Stop Choosing Between Safety & Profit with Simon Hayhurst

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the HR ER podcast where we delve into the world of HR emergencies and scandals. Don't forget to follow and subscribe to HR ER on your favourite podcast platform. Get ready for scandalous stories, lessons learned and a generous dose of advice for HR professionals for navigating the HR landscape. Our goal here is not just to entertain, but also to help you learn from the topics we touch on. In order to save your business from its own emergency. For my working life, I've been at board level in companies where I've been a shareholder director. Eventually I wanted to run my own business and help small businesses with a health and safety. Would you say that gives you a unique outlook on health and safety, like a top-down thing? A well-run company that involves health and safety in its normal day-to-day operations is thinking about its profit. If you've got your processes in place, you've got your safety in place, health and safety can actually save money. Just before we start, protect your business from the risk of tribunal, reduce legal costs and save yourself from HR headaches with our heroes software and employment law consultancy services. We're back in the red seats and the black seat over there for Simon, our guest today. This is, I think, it's going to be our third episode of this series of guests. Yeah, a ninth guest ever. Okay. Congratulations. Yeah, I feel honored. Simon, we've got Michelle for me again, presenting because Alyssa can't be here, but Hi. She does a good job, doesn't she? I hope so. It's your first podcast I'm told. It is? Yes. You're not nervous. Not at all. Not at all. That'll be all right, mate. We're going to talk a little bit about your background first if that's okay. If you can just start us off with sort of what got you here and what you're doing there. Yeah, sure. All my working life, I've been at board level in companies where I've been a shareholder director, people and operations have always fallen to me. And I got to a point where eventually I wanted to run my own business and help small businesses with a health and safety. It's something that I recognise is difficult to put in place. It isn't always highest on the agenda. So the idea behind Big Mountain Consultancy is that I help put those things in place as seamlessly as possible. The name Big Mountain, in case you're wondering, that came from my love of climbing, well, not climbing, but trekking, so things like Kilimanjaro, Tupp Carlin, Morocco, anywhere that I can look down and look at the scenery, that's my happy place. You've been up and all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And working my way through the late district, when rights at the moment. Nice. I'm partial myself to a hike. Good. Yeah, well, set the scene. First question. Why does health and safety so often stay on this dualist rather than moving to action? Right, you kind of alluded to it there, didn't you? Yeah. Fundamentally, growth, cash flow and customer satisfaction and services, you know, high up there on the agenda. But health and safety is it's in there, but it's not a high priority. It's one of those, we must get it done this year, but it'll happen in time, but times, you know, runs away with itself and it'll be on 2020, 2020 sevens list, if we're not careful. It's not exactly subject to it. No, it's Vogue as such. Correct. And, you know, let's face it, if a business hasn't had an accident or were of a near miss event or upset employees, then it's just going to be down there lower on the list, because it's not pushing its way up there. So one of the things that we sometimes hear is that, well, we don't have accidents. So, you know, what's the point of having health and safety, but Matt has also some money and not bother. Yeah. So is that something that you hear and what would you say to that? Yeah, I hear that often when I'm in conversations with potential clients. And, you know, let's face it, the fact you haven't had accidents, it's not a good strategy to have. Quite often, if I walk around the factory or the manufacturing environment and speak to the employees, they'll tell me about accidents, near misses, incidents that have happened that just management aren't aware of. So it might feel that everything's okay, but it's just a time bomb waiting to happen. And I think the other thing is some companies have a consistent workforce. So they've got a lot of trust, their experienced employees, but what they forget is if they're introducing new plant machinery or they're bringing another apprentice on, all those risks are starting to change. And so that likelihood is likely to, you know, come quicker than they had anticipated. But if they're not aware of that, it's not on the radar, then, you know, this rosy picture of we don't have accidents, just is the mantra. But, you know, it is time that's the factory and all of this accident waiting to happen, actually. You get like, is it predominantly mentioned like factories in that? I imagine it's probably like workplace, sorry, blue collar like workplaces that need this sort of training. For example, I live in scum thought steelworks there. Like I've heard no end to stories from my mates about clive who's nearly fallen off a crane or whatever. But they don't record it anyway. It's not like near miss book, it's just kind of blue collar. We'll get on with it type thing. Yeah, something you encounter quite a lot that kind of attitude. It is. And, you know, unfortunately, it's down to training and education and actually providing something simple for them to report on. So an Apple or a WhatsApp group, just so it can be investigated. So what happens is, you know, they wipe the brow. Gosh, we