Mental Health At Work: How Can Managers Protect Employee Mental Health?

Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in risk assessments and other everyday health and safety management that we forget about the people involved.

H&S isn’t just about avoiding physical injury. The goal is to ensure the health and wellbeing of everyone onsite, to ensure they can do their job without risk or discomfort to themselves or others – this includes mental health.

In just a few short years, we’ve come a long way regarding mental health at work, but we still have a long way to go. One in four people in the UK will have a mental health problem at some point in their lives, potentially triggered or exacerbated by work.

Managers should be putting as much emphasis on mental health as they do on physical health if they want to achieve a truly effective health and safety culture.

Do employers have a legal obligation to protect the mental health of workers?

For a start, it’s worth highlighting that any business satisfied with doing the bare minimum the law requires probably isn’t all that bothered about their health and safety. However, it’s good for managers to refresh their knowledge of the law every so often to ensure they’re still on the up and up, no matter how invested they are in risk management.

The simple answer is that employers have a legal responsibility to ensure workers are not working under undue stress or pressure.

Anxiety and depression, the two most common mental health issues, can be triggered by issues at work. Over time, without treatment, stress at work can lead to physical and psychological damage.

That’s not good for the employee or the employer. It can lead to absenteeism, reduced productivity, and even physical harm due to distraction or exhaustion.

No matter whether work is causing the issue or exacerbating an existing issue, employers are legally required under legislation to manage it as they would any other risk.

According to the HSE: ‘Work-related mental health issues must be assessed to measure the levels of risk to staff. Where a risk is identified, steps must be taken to remove it or reduce it as far as reasonably practicable.’

Employers may also find that they have additional legal requirements under other legislation to protect workers’ mental health, such as equalities legislation.

The fact is that the HSE views mental health as no less important than physical health and expects employers to act accordingly.

What can employers do to protect the mental health of employees?

In 2017, the government commissioned the ‘Thriving at Work’ report, which laid out a framework of actions that employers and risk managers should implement to protect the mental health of workers. These guidelines state that employers must:

Produce, implement and communicate a mental health at work plan which promotes good mental health for all employees and clearly outlines the support available for those who want or need it
Develop mental health awareness among employees by making information, tools, and support accessible
Encourage open conversations about mental health and support available, from recruitment and at regular intervals. Employees should be offered appropriate workplace adjustments if needed
Provide employees with good working conditions and ensure they have a healthy work/life balance, as well as opportunities for development
Promote effective people management to ensure all employees have regular conversations about their health and wellbeing with managers, supervisors, or leaders, and train and support managers to effectively manage mental health issues
Monitor employee mental health and wellbeing based on available data, talk to employees and understand risk factors

What these very in-depth guidelines boil down to is this:

Have a mental health plan
Promote communication and open conversations about mental health by raising awareness and reducing stigma
Implement a way to monitor actions and outcomes to inform future decisions

Another set of HSE Guidelines, the Management Standards, also includes a framework for managers to manage mental health at work better.

You can read more here.

What does this mean in practice?

Like most things in health and safety, managing mental health at work comes down to treating your employees like people, not statistics.

Those responsible for managing risks must be aware of who is working onsite, not just as a name on a clipboard, but as a person.

This is perhaps even more crucial when it comes to mental health. Often, safety managers can identify physical risks from a standard visual inspection and tackle them then and there. Unfortunately, mental health is very personal, and too many suffer in silence or fall through the cracks. Symptoms might not begin to show until it’s too late.

By treating employees as people and regularly talking with them person-to-person rather than communicating through PowerPoint, you can more easily identify struggling employees and provide the help and support they need.

Managers should also strive to ensure psychological safety onsite. Employees must feel comfortable coming forward with physical or mental issues without fear of reproach or punishment.

If an employee is not certain they can safely bring issues to your attention, they won’t, and the problem will continue to fester until something goes very wrong.

Fundamentally, suppose the employee’s mental health is impacted by work, such as poor management, excessive workload, or bullying. In that case, immediate action should be taken to remove or remedy the trigger.

Just as employees should not be expected to work under the threat of physical harm, no employee should be expected to do a job that harms their mental health.

