How safety culture helps you build a stronger business

Stephen C: Welcome to Health and Safety Uncut, a British Safety Council podcast with me, Stephen Cooke standing in for Doctor Shaun Davis. Who usually presents the podcast. Today's guest is Phil Pinnington, Head of Audit and Consultancy at British Safety Council. We're going to discuss how safety culture helps you build a stronger business. Phil, welcome to the podcast.  

Phil: Thank you, Stephen. 

Stephen C: And Phil, could you first just tell us a little bit about your background and explain why health and safety is so important to you? 

Phil: OK. Well, I would probably like to start by saying that I didn't come to health and safety as my primary career. I was fortunate enough to work for some years within the transport logistics sector, initially just simply international travel, our transport button and then moving into volatile products, shifting. 

So I started to get into hazardous goods and moving around of hazardous goods, then into downstream fuel. So there was very much a baseline of working within commercial environments and commercial pressures. And health and safety obviously within those sectors was quite an important part of what we did. 

So therefore it was never away from me. I was then fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to switch careers, which I'm very, very grateful for because it felt at the time that it was the right thing to do. 

And then from that, I was able to start working in various sectors that potentially would be quite unusual. So I, I was lucky enough to work with social care organization. The one thing within that sector is that risk management is very, very complex. 

It's not the same as trying to deal with a particular process in the manufacturing. You're dealing with people and you have to find ways of finding solutions. So it helped me develop, I guess my, my mantra, which is that health and safety is here to help business succeed, not to hinder. 

So it's, it was very much about finding solutions. From there, I was able to move into working for a trade association. So in working, again, commercially within an organization that was there to help people find solutions. 

So it really crystallized the way I operate in the field of health and safety, which is about finding solutions. It's about, yes, there are rules, regulations, ways of doing things. We have to apply those into the real world and find the solution. So it's about innovation, bringing things to the fore. 

So all of that I think really encompasses the view that health and safety is a function that is here to help the business succeed. So by taking that view, you can get success, you can get innovation, and you can make environments safer for your employees and other stakeholders. 

Stephen C: Fantastic. Thanks, Phil. So in a sort of practical sense then thinking about how you bring that to life, can you explain to people what a typical day, for instance, for you or indeed one of your team in audit and consultancy, looks like at British Safety Council? 

Phil: Well, luckily I can say that it's always a different day. The beauty of working at the British Safety Council is that we have clients in all sorts of different fields, different environments. So for an order to go in or a consultant to go into a client, it's always a nice challenge to understand what the needs of our clients is, whether they have a particular specialism they need supporting or just general approach and being able to go in and be the critical friend. 

And I know it sounds a bit of a cliche, but a lot of our clients that we work with time after time will say the value they have from the time they spend with the auditor is absolutely worth its weight in gold because they can have conversations, they can explore problems, they can discuss things. 

What they're discussing, they're discussing issues with people who get it, people who've done it, people who've experienced this in their, their own careers. And being able to go in and be a, you know, a consultant that is working collaboratively with you is, is a real advantage of what we do. 

And I, I, I personally, when I've got the opportunity to go out, I was with a client recently and it's, it just feels so good to be able to walk away from somewhere thinking actually, you know what, we've helped somebody. We've helped somebody overcome an issue or a problem, or if we haven't helped them to overcome it, we've given them some way of finding a route to the solution. 

So when you ask, what does a typical day look like? It is varied. It's, it will always be varied. And that's what makes it quite unique. We never look at a client as somebody that we're just going in to do a little bit of work with and we walk away. 

We want to know how that next step goes. We want to know where the successes are because we work with a view of, we want them to succeed.  

Stephen C: So you've mentioned variety, Phil, and obviously, I guess you're seeing different organizations, different types, different sizes, different sectors, different sorts of organizational capabilities all the time. And really no one is the same as the other, isn't it? So what does that mean in practice?  

Phil: OK, well, Simply put, what works for one company can't work necessarily for every other company. You need to set your priorities based on your own organization, your all, your own structure, your own needs, your own stakeholders. 

By doing that, you have to consider the listening. You have to listen to your staff. You need to understand what's right for your organization, the people who work for your organization. So including workers at every step of the design and development of your strategy is critical to its success. 

Often we forget that the people who do the job are the ones who can offer the best insight into how to do it effectively. And when we don't do that, we lose an opportunity. And it's very much a key part of it. 

And that covers all aspects. That covers your health and safety, and it covers your well-being because people have to feel as though they're part and parcel of the organization at every level. They're much more likely to come along with you if you include them. And they are the people, at the end of the day, we talk about control measures. We talk about how things are done. If you don't engage with these people, all you'll do is you'll be constantly chasing and finding why things aren't working. So it is important so you understand what your workers need. 

