The book considers what makes an excellent face-to-face health and safety contact in the workplace, and why these contacts are a fundamental building block of any strong, caring, and empowering workplace culture. It stresses the vital importance of inquiry, empathy, and analysis in understanding what employees need to mitigate risk factors around safety and mental health.

What happens when a tradesman falls from a height and a few hours later is told that they will never walk again? How does that person begin to comprehend that shocking prognosis? And how does he cope when he loses almost everything? This is the true story of Jason Anker. As a young family man, it hit his family hard as every day became a struggle. Unable to deal with his emotional and psychological pain, Jason turned to alcohol and drugs to blot out his dark thoughts. A tale of an “ordinary” guy whose life drastically changed in a moment.

This book makes the case that far too much work undertaken under the banner of ‘behavioural safety’ is overly person-focused. ‘If you can walk on hot coals, you can do anything – so be safe’ needs to be dismissed out of hand, but also more advanced techniques based on coaching and empowerment fail to reflect the fact that, as ‘Just Culture’ models show, the great majority of causes of unsafe behaviour are environmental.

Safety standards are set by a combination of three things: first, the basic systems: risk assessments, procedures, training, inductions and maintenance; second, the amount of objective learning about the inevitable weaknesses in these systems achieved from a ’Just Culture’ perspective; and third, the quality of ’transformational’ safety leadership which means coaching not telling, praising not criticising, leading by example and maximising front-line ownership and involvement.

The book covers the fundamentals of Safety Culture, Leadership and Risk Literacy. It explains each on their own with use of formal models and extensive references to research and then moves on to how individuals are motivated. Combining those four concepts it explains how the norms of an organisations Safety Culture are formed, affect individual behaviours and importantly how changes to the working environment can influence behaviour and ultimately improve the safety culture.

Organised Wellbeing: Proven and Practical Lessons from Safety Excellence seeks to present, in a user-friendly way, all of the key wellbeing themes. It views these through the lessons learnt from safety excellence because, at present, UK safety is world class but, frankly, wellbeing seldom is. In any organisation, culture is even more important than strategy and tactics, and training is just the base of a process in which facilitation and embedding of key behaviours and mindsets is the essential element.
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Risk-led Safety, Evidence-driven Management is a book that is a beacon in this storm of opinion. It strips the law back to its basic elements and focuses on its spirit and intent. It dismisses needlessly complicated ideology to reveal what perhaps Lord Robens really had in mind. So if you want a book that uses plain and simple language to explain what the law is really asking you to do, then this is the book for you.