Get in touch today via the contact form below to learn more about how better to manage people and mental health issues at work or discuss your health and safety needs.

Opening Pandora’s Box: Are Numerical Risk Assessments Any Good?

Last month I caused a bit of a furore over on my LinkedIn when I shared this post:

Although I was aware that this opinion goes against the grain somewhat, I was surprised by the magnitude of the response. With over 400 comments and 600 reactions, it’s fair to say that a lot of my fellow safety professionals had a lot to say!

Why would you say such a thing?

Because it’s true! I’ve built a career out of urging business leaders and safety professionals to look beyond numbers and instead take a straightforward, people-first approach to risk management.

Quantitative and numerical risk assessments – though common – go against one of my fundamental core beliefs: risk assessments should be, above all, a simple and practical method of managing the risk of harm, not made for safety professionals themselves but for those on the frontline.

Numerical risk assessments are far removed from the reality of dynamic, ever-changing workplaces. Time spent juggling numbers and calculations for task-based activities adds no real value, providing a mostly baseless, needlessly specific view of things and generally overcomplicating the process.

Too many safety professionals complexify when they should be simplifying, stuffing risk assessments full of figures to show their work. When the assessment finally makes it into the hands of those that need it, it’s just too complicated to make proper use of.

Will the control measures implemented change all that much based on a 5 point difference when the obvious answer to ‘there’s no edge protection’ is usually ‘install edge protection’?

Instead of this incessant focus on the numbers and back-and-forth over whether a risk is a low 2, low 3, or medium 4, I believe safety professionals should instead be striving for a simple but effective hazard + risk + solution approach, encouraging and enabling those that are trained and competent to work safely.

The magic of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is, of course, a communication platform, and you might not be surprised to learn that plenty of people disagreed with me. Although the quality of debate on social media can be hit or miss, to put it mildly, there were some fantastic, thoughtful responses worth considering.

This one, for example, highlights that it’s important to remember that, ultimately, risk assessment is subjective, and there’s no one right way to do things.

Different methods have shortcomings which can be overcome by combining them with other strategies. I agree that some sort of framework is necessary, but feel that the obsession with numbers continues to hold us back more than it helps. Nevertheless, I agree that coaching employees and empowering them to make the right choices is by far the best option. I just don’t think boxes full of numbers are the way to do that.

Who indeed?

David Cant Risk assessment

One from the ‘I agree with David’ camp. A risk is a risk, no matter your subjective opinion of the severity. Again, how likely is it that the measures put in place will change based on whether you personally decide it’s a 3 or 30?

David Cant risk assessment 2

Another interesting point. Risk assessments are not for identifying and accounting for every single thing that can go wrong – because that’s impossible – but for identifying the most likely risks and triaging your response to them.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain why numerical assessments are better than your standard low, medium, and high grades, or a qualitative assessment. Surely whoever receives the risk assessment at the other end has enough to go on without chucking a load of numbers into the mix?

The mood of the negative responses seemed to translate to one question: ‘well, do you have a better option?’ and that’s fair. Numerical, quantitative risk assessments are as common as they are because there aren’t a huge amount of alternatives.

But does that mean we should continue to rely on something that isn’t fit for purpose?

What’s the alternative?

Ultimately, despite all the arguments for and against them, I still haven’t yet gotten a straight answer to why numerical risk matrices are beneficial. People seem to either hate them or begrudgingly accept them because there are no better options.

The example I used in my post was a real matrix I received from a bricklayer, who admitted to me that he was just ‘number crunching’, and wasn’t actually sure what tangible benefits there were to it. Neither was his site manager. If whoever is filling in the risk assessment isn’t sure why it matters, what’s the point?

Risk assessments should be about making life easier for the worker, equipping them with the resources to make informed decisions. It shouldn’t be a box-ticking exercise (or, in this case, a ‘fill the boxes with numbers’ exercise) but a logical, clear examination of risk.

I think that moving forward, we should make an effort as an industry to simplify a lot of the procedures we’ve become accustomed to, particularly when it comes to risk assessments.

