A summer of seeing things differently

Summer is a good time to talk about workplace health. Rising temperatures, longer days, and more time spent outdoors bring familiar hazards into sharper focus: sun exposure, dehydration, heat stress, air quality, allergies, and the particular challenges faced by people working outside. We think about how PPE becomes harder to manage in the heat, and whether emergency plans can withstand extreme weather.

Perhaps the most important lesson summer offers, however, isn’t about summer at all. It’s a reminder that some of the most significant risks at work are the ones we don’t see.

A sunny day can make UV exposure feel harmless. Heat can be dismissed as an inconvenience rather than recognised as a serious health risk. Poor air quality is invisible, but millions of people breathe it in every day.

These risks are the hardest to spot and, precisely because they are hard to see, they can be the easiest to overlook.

If we are serious about every worker returning home safely at the end of each day, we have to confront that reality free from fear or favour. 

Hidden hazards are collectively responsible for thousands of worker deaths in the UK every year, far more than the incidents recorded in official injury statistics. They span almost every sector, from the long legacy of asbestos to the exposures still taking place today in schools, hospitals, construction sites, and homes.

This is why I was proud to launch our Hidden Hazards campaign, shining a light on the biggest workplace killers: the hazards you can’t see. By engaging with workers, advocating for change, and challenging society to do more, we want to help create the thriving workplaces of the future, where hidden hazards are seen and stopped. 

Take silicosis, the first theme we are addressing in our campaign. Huge gaps in the data mean we still don’t know the true scale of the problem of breathing in Respirable Crystalline Silica (RCS), yet workers continue to be exposed to harmful dust that can rob them not only of their breath, but ultimately of their lives.

We should not accept uncertainty as an excuse for inaction, not when others have developed stronger approaches to identifying, regulating, and controlling workplace risks. Then, we should have the confidence to examine those approaches and learn from them because protecting workers should never be constrained by the boundaries of our own experience or by a fear of doing something differently.

At the heart of all of this, there is a fundamental point we should never lose sight of: behind every statistic is a human being. Behind every number is a life lost. 

The value of a human life must matter more than petty politicking, institutional caution, or an unwillingness to lead where the path is clear. When the evidence tells us workers may be at risk, the question should not simply be, “Can we justify doing something?” It should be, “What can we do to prevent harm?”

Hidden Hazards is about asking those questions. It’s about using data and evidence to uncover the true nature of workplace risks and building the workplaces of the future around prevention rather than regret.

Summer gives us a reason to look again at the risks around us. The real challenge is to keep looking once the obvious hazards fade from view, because the risks that matter most aren’t always the ones we can see.

Our responsibility as leaders, employers, workers, policymakers and as a society is to see the invisible, understand the unseeable, and act before it is too late; because when it comes to protecting workers, doing nothing is not the safest option.

Sometimes the greatest risk is failing to act when we already know enough to make a difference.