This session will provide practical advice as to the steps companies should take in the immediate aftermath of an incident, including: the first call; incident response and management; dealing with the regulators; and media management. Delegates will then be invited to work through a short mock scenario involving a serious health and safety incident in order to put the learning into practice.
Facilitated networking session for anyone wanting to make new connections. You’ll get matched with a partner then grab a question from the bowl which you’ll discuss until a bell rings and you’re moved on to your next partner.
Open to all, men and women alike.
This is an interactive and practical workshop that shows how to address and measure psychological safety in the workplace. The workshop covers why senior managers should devote resources to this subject, the risks and benefits of investing in Psychological safety, how to identify psychological risks, what type of solutions exist to address the risks and key stra-tegic and practical actions to consider.
With 300,000 losing their jobs every year because of poor mental health, now is the time for employers to act.
Mind’s Chief Executive, Paul Farmer, was asked by the Prime Minister to undertake an independent review into how employ-ers can better support the mental health of employees. In this talk his colleague, Faye McGuinness, will provide an overview of the findings from the ‘Stevenson/Farmer: Thriving at Work’ review. In addition, she will share:
• Update on the progress that has been made since the re-port was published
• Guidance on how employers can implement the core and enhanced mental health standards
• Best practice from the range of workplace wellbeing in-terventions being delivered across the UK
• Useful resources for employers which save money and time
Are the people in your organisation energised, motivated and valued? Would your customers/clients agree? Less than half of UK employees feel that they’re supported by their colleagues when they need it and 60% state that their workplace directly contributes to poor mental health.
In this interactive session, we will explore emotional health as the foundation for good mental health in the workplace. We will demonstrate how you can enhance the emotional health of your employees and the relationships between them. The positive benefits extend beyond individual employees and their families into the organisation as a whole. This can allow both the people and the organisation’s vision and purpose to flourish.
Over the past 12 months, Oakwood Training has been helping Next look after the mental health and wellbeing of their staff. From developing corporate policies and wellbeing charters to creating and delivering comprehensive training programs and procedures.
Terry and Andy will share their journey with you.
- Why things needed to change
- How they started
- The importance of board-level buy-in
- How they overcame any objections and obstacles along the way
- What’s next for Next? How do you keep the momentum going?
Laing O’Rourke is a champion of employee health and wellbeing, with comprehensive prevention and intervention programmes, training courses and employee engagement projects which are proving to make a real difference. But this wasn’t always the case. 5 years ago, their health and wellbeing strategy was much less mature.
In this talk visitors will hear about Laing O’Rourke’s journey. As well as hearing how they cover fundamental legal requirements, you will hear about a range of projects they’ve run for 4,000 construction workers across 70 sites. Including: mental health, MSD and fast-track to physio programmes. Other programmes include:
• Annual ‘best improver’ competition, for employees wanting to lose weight, improve resilience and capacity, and generally improve their lifestyle choices.
• Raising awareness of the importance of physical health and exercise on mental health by running a charity cy-cle challenge during the working week. Employees cov-ered a distance equal to the distance from London to Sydney.
• Campaign to protect outdoor workers from skin cancer, presented in House of Commons
• Plus – plans to improve for the future
This session will explore the significant changes that have happened over the past 18 months regarding how businesses are approaching mental health and wellbeing in the workplace and what is next for solution focused best practice.
Through a new initiative called ‘Talk to Me’, Siemens is shifting the focus of conversations about safety and wellbeing. EHS are facilitating the initiative, operational managers are taking ownership, and safety & wellbeing are now discussed together as part of the same conversation. Hear about the full scope of the initiative in this case study.
Recognising the fact that people have lives outside work too, and factors which can impact on health and wellbeing.
How do we make sure that health and safety is given appropriate focus in a sector where looking after others is our job? Ensuring that the health and safety of staff is embedded in our safety culture is fundamental to controlling the risks in such a complex sector. From board level support, to encouraging staff on the ground to make health and safety part of their everyday working life, we can only take care of others if we look after ourselves. This presentation will look at ways we are trying to embed health and safety in a hospital environment to prevent accidents and injuries.
As the profession faces an unprecedented period of change with the emergence of a range of new theories, approaches and transformative technologies, what needs to change in our thinking and approach.
James Pomeroy will share what he has learnt from introducing new approaches and trialling new technology, and what these lessons mean for how safety practitioners approach to change and view success.
Acre Frameworks have recently conducted the largest research projects into defining the non-technical competencies critical for success in the Health and Safety profession.