By switching to qualitative risk assessments, where the focus is on clearly and succinctly listing potential risks alongside relevant solutions, we can enable those using the risk assessments to make better, safer decisions, and more generally create a healthier culture around safety.

For ways to simplify your risk assessments and maximise the safety of those using them, check out my blog on avoiding risk assessment bloat over on the Veritas Consulting website. If you’d like more advice on how to assess risk effectively in your business, get in touch.

PS: Here is the post on my on my LinkedIn

Coach, Don’t Manage: Working Together For A Healthier Safety Culture

If you’ve ever read my blog or seen one of my posts on LinkedIn, you’ll know that I firmly believe in coaching, not managing. But what do I actually mean by this?

I am a big advocate of honest, open communication in the workplace, no matter your role because I know it can make or break a business. This goes double for those responsible for safety, as communication can often be the difference between life or death.

Long gone are the days when it was fine for safety managers to walk around, clipboard in hand, shouting orders and telling people off for not wearing their hard hats. To have any impact, these managers should instead be asking themselves why that person wasn’t wearing their hard hat in the first place.

Coaching comes in; a more diplomatic, empathic way of doing things to get the best out of your team.

However, I know this management style doesn’t always come easily. The good news is that these skills can be learnt, and with an open mind and a willingness to change, safety managers can shift the way they do things and ensure a safer workplace.

Change things up

Sometimes, when things don’t seem to be working, a change in mindset is all it takes.

Empowering people to reach their conclusion, make their own decisions and take responsibility for their actions can be far more effective than telling them the answer.

Rather than drilling the ‘right’ answer into employees, managers should be focused on empowering others to make their own reasoned choices and make daily safety tasks subconscious.

This subverts the idea that employees should ‘do as they’re told and instead equips them with the ability to act independently and dynamically, freeing managers to take a more effective big picture approach rather than getting bogged down in the day-to-day.

Get to know your people.

I can’t stress this enough. If you don’t know who your people are, what makes them tick, and their ‘why’, your efforts will always be in vain.

Everyone is different and has their reasons for doing what they do, and something that works for one person will not work for another. This is why cut and paste safety briefings are so ineffective.

You will never learn anything about your team by locking yourself in an office and waiting for them to ask for help. Showing you care, engaging with colleagues, asking questions – not just about the workplace but about their lives too – and offering guidance is a far more effective strategy.

Take time to walk and talk with co-workers and keep them up to date with developments. It shows that you care about them as people can work miracles though it takes commitment and patience.

Your involvement and genuine interest in who they are will result in an engaged team that will want to work with you and take your advice on board. Building relationships is a superpower that not enough managers take advantage of.

Ensure your employees have the information they need

As a safety manager, it is your responsibility to make sure that colleagues have access to the latest safety regulations and procedures and the relevant training that will help them build a stronger safety culture together.

This sounds easier said than done, however. We all know how easy it is to throw a few PowerPoint presentations together and call it ‘safety training’. But unfortunately, such training is rarely put together with the worker in mind, and most workers will zone out before they take it in.

When putting together training materials, you should know who your audience is, their pain points, and which training method they’ll respond to best. Don’t overwhelm them with things they don’t need to know.

By giving employees relevant information and training so that they can put it into practice, you’ll be equipping them to respond to situations safely and dynamically, ultimately reducing the time and financial cost of micro-managing.

Show, don’t tell

Think about coaching this way: you are like a parent who needs to teach their children the life skills they need to figure out how to do things independently. Although it feels more straightforward and quicker to tell someone exactly what to do and how to do it, you’re just creating further problems down the line.

With this method, you’ll more than likely have to give specific instructions repeatedly. This is unpleasant and frustrating for everyone involved: no one likes being told what to do, especially repeatedly. They’ll tune out.

Micromanaging people discourages initiative, engagement, and taking responsibility for one’s actions.