You understand you listen to their voices, you listen to what challenges they face in the workplace. And then you can look at how you can adapt or possibly tailor you know your management's, your management system, you know your functional day-to-day activities. 

So by listening to workers and listening to their voice and understanding their challenges, you can then provide the support that they need, which means a happy workforce is going to be a collaborative workforce, it's going to be a committed workforce. So the business as a whole will benefit. 

I think the other thing as well is we need to think about the non traditional ways we talk to people. We relied historically on worker representatives and relying on those communication pathways. Sometimes, especially now, in this way we work. 

It's not always possible to stick to that way of working. So bring innovation into it. I'm a strong believer that innovation is obviously a key part of development, but is not often recognized. And you know, in the way that a lot of organizations work nowadays, you have to be innovative about how you approach things and that includes the way you communicate. 

So think about the non traditional ways of communication. Think about getting conversations from people, encouraging them to talk, encouraging them to provide their insight, right? In essence, communication with the workforce, key part of how you do things. 

Keep on innovating. Think about the future, how are you going to develop? What are the challenges that you're facing?  

Stephen C: And that's very helpful, isn't it, because there are some commonalities there aren't there for organisations to think about in terms of their people, in terms of how they're engaging, in terms of what they're doing with staff. And I guess this is about culture in their organization overall. And if people want to start thinking about changing the culture and we're talking obviously here specifically about safety culture, where, where should they begin these to suggest? 

Phil: Well, I think it, you're absolutely right. The innovation now is culture reviewing culture. What was the culture that we have within our organization? What are we trying to achieve? Are we talking the right message? And we're talking here, first of all, the, the simple first step is to understand what, what your needs are, what your employees needs are, what, what's the, the perception? 

Because when we talk about culture, we, we talk to senior leaders on a regular basis when we audit. And they quite rightly will be very proud of the work that they've done. And in a lot of cases they've done some phenomenal work. The problem is how does that reflect in reality in on the ground? 

Are they getting the message out there that they and they think that they're getting out there? Is it at the level that they think is out there? And sometimes they can be a little bit disappointed. So you have to start from a point where you need to find out, you need to listen to your employees. You need to find out what they're thinking. 

Are they, are they honestly saying that actually this organization has the level of commitment and a culture that is being lived and you have to start from that survey. You know, we're working very closely with companies at the moment to try and develop that and make it a living process that gives us an idea of what's going on and helps employers. 

We talk a lot about authentic leadership. Authentic leadership, maybe a bit of a cliche, but it's really, really important. We talk very often about walking the walk and we have leaders who are absolutely passionate about being seen out there and they are doing some amazing work. 

They may not be hitting 100% of the workforce, they may be missing an opportunity with some, but understanding what they're missing helps them become more responsive to the needs of the workforce. And the commitment is there because without that commitment and the culture change work that we're doing at the moment is very much focused on people identifying where they need to work, what the focus areas need to be so they can be effective in what they're trying to achieve. 

Stephen C: What I mean, in your experience, what does a good safety culture look like?  

Phil: Well, again, it's very much determined on the organization and what they believe. A good safety culture would be an open one, would be a position where the employees are comfortable with asking the difficult questions, but not just asking the difficult questions, being listened to with solutions. 

Again, I think it's something that is often missed is listening to the people who do the job. If you have a, a good culture, you're listening to employees, you're listening to their suggestions because they're the people who know what they're doing. They're the people that can offer you some real good insight that will help your organization develop and become better at what it's trying to achieve. 

So if your leadership is listening and your leadership is prepared to listen and is prepared to take criticism as a constructive means of criticism, then you're going to get huge benefits from that.  

Stephen C:  So, and when people think if, if health and safety and audits and the kind of work you do feel, I guess they think immediately of risk assessments, don't they, and, and filling out the forms and all these kind of things. 

What I mean, would they clearly still play a role. And, and so how do they fit with the broader picture you've just been talking about?  

Phil: Risk assessments nowadays, I mean we can, we can see every end, or each part of the spectrum. 

Here we've got the paper based risk assessments, the very structured way of doing things, the electronic way, the software that there's, there's hundreds of ways of doing this sort of thing. The process of risk assessment in my experience, is something that is very unique to an organization. 

And you know, every, every practitioner will say that they've, they've got their own approach to do it and they, they think their approach is, is the best approach. As an auditor, you see different ones and you can see the pluses and minuses. At the end of the day, the key part of that process is it has to be consultative. It has to include the people who are doing the job.  

