly haven't got very good risk perception haven't got very good decision making ability because of this because of their state of mind so you're more likely to have accidents and also you're more likely to have sickness absence because the immune system isn't working properly. 

So it's it's this perfect storm and when you look at accidents that people do on site they're always like oh it's just it was just a silly mistake I just I just wasn't thinking. But a lot of that's for a lot of the reason that is why is because we have become so stressed with life and those pressures and in construction the stress is a huge on people that it's yeah it it's a it's a massive issue and again that's why we've created safety shift is that we we've got to make a difference and we've got to make a difference fast. 

Jimmy: Yeah I think it's great it's great yeah it's a good point actually about the body yeah your body does communicate with you doesn't it if you ignore it too much it will start saying okay well I'm going to do this then like do something manifest into into physical aspects do something with your heart or whatever else that that you have to take notice of 

Beth: yeah yeah and that's good that's the other side why I found it really interesting the other day where the hc was sort of saying health isn't where it needs to be in construction and it's those things that if you had that regular health screening as well in construction those things would be being picked up on but sadly they're not.

Jimmy: Yes that's true that's yeah that's a whole nother subject that is isn't it yeah so you mentioned earlier iso is it iso 45003 is that right?

Beth: Yes I did yeah right 

Jimmy: So that I didn't realise that there was a standard for mental health. So that's the standards for mental health, is that right?

Beth: Yeah standards for psychological risk management yeah 

Jimmy: Right okay so moving on to the next bit I did I mentioned another post about I mean you're probably aware of construction support people like that who are quite vocal on this. There was there was a we'll move on to an exclusive on this as well with you but there's a there was a summit next door to me where I'm working at the gherkin where the construction leadership council and bm1 and various people like that. And Steve from the from construction support is saying that there should be legislation in mental health to regulate it regulate all these risk factors and stuff like that and but the the CLC didn't really seem that responsive to it I think they've just come out and said they have another consultation soon. 

What do you think of that because although there's standards in place surely there should be men's health police to regulate those standards 

Beth: yeah it's a really interesting topic and the clc at the moment are currently consulting so they've got the mental health project running at the moment they are consulting the industry and they are trying to reach the entire industry so I would definitely encourage everybody to be joining in and participating in that consultation because it's really really key to hear everybody's voice because we've got such a diverse range of businesses and people's individual situations but within the construction industry that it's important we're picking up on everybody's views on this. 

But my understanding is what what what they're trying to do is to really understand I mean they've got early data at the moment around the current situation in the industry but they really want to make sure that they're fully understanding all of the issues in relation to mental health and construction with a view to releasing their findings and some guidance in the spring of 2026.  So I think that's going to be a really interesting initiative to follow and to see see the campaign and see what comes out with the guidance at the end. 

I guess we do have a lot of guidance already around mental health at work. We've got the hse who have got the the six management standards around how to manage stress they've got a lot of guidance around mental health and the government commissioned a review back in 2017 around mental health at work. So it's not new it's not something that we're only really just sort of thinking about guidance wise. We've got the ISO 45003 sadly that though doesn't have the same status as the other ISO so iISO 45001 for example you can be accredited and and receive certification for that ISO you can't currently with 45003 which is really disappointing it is guidance only so what I would really like to see is for that to have the the status upgraded with regards to legislation and things the HSE have been really really clear psychological risk sits under the health and safety at work act it sits on within the management of health and safety at work regulations so I think from their perspective it's already covered but what with most things is at the minute it's not clear. 

Because if you look at things like asbestos or manual handling or cosh or vibration you have another set of legislation and you have approved codes of practises and documents that the hse produce which tell you exactly what you need to be doing to to meet the regulations. We don't really have that to an extent for mental health so it would be really interesting to see this guidance that comes out in the spring next year because I'm hoping that's what that will be and that will that will become the go-to. But I would also say with the ISA 45003 and the information we already have ultimately how we're going to manage the risk at work is through risk assessment right ultimately so that's what safety shift does it starts with that psychological risk assessment and the HSE are really clear at this moment in time you must risk assess psychological risk in the workplace.