Instead, here are a few things you should focus on:

First, listen to what your team says and learn their pain points. Listening will help you come up with more helpful solutions.
Ask open questions, don’t just assume things – if you need more information or clarification, don’t be afraid to ask. Similarly, some individuals find it difficult to express their concerns or might not know where to start in conversations. But, again, asking the right questions can lead to a more fruitful discussion.
Give feedback. This is essential for improvement as it helps things move along. Focus on constructive feedback.
Show empathy. When we struggle or make mistakes, being shown empathy helps us unblock, move on, and learn. Showing empathy will help guide your team out of the slump and closer to your desired goal.

Use mistakes as learning opportunities.

Everyone makes mistakes. The safety industry itself was built on learning from our mistakes, so it’s only fair to continue to use mistakes as learning opportunities rather than failings.

No one wants accidents to happen, but when they do, your goal is to understand why the incident happened and work with the people involved to prevent it from happening again.

As a safety manager, you need to accept that mistakes happen. However, you should also do your best to use them as learning opportunities rather than automatically resorting to discipline.

If the same person continues to make the same mistakes, there is probably a bigger issue. Perhaps the person does not fit into your safety culture. But if it’s the first time, you have a golden opportunity to look at the circumstances around the incident and work with the person to make sure it does not happen again.

As a safety coach, your goal should always be to work with people towards better safety practices, not against them.

Keep investing in yourself.

As with any skill, practice makes perfect, which goes for coaching. No one is born a brilliant coach, and there should be no shame in admitting that you need improvement.

Many managers might not even be aware that they lack skills, and some might even think they are great coaches when the reality is different. As coaches and leaders, we need to develop the kind of self-awareness that will help us improve.

Checking in from time to time, asking for feedback from teams or direct managers, and keeping up with training needs is paramount for building a successful career that helps people create safer workplaces.

Get advice from the experts.

I’ve spent the last two decades working closely with safety managers and supervisors to teach them the skills they need to help develop their people and get the best out of them, ultimately ensuring a safer environment.

If you think you might benefit from learning the skills to be more coach-like, get in touch.

Five Tips For More Engaging Safety Briefings

Briefings are crucial for creating an effective culture of safety and communicating the important messages colleagues need to hear.

Without proper communication, people can fall out of the loop with procedures, rules, and updates, which can, in turn, put them at risk of serious injury or worse. When people are on the same page, you expect things to run smoothly.

But safety briefings have a reputation for being, well, dull. When most people who aren’t safety managers hear those words, they immediately think of endless Powerpoints and the dreaded flip chart.

I’ve worked with safety managers for over 20 years. In that time, I’ve noticed that very skilled and knowledgeable individuals often struggle when it comes to communicating that knowledge to others. This is understandable, as these are two different things, and not all of us are born with the gift of the gab.

Unfortunately, the bottom line is that if people aren’t switched on and engaged when you’re talking about something important, they’re unlikely to take it in – even if it might save their life. They have to be hooked onto the topic instantly, and people will ask themselves, “what’s in it for me?” WIIFM, if it’s nothing, you’ve lost them before starting.

Thankfully, there are a few ways safety managers can change things up to communicate better, get people engaged with safety briefings, and ultimately ensure a safer workplace.

Tip 1: Know your audience

Although some might disagree, I believe that safety managers should be salespeople too. It’s no good knowing what needs to be done if you can’t communicate it in a way your audience can understand and buy into.

One of the most important things any salesman needs is understanding their audience. They can’t use the same pitch for everyone, as the needs and experiences of their client will depend on who they are and where they come from.

The same goes for health and safety. You will need to amend your ‘pitch’ depending on whether you present to leadership, middle management, or employees.

For example, briefings with those at the coalface will generally focus on daily exposure to risks, how to avoid them, and why they must follow procedures. Conversely, briefings with leadership should be more general and consider how changes to policy might impact the long-term running of the business.

Those in different business areas have other priorities, and your briefings need to reflect this.

Understanding the people you work with is integral to health and safety. You need to ensure you see colleagues as people, not statistics, as only then can you begin to communicate with them in a way that will be effective.

Tip 2: Minimise the Powerpoints

It can be easy to get carried away with PowerPoint. Unfortunately, too many safety managers pack everything into their presentations, resulting in verbatim repetition from slides that are far too busy, boring most people to the brink of sleep.