And oftentimes if you have a very simple process that is being risk assessed, you will have, I hate to say generic, but very simple, straightforward as assessment that they can look at and they can sign up to. 

What I often see, and I suppose if you like, it's a bit of a bugbear of mine, is control measures that are not affirmative action statements. Because again, from a cultural point of view, people need to have clarity. They need to understand what the expectations are. 

If you provide a control measure that is aspirational, that's not giving people the guidance they should be.  

Stephen C:  Before you carry on them in just to for those who are new to this topic as well, control measure Phil and pick that term for us.  

Phil: OK, control measures, how you're going to implement what are you going to do to protect individuals from injury or harm from the, the, the, the activity that's being done. 

So when we talk about a control measure, I like to use the analogy, it's like building a wall. That wall is, is that your control measure. And you can use different materials. You can use a breeze block, you can use a hay bale, you can use a piece of MDF, Whatever you've got is that control, that wall between the person and the injury. 

So you're building that up and the measures that you put in place there, they have to be affirmative action.  

Stephen C: And by that you mean?  

Phil: They need to. So when we talk about training, for example, how do you control that? Well, everybody who does the job has to be trained to XY or Z. 

What we often used to see during COVID was risk assessments. Hey said face masks and hand sanitizer are available. Well, that doesn't actually, that's not a firm affirmative statement. That's aspirational. 

It just says it's there. It doesn't tell me that my control is to use it. So risk assessments as should be very affirmative statements telling people what is expected. by doing it that way, It's also really helpful because when you want to check to see if you're actually being effective, all you do is you had a question mark at the end of that statement, which therefore means you can validate and check, are these effective, effective controls for, for the risk. 

But again, they go back to the cultural issue. If you're consulting and you're talking to your employees, then they're going to tell you whether these are effective solutions or not because  they're involved in the conversation. So it, it, it all of this fits into that the cultural norm that you want, you want the ability for your employees to think ‘actually I'm being spoken to, I'm being consulted on, I'm being asked for my opinion.’ 

Because I've found time and time again in my career, those people who do the job are the ones that will have the solution. And it makes certainly a health and safety practitioners life much, much easier because the health and safety is about facilitating solutions. It's not always about inventing a solution.  

Stephen C: And then audit, Phil, I mean, you don't. We're not required under the law to undertake health and safety audits in the sense, in the structured sense, but it, it obviously brings out this kind of level of detail. 

Obviously you're going in to look at various aspects of the organization like you've been describing clearly their records, the kind of way they're doing their own risk assessments. But can you just explain, you know, what, what goes into that and why that's sort of a benefit, I guess a benefit to an organization to do that? 

Phil: Well, audits by their very nature is the third party view. It's an outside set of eyes looking at how you're structured. You're quite right. We look at structure, the management system. So when we do health and safety audits, we look at what's the management system, what are the, does the management system comply with the legal requirements that are there so that the framework. 

But then we look at are you doing what you say you do? And again, that's about bringing again, it brings in culture and are we talking the right language to our employees? Are we using the right language? Are we being a little bit aspirational again, or are we being vague? 

We're getting better at that. And I think we'll audits do it challenges because you're if you're a third party coming into an organization and you look at a policy and you read it, you can ask what others might think is a stupid question. ‘Can you explain what you mean by a particular instruction?’ 

And if the person can't explain it to an outsider, then begs the question, can you explain it to a colleague? Now that said, different organizations will have their own language. And when you audit, you always have to have that in mind. Now the, the sort of language you see written down in a corporate setting is not going to be the same as you see in a manufacturing setting. 

Or, you know, geographically you may find the way it's described in in a European country will be different as it is to a North American company. So there's very much about those different sort of environments that you're working in. But as an auditor, you're looking at that type that you're challenging. 

I think the perception of auditing, sadly in some sectors is still quite fearful. And I think one of the challenges of an auditor is to take that fear away. Yes, we're there to find areas for improvement. 

Yes, we're there to identify areas where things aren't quite where they should be. But our approach is also about helping people to overcome those challenges. Nobody wants to be told that, yes, you've got a problem here. There you go. Go and sort it out yourself and walk away. 

That's not very collaborative, certainly not very helpful. And I know myself and plenty of practitioners who've been on the other side of the fence being audited. We always value the ability of speaking to somebody else who understands what goes on and we can chew the fat, if you like, and work out or what the best solutions are to solve a problem. 

So you know, the the principle of auditing is very much about pushing the organization to continually improve, which is something that you know is a is a common mantra within any sort of management systems. You want it to evolve, to become better, to reflect the organization, to reflect the needs of that particular time because organizations change. 