So we know so we know what we need to be doing I'm not sure what we're waiting for and what else we need if the current statistics of those deaths every day is not enough to to push us in the right direction I don't think a guidance document is is gonna it's gonna change things we have everything we need right now to to make that difference 

Jimmy: Yeah yeah it's just too many too many grey areas at the moment on there in the guidance and that yes so you mentioned the other day that you are you could be working with the construction leadership council on on something can can we go into that at all?

Beth: So I think the the construction leadership council were really really keen to hear from people who wanted to support this mental health project and that's something that we fully do support and we've talked to them about that and yeah it's early days at the minute because they are very they are very in the early stages of that consultation but we are absolutely 100 supporting it and we'll hope to be able to contribute to to that consultation and and the outcome at the end 

Jimmy: Good well I have to say safety shift sounds like a proper little gem 

Beth: It really does yes I it's groundbreaking there's nothing else out there that exists and that that will deliver what what the programme is set out to deliver I feel very passionate about it as does joe and everybody else in the teams that are working around us to deliver it we we feel very passionately especially around the the male suicide and even one death a day is too many and we will continue with the programme and we will keep tweaking it and making changes to it as time goes on but we will carry on until we start to see that statistic falling in the right direction.

And I hope in sort of five three or five years time we can sit here and have another conversation about it and we can talk about how successful it's been and the impact and and all of those things because it is just it's for me it's the most important part of my job right now and it will be for the foreseeable future.

Jimmy: Yeah brilliant up it's really good the more people that can get involved with things like this the better I think I am seeing a small change but yeah more people get involved with better because it will send the message out there to the masses and to to the to the people upstairs to to make changes definitely. With regards to that and your and the day-to-day work you mentioned the coming together and the connection between management and the people on the ground. How do say like somebody's running a site how how can they get this message across to the people on the ground and maintain that?

Beth:  Which message? 

Jimmy: well everything that you do in your assessments and your and your courses and the safety shift because because the safety shift that I'm assuming is so that's that's same to everyone isn't it that's not just aimed at the contractors it's the same to everyone yeah so that's for them to implement a culture within on their site so how do they get all these messages across to to the people on the ground to the subbies and stuff like that.

Beth: So I always think it's engagement is key so I always think if you've got a problem on site the best people to fix that problem are the people that have the problem and are on site and on the ground and are doing the job every single day so our ethos is always whenever we do a risk assessment or we've got an issue we've been asked to look at we always go to the people on the ground and we have a conversation and say right tell us explain it to us explain explain what's going on and then tell us what you think would fix it. 

So I think it's it's about involving people and using those resources you've got like there's no point reinventing the wheel you just need to talk to people people will come up with an answer I mean like with your job if you've got if you've got an issue you probably know how to fix right? Yeah well most of the time I'll make out what's going on to be honest but if you if you had if you had a situation and there was something that needed resolving yeah you'd want to be part of it wouldn't you be part of the solution. So I think that that is how you you bring people on the journey and you make those changes is that you bring people in and they become part of the solution 

Jimmy: Yeah yeah I agree with that so the thing is in an industry where sort of like deadlines and stuff come into play and budgets and there's such strong pressures how do you get the decision makers on board particularly those who are sort of like fighting against it I think 

Beth: Most of the time if a company has reached out they're not going to fight against you right as a general rule probably the bigger challenge is around getting into the room with them in the first place if you're in a room with with the directors or the board it's because they know they need a change and I think for me it's about always being very open and honest about the current state of play now a lot of health and safety professionals will take the view of scare tactics. 

So this this is where you're at and these are all the things that are going to happen to you if you don't sort yourself out there's that like I'm going to scare you into realising that you need to think about this. I don't take that approach I'm I'm very honest I'm very open and I can be pretty direct as well. But I think it's it's about being realistic and it's about understanding how that business works what their priorities are and talking to them in a way that aligns with how they run their business and I think if you can do that and that's not always easy I think if you can do that they can't they they they get it and they start to really understand it. 

But sometimes you you do have to you do have to have those conversations and say look if you had a HSE inspector come right now you're you're probably going to be served with a notice because they need to understand and I think that's that's the really important thing is that if something goes wrong the responsible person for that business needs to understand what that looks like what that looks like when they go to court. What are the possible outcomes from that. 