Powerpoints shouldn’t be your entire briefing. Instead, they should support your briefing with essential information, allowing you to expand on the subjects more engagingly.

According to Guy Kawasaki, former Apple founder and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Powerpoints should adhere to a 10/20/30 rule. That means:

no more than 10 slides
no longer than 20 minutes total
and, perhaps most importantly, presentations should not contain text in a font size smaller than 30 points.

This ensures that you don’t try to cram too much information into the presentation itself, avoiding “death by Powerpoint”. Any information that can’t be included in your presentation should be given as a handout afterwards.

Tip 3: Watch your body language

We’re not all born presenters, and that’s fine, but one thing that it pays dividends to focus on is your body language.

Body language can be both conscious and subconscious and influences our interactions daily and during presentations more than you’d think. For example, the wrong body language, such as slouching, lack of eye contact, or crossed arms, can negatively influence your audience and turn them off.

Conversely, confident body language such as better posture and eye contact will engage people.

Body language is a huge topic, but you can start by paying attention to your physical actions during your next briefing and keeping an eye on how your audience responds to you. You might be surprised.

Tip 4: Get people involved

No one likes being talked at, and if your briefings consist of you standing at the front, droning on for an hour, you’ve already lost the battle.

Instead, you should make an effort to get people involved in the briefing. This can be small, such as getting people to guess answers or even using role-plays to illustrate new procedures. If people expect to be called on, they’ll be more engaged.

A very effective way to do this is to invite opinions about current safety processes as a sort of forum. This gives people a chance to share their thoughts and will, in turn, show that your business values their input. In addition, if people are involved in implementing rules from the start, they’re more likely to follow them.

Listening is a valuable weapon in any safety manager’s arsenal, and you should make the most of it.

Tip 5: Keep things moving

According to a study by Skipton Building Society, the average person has an attention span of just 14 minutes. However, in work meetings, they generally zone out after 13 minutes, like safety briefings.

Leading public speaking consultants and media training company Throughline Group suggest that a good presenter can hold an audience’s attention on a relevant topic for a paltry seven to 10 minutes. How long was your last presentation?

Now, this doesn’t mean that you should cut your briefings down to a few minutes, just that you should be conscious of attention spans and ensure regular transitions and breaks to keep your audience engaged. You can change things by moving to a new position, asking the audience a question, or just shifting to a new topic.

Remember that even the most talented presenters can only keep things moving for so long, so try not to spin the plates forever and drag your briefing out. Remember, people have other priorities, and if they feel that you’re taking up an unreasonable amount of their time, you’ll lose them.

These skills can be learned.

Many people assume being good at engaging others is something you’re born with. While it’s true people can be taken with a magnetic personality, there are plenty of tips and tricks you can employ to communicate more effectively in safety briefings and beyond.

My safety coaching package includes modules on how to communicate safety to engage others and, more importantly, keep them engaged, whether you’re talking to employees or employers. So if that sounds like something that might be beneficial to you, get in touch.

The Types of Risk-Taker and How To Spot Them

As a health and safety manager, it’s frustrating when near misses or accidents occur because someone took an unnecessary risk.

Whether it’s because someone failed to use the right equipment, cut corners, or was simply cavalier with their own safety and the safety of those around them, the consequences of risk-taking can be dire.

Your first response in these situations, understandably, might be to punish the person responsible for choosing to take that risk. But, if you look deeper, you might find that things aren’t quite that straightforward.

The Human Factor

In my twenty years as a risk management consultant, I’ve come to understand that – as with most things – the most unpredictable part of safety is the people involved. I call this the ‘Human Factor’, and it’s one of the first things I communicate to new clients when I start working with them.

Take cars, for example. Over the past few decades, carmakers have invested combined trillions of pounds into making their vehicles as safe as possible, implementing a plethora of fancy gadgets to aid drivers in getting from A to B safely. But for all the money, time, and science, all it takes is one person not paying attention for a split second to cause a terrible accident.

And it’s the same with health and safety at work: all it takes is one person deciding to go off-script for an incident to occur.