got away with that one. Let's crack on because we're busy. Whereas really, you know, we need to learn from accidents near misses because we can't look at our controls unless we understand what those those risks are. But you're quite right. Blue collar workers are at a higher risk. But you can each also have organizations where they're sending employees out into the big bad world and coming across, you know, different people for whatever reason that business is in existence. So it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody working at height or working on a thought lift truck. That sort of thing could literally be interactions with other people that is a higher risk because of the nature of that particular business. In the past, I've been a HR consultant where I've actually had to visit sites, so small to medium businesses, some of those being manufacturing plants, retail, whatever. And although I'm not a blue collar worker, I am having to go on site, walk through the warehouse, walk across the plant, pack my car, etc. Do you think it's important to have health and safety plans in place for visitors? Yes, for employees and visitors. So as you rightly say, you're going from a low-risk environment of the office and then straight into the highest risk of that business. Yeah, here's the from the kitchen table. Yes, yeah. So, you know, things like clear walkways, signage, hivers, jackets, if that is a need, you know, all these sort of things need to be assessed and to make sure that people that we thought were low risk aren't overexposed and are also aware of what risks are in that other environment and trained on them. That's key. Contractors and visitors is a big thing when I go and get involved with a new client, very often there's little in place and just signing in and assigning out. So, if you've got somebody that's going to be doing some repairs on a piece of equipment in the main manufacturing area, it's, you know, do they understand the risks, have there been, had a walkthrough of what those risks are? Does everybody else know they're there and what they're there for? And how are we going to control and keep them safe whilst they're on our site? So, these are things that quite often are just assumed will be okay, but those controls need to be put in place. Absolutely. I mean, worth a fire exit. Yes. What's that noise? Yes. Yeah. You know, I've been there and, you know, the fire alarm's gone off and someone's gone, it's just a test. We do it every Tuesday or what happens if it had been in the ladies. Yes. Oh, in an office on my own. Yeah. Add a packed up and gone. Well, I want a packed up, but I've just gone. Yes. Absolutely. I've been to companies where, you know, they've had an open plan warehouse and then things have got added, things have got added. And when you stand there and do a 360, I can't actually see any fire exit signs because everything's grown up around it and they've not reassessed. So, these are the sort of things that a good health and safety consultant brings to the table because they've got that critical eyes of looking around that they're just not accepting what has become the norm. Yeah. I mean, there's some scary stuff out there, isn't there? Yes. The really is. Yes. Absolutely. I just brought back some memories to me like every, every other fire alarm I've ever encountered, like someone has gone, that's a test. Yes. No matter where I am. Yeah. Like our recent one, our in JD, Jim, just down the road and it went off. I looked around to my headphones. I've no one was moving. It's like, I probably shouldn't have, but I just put my headphones on and carried on. Yeah. I've ignored it. Yes. Which, don't do that anyone. No, no. - No, absolutely not. - Don't do what I did. But like, people seemed pretty convinced that it was just a test. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Who do you believe? - Yeah, absolutely. - In that situation. - Sort of third section I'm gonna cover today. I'll give you a title 'cause there's a lot of words in here in terms that I'm not aware of. So I'm hoping you can shed some light on it. Commercial, reality and proportionate safety. - Yes. - You know what that means. - Yes, I do. - I'm glad you know what that means. - Yeah, so the first question Simon, many leaders worry that health and safety will slow workflows and impact cash flow. How do you balance the safety with commercial pressure in the real world environment? - Yeah, I mean, I've come from a commercial environment. So I understand that in relation to a business that has to have a priority in there. But in terms of the actual proportions, it's about looking at what risks we have got at that company, what controls we need to put in place and have we got a budget for it. If we haven't got a budget for everything, then it's okay. So how are we gonna change these controls to fitting with the budget for now? And then we'll develop some of these other ideas later without it affecting risk. So it's not just a prescribed, this is what you must do. And I don't really care about the cost. It's taking that into consideration with the business because you need them to come along the journey and we've got to start somewhere. So we've got to start with a budget and it's just got to be reasonable and practical for that company. - You mentioned as well there, obviously you've got a board level experience and you started off with that in your career type things. You built that first. - Would you say that gives you a unique outlook on health and safety like a top down thing? - Yeah. - How, from me, I pride myself having a commercial lens. So I'm looking at health and safety and operations, not just health and safety. So it's not that that is a role I've had, health and safety, that's all I'm interested