One of the critical Leadership competencies identified is ‘Industry Ambassador’. Anna Keen, Director of Frameworks, will explore this with a panel of rising Industry Ambassadors with the aim to answer the following questions:
As work demands change, Health and Safety professionals need to ensure their organisations are both physically and psychologically safe.
Hamish Moore, Chief Executive will explain in detail what Psycholog-ical Safety is and explain his research in this area, why organisations are now measuring Psychological Safety and provide some practical actions that you can implement to address the issues arising.
Immediately following the presentation, Hamish will lead an interac-tive, one hour workshop in the Workshop on Networking Forum for those who want to put theory into practice.
Ed will present HSE’s perspective on H&S leadership, identifying tips and common pitfalls. He will also give an outline of the HSE/NEBOSH H&S leadership excellence qualification.
Enabling business leaders to drive positive change is fundamental to establishing a strong health and safety culture. Health and safety practitioners are challenged to influence business leaders such that they actively and visibly champion improvement in workplace safety standards.
Paul will cover some of the challenges faced by health and safety practitioners associated with enabling business leaders to drive positive change. He will explore some of the most effective ways to secure business leader engagement with enhancing business health and safety performance.
Kelvin TOP-SET are world leaders in incident investigation and problem-solving methodology. In this talk, Nikki Curtis will discuss her experiences rolling out the TOP-SET Incident Investigation System across a major infrastructure company when she was Head of HSEQ.
Nikki will discuss planning, roll-out and lessons learned along the way, as well as challenges faced by organisations implementing a new methodology.
We will also be discussing the benefits gained by taking the time to plan, implement and successfully embed an incident investigation system into an organisation and the return on investment.
The session will provide an overview of Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome including the latest knowledge and research from across all aspects of the condition and related exposure science.
Current challenges in prevention will be illustrated alongside potential avenues for improvement enabled through recent technological and scientific developments.
The session will cover:
• Clinical overview of condition pathogenesis and recent biomedical research
• Epidemiological overview of risk factors and the effect of variance on further progress on disease prevention
• Operator tool interaction and resulting variance of human response to vibration – latest research
• Harnessing data to drive change and addressing the issue at the source
Lone and remote working is on the rise. Fuelled by flexibility, responsiveness, and technology employers and workers alike are actively choosing lone working scenarios. Often these workers in your organisation will be apparent to you. But some lone workers may be more invisible. What about the librarian who stays late to tidy up and is alone in the building; or the utility engineer who is working with customers but isolated from colleagues?
Who is working alone?
The Health & Safety Executive defines lone working as “those who work by themselves without close or direct supervision”. This definition includes staff in fixed establishments who may be out of sight of colleagues, those who are occasionally mobile and working away from their usual base, and those who permanently, or usually, work by themselves.
Devices for everybody
Since each worker’s role and risk assessment will be different, it’s essential to ensure they have a device ideally suited to their scenario. For each type of lone working environment there is a perfect solution, here are a few examples:
We would discuss these in general terms (not specific brands), including product categories that LWS doesn’t necessarily support. Companies with varied remote and lone workers need to be sure that their system supports every device and every person, regardless of their work/risk scenario.
This session is a lively legal update and regulatory roundup into how to reduce accidents, protect your people and reputation. BLM will guide delegates through recent health and safety case law and how this impacts on your business. The session will also review tips on best practice in incident management and investigation.
• Organisations are often puzzled that the introduction of a safety management system does not always improve safety culture, especially long-term – why is this?
• The Safety Culture Maturity Model looks at behaviours and 10 elements which are needed for safety culture - does ISO 45001 address these elements?
• Have organisations that have adopted ISO 45001 seen any changes to culture?
The session will review and discuss:
• Background to ISO 45001 standard development
• Main themes of the standard
• Experience of organisation’s adopting the standard to date
• How to prepare for transition to ISO 45001
Time to Breathe: air pollution and outdoor work
• Why we think outdoor workers are vulnerable to the health impacts of ambient air pollution. The regulatory 'gap' and launching Time to Breathe.
• The use of data to inform operational decisions that can help reduce outdoor worker exposure: Canairy, the mobile app and the politics of data.
• London's pollution 'infrastructure' and an overview of UK monitoring of air pollution. Working with King's College London.
• Data into policy: next steps for Time to Breathe.
It is widely acknowledged that there is a very significant burden of respiratory disease associated with working in the British construction industry. Experts estimate that for every worker killed in a construction site accident, a hundred workers will die from long latency lung diseases resulting from dust exposures.