Unfortunately, as easy as it is to view all risk-takers as mavericks with no care for themselves or others, this view fails to consider how complex human beings can be.

To implement truly effective safety procedures, you need to understand the people you work with, their place in the system, and the reasons they might take a risk at work. Are they just being willfully ignorant, or are there other factors at play?

There are a few types of risk-takers

The Maverick

Let’s start with the stereotypical risk-taker. Usually overconfident, this person thinks they’re above the law and invincible. We’ve all heard the adage, ‘this is the way I’ve done it for years. Why should I change now?’

They might think ‘health and safety has gone mad’, too. But, it’s their way or the highway, which means they’ll take every opportunity to ‘forget’ their PPE or grab a ladder to ‘sort something quickly’.

It can be challenging to know how to handle these types of risk-taker. You might catch them on their phones during safety briefings, and one-to-ones with them usually end in an argument or a half-hearted, unconvincing ‘OK mate’.

I generally advise against punishing people when things go wrong, as it only leads to pushback and a very negative view of safety. However, suppose after reasonably explaining the reasons behind the procedures, they continue to take risks, putting themselves and others in danger. In that case, your only option might be to get upper management involved for a serious talk and potential dismissal.

This type of risk-taker is why involving health and safety in the recruitment process is so vital. Managers should be doing everything they can to ensure that new hires will (or can) fit in well with the existing safety culture.

We have the Time Saver

This person will cut corners to get a job done quicker, skipping safe choices in risk assessments or using an inferior form of access system because it takes less time to set up. All the risks they take are in service of getting things done quickly. There could be two reasons behind this.

One, the person wants to get home faster. They might not think much of a few missed steps here and there, so it can be as simple as taking them to one side and explaining the danger they’re putting themselves and others in.

Interestingly, they might actually have some good ideas about improving efficiency. By working together with them, you could identify areas where time could be saved in a safe manner. But, again, punishment should be a last resort.

More seriously, it could be a sign that employees are under pressure to do their job quicker, usually from upper management. All the well-intentioned safety procedures in the world won’t do a thing if employees are all but told to put themselves at risk or lose their job. This is unacceptable and should be raised with management immediately.

If you feel that this is happening in your organisation and your concerns are being ignored, you can anonymously report safety failings to the HSE.

And the Innocent

When safety breaks down, it’s important to ask yourself whether the person in the middle of it all is actually at fault or if the problem lies elsewhere – which is more likely.

A near-miss occurs because someone was in the wrong area, not using the right equipment, or because a machine inspection wasn’t undertaken. It’s possible that the Maverick was involved, or the Time Saver was looking to get out by lunch, but it’s equally likely that the person involved didn’t know.

Businesses are a complex web of constant communication, and the biggest organisations can potentially have thousands of people working closely together. So first, think about how many emails get missed each day; now, consider how many of those emails contain important information.

Although health and safety is, at its heart, just common sense, there can be a lot of information to take in. For example, it’s entirely possible the person involved in the incident missed a new safety briefing updating everyone on the latest maintenance timetable or how a specific type of PPE is now required.

This once again comes down to treating employees like people rather than numbers. A 97% take-up rate on the latest online safety sessions sounds fine, but in a business of 500 people, that’s 15 potential risk takers out in the world who might not even know they’re about to do something wrong.

It would be best to make health and safety communication as personal as possible to get your workers involved. You can be sure that everyone is on board and, more importantly, understands why procedures are being implemented.

I know this is easier said than done in larger businesses. Still, the onus is on both safety managers to communicate the resources they need to ensure this level of communication and on management to provide the resources requested. The initial cost might be higher, but trust me, it’s far lower than the potential cost of having several ticking time bombs out on site.

It’s about people

It can be easy to get wrapped up in safety bulletins and statistics. But, ultimately, health and safety is about people. So understanding your employees and why they might put themselves and others at risk should be every risk management expert’s priority. Only then can you put the right safety systems in place.

I’ve been a safety consultant for more than two decades, and in that time, I’ve seen every type of risk-taker there is. So for impartial and independent advice on better managing and coaching people as a safety manager, get in touch.