And you can you can bring in studies of things that happen within the industry so if you've got a construction company that has gone for and been prosecuted for something similar you have that conversation say okay so this company up in such and such an area of the uk back last year this had a similar situation this is what happened this is what happened through the through the courts and and this this is what this is what the outcome was so you you just talk about it in their language I think that that's how you you you make people understand. 

But yeah ultimately you're going to be in situations sometimes where people really don't get it and in those situations you have to walk away and that's not a nice place to be in because you don't want to leave people open and you you want to support people so I've never walked away from anybody yet so I think it's crossed 

Jimmy: Good no that's good well yeah yeah hopefully yeah good that's great well I think we're on our last thing now I mean you I really appreciate your time I appreciate your frankness as well and your honesty it's it's refreshing really is but we don't get anywhere without that do we no exactly transparency is key isn't it. The last question when you look back at everything you've achieved so far what's the one moment or result that's made you think yes this is why I do 

Beth: Ookay shift is and I and yeah we're literally just on that launch but yeah for me I look at the time right now and I think this is this is what I was supposed to be doing with my career this is 100 percent everything I've done up to this point has led me to this and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't I'm incredibly grateful for the career I've had but I wouldn't be here right now launching safety shift if it wasn't for the last 20 years so I'm I'm incredibly incredibly grateful for that and yeah this is this is my calling this is what I'm I'm meant to be doing definitely 100 percent 

Jimmy: I can see that I can see that.You've learned a lot from that and you've helped a lot of people, but now that you know that, now that you know that this is your calling, what's going to happen with the other work?

Beth: I'll carry on. I have a team around me that allows me to be able to kind of carry on with the business as it is and kind of moving forward and I've worked really hard to build the right team of people around me because, you know, I don't just take on people to be a health and safety consultant. They have to have a very unique set of skills and they have to have a very special and specific approach.

So I've been very, very lucky with people that have approached me wanting to work with me. Again, I feel very privileged that those people want to come and work with me and want to be in our team. So, yeah, I will not, I won't be letting any of my clients down.

I will still be carrying on with those other industries because I do work outside of construction and I love doing that. I work in other high-risk industries and, yeah, I'd love to take Safety Shift out to offshore. It would be my dream.

I'd love to do that. And I've already had other people across other industries who want to talk about Safety Shift and look at how it could go into their businesses and other industries as well. So, yeah, there's a lot more on the table and we've got big plans for the next sort of three to five years that we're looking at.

So, yeah, it's an exciting time. But, yeah, we are very much building a team around us that believe very much in that culture shift and that Safety Shift programme. And, yeah, we will continue to push for as big a reach as we can across any industry and to anybody who wants our support, absolutely, 100%.

Jimmy: Brilliant. Well, listen, I wish you every success in the world. 

Beth: Thank you.

Jimmy: I'll be really interested to hear what happens in the future, how you go with it and stuff like that.

Beth: Yeah, let's have another chat again in a year or so's time and see where we're at.

Jimmy: I'd love that.

Beth: Absolutely.

Jimmy: Good stuff. Well, again, thanks very much for your time, Beth. 

Beth: No, thank you.

Jimmy: I love doing these because I learn so much about so many different things and so many different industries and so many different people. So, you've taught me a lot, even in the research that I do, you know, you teach me a lot, but you've covered a lot of areas here. So, thanks for that.

Hopefully, other people who are listening have learned from it as well and take something away from it, yeah?

Beth: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Jimmy: It's an absolute pleasure. So, what are you going to do for the rest of the day?

Beth: I don't know. It's horrible weather here.

Jimmy: Oh, is it?

Beth: It's awful, yeah. It's raining. It's pretty dull.

So, probably just some more work around getting ready for our launch. We launch in a few days' time. So, yeah, I've got my Lego bits on the side and other bits and pieces of what we're doing. So, yeah, just kind of pushing through for the launch to make it as successful as possible.

Jimmy: Great stuff. Well, good luck with that. Go for it.

Beth: Thank you.

Jimmy: Speak to you soon then, yeah? You take care.

Beth: Thanks very much. Nice to chat.

Jimmy: Likewise. Bye-bye.