Chris will discuss the British Occupational Hygiene Society’s highly successful Breathe Freely campaign. This initiative was launched around 4 years ago and targeted at reducing respiratory disease in construction. Chris will summarise the journey of Breathe Freely, describing how the campaign has engaged the construction industry and helped to drive a culture of tackling health like safety. She will discuss some of the practical tools which the campaign has generated, which are designed to upskill construction industry stakeholders to allow them to effectively manage respiratory disease risks.
More recently the campaign has broadened out to engage with the manufacturing sector, specifically to address welding. Chris will describe the recently launched welding control selector tool, which provides clear guidance on how to effectively control the respiratory risks associated with welding.
The appetite for using products containing asbestos had largely gone when new year broke in 1980; or at least no more asbestos was to be sprayed, no more asbestos lagging was to be mixed and applied, and no more asbestos insulating board was to be cut, drilled and fitted.
Then came the first major decade when we decided to reverse the process and get the stuff out of our schools, shops and factories etc. Moving nearly 40 years on, one might expect asbestos to be a problem confined to the history books; but it is not.
We are returning to those schools, shops and factories to remove the asbestos we thought we had removed in the 1980s.
Forty years on and nearly 60 years after the UK developed common methods for asbestos sampling, we are now debating how we should test for asbestos and what should be considered an ‘acceptable’ level of exposure. If we don’t tackle these problems now and tackle them through competent advice and expertise, give it another 40 years and duty holders will still be wondering whether or not they have an asbestos problem.
Sainsbury's has been working with Alcumus Info Exchange over a number of years to take the business and safety data available and feed this into a "Risk Map" for all of our 2000+ stores. The aim is to try to predict where issues are likely to occur before they do. We have also piloted this as part of a National Inspection strategy Approach with the Food standards Agency. I will explain how we approached this and what we have seen so far and how we see this developing further.
It’s no coincidence that conversational interfaces will help drive incident reporting in the future as we’ve been using this technology every day in our lives without even thinking about it!But how can voice first technology advance incident reporting? Working in collaboration with IBM and kiosk manufacturer Odema, Airsweb are binding new technologies to extend EHS best practice in diverse hazardous locations using voice first application.IBM’s Watson and Google’s Voice Recognition enables a voice first kiosk to be the central source and access point for EHS best practice incident reporting and hazard identification. The ease which on-site workers and contractors can verbally report an incident will certainly help drive a more positive safety culture and identify risk patterns on site. Conversely, it can also deliver real time safety reports with a simple verbal commands.
Last year, the British Safety Council built a virtual environment to help learners experience real risk assessment. In this session, James will lead you through the British Safety Council’s journey until now and share plans for future projects. He will cover:
• The zero-harm environment
• 20 learners in VR at the same time
• How online learners get involved
• Learner feedback
• The overall impact on teaching and learning
3 innovators with 20 minutes each to show the audience what is possible with VR in health and safety.
14.00 – 14.20
Demo 1: Using Immersive technology and virtual reality to reduce risk and improve training
The Luminous Group Ltd are working with leading global companies to develop innovative new solutions that use the latest immersive technologies to provide enhanced health and safety training. The presentation will introduce virtual, augmented and mixed reality and outline the opportunities available. Ben will demonstrate real-world examples, applications and quantifiable ROI.
Immersive technologies are transforming the way businesses manage to train and operate, get an insight into how you can start benefiting from this exciting new technology now.
14.20 – 14.40
Demo 2: How Virtual Reality for Health & Safety is more than WoW factor
14.40 – 15.00
Demo 3: Hazard spotting and working at height – 2 VR-based training modules
See demos of 2 VR-based training modules. The first takes the user to a virtual warehouse where they will have to spot hazards which appear at random. The second takes the user to a virtual nacelle where they have to change a lightbulb at height.
As well as seeing the two demos in action, visitors will get an overview of Immersive Factory, a company which offers HSE training modules in virtual reality and provides a catalogue of HSE training. All VR exercises are based on real-life HSE issues and they are developed in partnership with large industrial groups in France such as Veolia, Air Liquide, Suez (also in Poland and Morocco), EDF, Saint-Gobain, SEB, Colas (also in Indonesia), Engie, Volvo and many more.
Sarah Sargent, Safety & Assurance Performance Manager for the new high-speed rail network, known as High Speed 2 (HS2), will discuss how HS2 is using technology to take an innovative approach to how they manage health and safety across the UK’s largest infrastructure project.