Why health and safety should be considered in the hiring process

When they hear ‘health and safety’, most people – particularly managers – immediately jump to fire drills, risk assessments and box-ticking. But health and safety in the workplace is far more than that.

A positive health and safety culture can improve productivity, profitability, client and stakeholder satisfaction, lower staff turnover, and so much more. It’s key to get it right, and part of that is bringing in new staff that share a commitment to building and upholding that culture.

Good health and safety practices ultimately benefit your whole workforce, whether through procedures that directly impact them or by reducing staff absences creating a more efficient site. In addition, research shows workplaces that prioritise health and safety have more productive workers. Therefore, bringing in individuals who have the same emphasis and commitment to health and safety is advantageous to your entire team.

Attitude to risk

A commitment or passion for something is hard to ascertain from a CV alone, and understandably, skills and knowledge relevant to the role are usually prioritised over health and safety.

Nevertheless, including one or two safety-relevant questions in the interview process can be hugely beneficial and can help build a team dedicated to working towards a strong health and safety culture. In addition, interviews are the perfect place to find out more about your candidates as people, beyond their CV, especially their attitude to risk.

Of course, you aren’t going to turn down a prime candidate because they’re a fan of skydiving. But if they’re consistently brushing over health and safety details when asked specific questions, it begins to build a risk profile that you can use to determine a candidate’s suitability.

When a person is being blasé about health and safety and procedures in an interview, you can bet that they’ll be taking risks and not following policies in the workplace. So excluding that risk at the interview stage will undoubtedly create a safer workplace.

Knowledge and qualifications

CVs are limited in detail they can give, which is why asking health and safety questions in the interview process is crucial. However, the information they can provide goes beyond qualifications. You can use your questions to find out what hands-on experience they’ve got, either at handling emergencies or setting up procedures to minimise risk in the first place.

Opening a discussion around health and safety allows you to explore their knowledge so you can be sure if you bring them into your team, they’re committed to building and maintaining a health and safety culture.

Value led interviewing

There is a growing trend of employees wanting to work for companies that share their values and beliefs. Having questions in an interview that explore an employee’s values and allow you to share yours makes it far more likely that you’ll attract new starters who have the same commitment to health and safety.

If your staff truly believe in creating a health and safety culture, it becomes far easier to embed in day to day activities.

How can you include health and safety in the process?

Structured, competency-based questions

Often the success of an interview comes down to the questions asked. By using structured, competency-based questions, you can probe their health and safety experience, understanding and qualifications.

The exact questions you ask can be tailored to the job and industry you operate. For example, you could ask them to tell you about how they implemented health and safety procedures in their previous role, or you could broaden it to ask them to explain a time when they had to consider health and safety. Both will very quickly give you an indication of their involvement and understanding of health and safety.

Included in all interviews regardless of level

This is crucial. For a health and safety culture to become embedded in everything you do, it must come from the top. A policy stating health and safety questions will be asked at all interviews will start to help this happen.

It’s no good having entry-level employees who are passionate about health and safety, only for a manager to put an end to it because they’ve got no interest.

Accessible interviews

Health and safety are more than procedures; it also covers employees and their working conditions and needs.

A great way to attract the right people to your business is through demonstrating you mean what you say. Asking someone for an interview and immediately asking about any accessibility needs and considerations that need to be considered does just that. Actions speak far louder than words and you taking the first step shows just how important that health and safety culture is to you.

Building a safety culture with the right people

Attitudes towards health and safety are difficult to change, however, if you are serious about cultivating a strong health and safety culture, bringing in people with the right perspective and knowledge.

It goes further than that, however. It’s about setting up the structure and expectation from the start – asking at all levels about their experience and making sure your interview process is truly inclusive. Then, when you start asking a few questions designed to probe that area, you’ll be in an excellent position to make the right decision for your business.

If you’re not sure where to start, get in touch. I’ve been working with businesses of all shapes and sizes for decades, helping them achieve a broader, more inclusive safety culture. I can help you identify the right questions to ask in your interview to ensure you’re hiring the right people.

Get in touch using the contact form above, or send me a WhatsApp message or text on 07814 203 977.