So arguably, management systems should never stay the same because it needs to flex and contract or expand based on the needs of the organization that's using it.  

Stephen C: So talking of improvement, then what? What could industry, but actually government as well I guess, do more of, or differently to, to really help support health, safety and well-being in the workplace? 

Phil: That's an ever changing landscape. I think, there's definitely awareness if we keep on raising the profile of what health and safety looks like. We've, we've come a long way. I, I, in my career, I've seen the perception of health and safety move in the right way. 

You know, for many listeners who've been around in the sector for a long time, they remember the days where we were ridiculed. We were, you know, oh, you're the other people who stopped us from doing things and COVID made a big difference. During COVID, You know, health and safety practitioners who were around that time will remember that they're now they were involved in conversations and a lot of times health and safety practitioners actually help businesses survive by their activities and their intervention. 

And that that was recognized. And I think we're in a place now where people recognize that good health and safety helps business. You know, we, we've moved away very much now from the regulator being a collaborator and that's disappointing, but it is the, it is the situation that we're faced. 

So there are sector representatives, there are organizations like the British Safety Council who are a voice who can help organizations decide what does the next level of good look like. 

Stephen C: So Phil, you mentioned the regulator is or has moved away from being a collaborator. What? What did you? What did you mean by that and why?  

Phil: Well, I think we've seen stats that show between 2010 and 2019, agency lost around about 45% in real terms. 

The budget, the operating budget now that reduced operating staffing levels of around about 35%. So we they lost around 18% of inspectors. So that's a big impact to, to the the regulator. 

And I think the, the shift, the unfortunate shift away from having the ability to ring your agency inspector and ask for some advice has had a detrimental effect. But saying that, you know, there's a void there, which I think people like the British Safety Council have been very eager to step into and help because that's what we're here to do. 

You know, we want people to succeed. So providing them with advice and guidance of how to deal with things, I think is, is a necessary step. And, you know, I'm proud that we're actually doing it.  

Stephen C:  And is there anything else that you'd like to sort of see the HSE doing? 

Phil: I think they need to, you know, we've talked a lot over the years about well-being and they they, they did introduce the stress surveys. I think they could do a lot more. I think they could show a little bit of leadership more in that area. You know that they, they are the recognized organization worldwide. 

You know, we work in different sectors and we work geographically around the world and HSE best practice is always seen as a benchmark to work to. So they have the opportunity to be serious voices in the arena and I think they should step up. 

Stephen C: Phil, we do this in every episode. Towards the end of the episode, we ask the speaker for one thing, 1 suggestion, one piece of advice or something that they could take away from it. 

So is there something you would suggest to people listening that they should be thinking about or could do?  

Phil: Well, I think one of the things that I'm really passionate about is innovation and don't be afraid to innovate. I think one of the one of the often missed opportunities for people working in health and safety is we get challenged to solve problems or to help solve problems. 

We find solutions, but then we move on to the next problem to solve. And we don't reflect back and say, well, actually, what did we do here? And I see evidence of this quite often. We deal with the problem, we move on. But actually it would be really nice to start saying, 

You know what? Actually health and safety does make a difference.  

It contributes to the organization's growth. It contributes to success. It makes things better. And we have historically not given recognition where that has been. And I think 1 take away I would ask people to think, what have you done? 

What innovation have you brought to your organization? And be proud of it because, you know, we've developed so far over the last 10 years. COVID obviously made a big impact. There's no doubt about that. But the technological changes we've made, you know, if you, if you reflected back and wondered how things have moved, we've moved massively. 

And in health and safety terms, I think we've moved quite a lot as well because we're not talking the language of, oh, it's simply regulation now we're talking about the impact. We're talking about how people have made a difference, how cultural an organization is. 

You know, we wouldn't have talked necessarily too much about culture 10 years ago. We're not talking about culture because you recognize the impact it can make. But as I said earlier on, we were talking about the, you know, the structure of an organization and how we collaborate. 

So innovate. That's the one take away I would ask people to consider. You can make a difference. Think about what you've done and be proud of what you've done well.  

Stephen C: Thanks Phil. It's been absolutely fascinating having a, a real insight, a window into your world in terms of what you see and what you experience in your work as an auditor and as a consultant of British Safety Council. 

So thank you very much for showing us and telling us a bit more about how safety culture can help organisations build a stronger business. And thanks very much for joining us here today.  

Phil: Thank you, It's been a pleasure.  

Stephen C: Phil Pinnington, Head of Audit and Consultancy, British Safety Council. 

 

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