Health and safety is one of HS2’s core business values. Joined by SHE Software’s Julian Taylor, Sarah will discuss how HS2 is making proactive interventions across their workforce, translating data in to actionable insights through the use of business intelligence tools.
The presentation will focus on three fundamental elements: engagement, communication and strong leadership, and how innovative technologies can make a significant contribution in supporting these to drive improvements in safety performance
The health & safety sector is ripe for disruption using innovative technologies like computer vision. This session covers what computer vision can do to help businesses enhance their health and safety operations whilst considering privacy and data concerns around visual-based monitoring.
Reasons to attend
To gain insight into the capabilities and existing uses of real-time video analysis in the workplace.
In this session we will talk through how today’s technology can be used for:
We will also address your privacy and data concerns around visual based monitoring.
Join us in this session as Steph talks about how she went from working as an apprentice engineer at Black & Decker in Durham to becoming an award-winning financial journalist and BBC household name.
Having broadcast from over 600 organisations around the country, Steph will explain what she thinks it takes to be a good business and how to weather the economic and political storm.
On top of this Steph will be talking about why we need to value skills more in the UK and the importance of vocational training. Plus, what she has learnt from some of her biggest interviews, which includes President Trump.
Recent research has shown that women in leadership positions within health and safety show lower levels of innovation, confidence and risk-taking compared to their male counterparts. This is linked to lower levels of confidence and creative thinking.
Guest speaker, Ruth Denyer, Group Risk Director at ITV, will explore the issue. An accomplished leader in Risk, she will share what’s worked for her and offer advice for others in, or aspiring to be in, similar leadership positions. She will touch on:
• Collaborating with the business and supporting strategic objectives – not saying ‘no’
• Knowing how to land a message
• Making safety accessible using technology and the right language
• Confidence, knowing what you want and going for it
Following this guest talk, the incumbent Women in Health and Safety Chairperson, Dr Judith Grant, will introduce the committee and outline aims for the year ahead, including ways in which everyone can get involved.
Following the keynote session, the Women in Health and Safety network will lead a ‘speed networking’ session in the Networking Forum, which everyone is invited to. (See the Networking Forum programme for further details.)
Women in Health and Safety is a network of people who support gender equality and want to see women flourish in our profession. We encourage both men and women to join us.
A detailed account of several recent incidents which have led to serious injuries. The presentation will include court cases involving following falls from height in LA premises (warehousing/office/ leisure). In addition, there will be examples of machinery incidents which have resulted in hand and finger amputations. The presentation will be delivered by Terry Mallard, a Health and Safety Inspector at Birmingham City Council. He has over 20 years’ experience of investigating a wide variety of -work-related incidents and will be available for questions following his talk.
Whilst working as a plant operator engineer, I was in-volved in a machinery incident. The injury is not im-portant, it's more important how the incident evolved from 5 years previously.
The story highlights the fundamental importance of key safety behaviours such as risk assessment, communica-tion, and lock off procedures. It also highlights the need to think about custom and practice in the workplace and the need to encourage people to question and challenge each other. It is about joining the dots and speaking up, to ensure everybody goes home every day to loved ones.
The incident has left it's physical and psychological effects, including those with my relationships with family, work mates and friends. And even though this presentation is based around my accident, it is very much about helping organisations with the complacency on sites up around the country and further afield. Complacency is at the heart of accidents, whether on the ground with operators or with the highest of directors in organisations.
This talk will help delegates spot the signs and listen to the conversations that are happening in the workplace to help stop complacency and accidents. We will look at:
• Rational and irrational behaviours
• Complacency
• Leadership
• Cultures amongst teams and departments
• Making a difference
Both the world of work and the world of Health and Safety are changing. Recruiting and retaining the right people is critical to achieving your strategy as a Health and Safety team - so how do you position yourself as the employer of choice for Health and Safety talent?
Anna Keen, Founder of Acre Frameworks, challenges a panel of Global Health and Safety Leaders to uncover the secrets to attracting, developing and ultimately retaining the best talent in Health and Safety.
Whether you’re currently leading a team, you’re an aspiring leader or you’re a health and safety professional trying to understand who should get the benefit of your talent, this discussion hopes to provide a fresh and inspiring insight.
The panel will explore questions such as:
What is ‘talent’ in Health and Safety?
How do you attract talent?
What does development mean to you and your team?
How do you retain the right people?
When do you support them to leave?