in. It's, as you rightly say, it's board level experience, it's looking at the whole operations, how that health and safety fits in. And importantly, making sure that that health and safety does fit in with the work operational work practices. If it doesn't, we're always gonna have a fighting battle and we're never gonna get health and safety properly embedded. So it also allows me to talk to directors at board level and not be afraid to have those honest and frank conversations. But knowing, for them, knowing that I've got there back and it's literally a case of, okay, well, we've got this potential problem. This is my solution for now. It's gonna cost X. Are we okay to do that? Ideally, where we want to be is Z, but I realize we can't afford to do that right now. So let's put this in place, but make sure that we factor in at a later point doing the control we really do to have long term plan. - Yeah, absolutely. - Same sort of question. You know, from that experience, are you almost going in there saying, listen, like I've had to worry about budget numbers all this X and Y myself and you're advising from that standpoint and then do you think that makes you more, I don't want to say believable, but like, do you think that makes you more approachable for them? - It does, because we can relate to each other. But actually, if we think of that from board level down to floor level, because of that experience that I've had, I realize that for anything to happen, we've got to bring the employees along the journey. So very early on, I'm having conversations with employees, reassuring them that it's not a tick box exercise. I'm not going to be walking around like a militant and a clipboard just basically disruptive. It's about health and safety. It's not for my benefit, it's for your benefit that we're putting this into play. So I want you to come along this journey with me and the board to put these safety measures in place that they'll never work unless you input on those safety measures and tell us, are we doing the right thing or not? Or from your perspective, bear in mind your closest to the risk and have a unique perspective, what we could be doing that isn't a problem that maybe we haven't thought of. But the point of that is, you've early doors building that cultural change and you bring in those employees along the journey which supports the board, it's an all-inclusive thing, isn't it? - Yeah, I've got to ask a lot of questions. You want to do all of that? - Yeah, so let's think about HR and health and safety together. Okay, so where do you see the strongest overlap between the two really in terms of working together? - Yeah. - And I suppose let's just get the next question and as well, what happens if they don't? - Obviously, the main ingredient is people. We both have an interest in people. We have an interest in recruitment. We have an interest in the training and wellbeing. And we also want to know about absences. From a health and safety perspective, a lot of these things are interlinked with HR or should be. They don't always start off that way, but that's the whole point. If we haven't got health and safety in there, but we've got HR, then once the two get embedded into the organisation, then they should be talking and working together so that there's no misunderstanding or contradictory information going out there. From a wellbeing and absence point of view, then HR, it's obvious where they're in dress lies. It's a lot of its absenteeism. But from my point of view, from the HR, hey, health and safety point of view, it's about root causes. Why is somebody off ill? If it's a mental health reason, is it something we need or the employer needs to address in terms of signposting, is it something internal that's actually happening at work that we need to address? So that's the main areas that we work together on. And when it works well, then you can see that with the workforce because they're all happier and focused and they know they've got the support. Where it can go wrong is when the two areas work in silos. So they do their bit, we do our bit, and never the two shall meet. What that means or what that looks like in practice is mixed policies with information. This is how we do things, but the health and safety is saying one thing and the HR saying another, we'll just do our own thing 'cause we just don't believe what we've been told. It's about that joint approach on things like induction. So there'll be a robust induction procedure, but does it include health and safety? And if it does include health and safety, is it just a sentence or are we actually getting them to understand the health and safety policy and understanding the risk that there are risk assessments or a safety management system that's there to help them? So all those things, if they're not integrated in with HR, will sit separately and it just depends on the strength of who's delivering health and safety in the company to make sure that that is delivered. But really, if you get a real smooth running HR and health and safety service going, then that should just be synchronous basically. - Yeah, absolutely. I've seen it go wrong myself in terms of the retail background for me and there's been an accident and the HR manager's gone along and it's been manual handling, not my problem. Of its health and safety, well, actually, this is a person who's employed by the company. Somebody needs to make sure they're all right, get your heads together and do it between years and get it right. So it can go wrong, but as you said, if both works side by side and don't see it as an individual role, health and safety induction, the employees are both, it can work. So yeah, really interesting. - Yeah, and another quick example, if you're driving for work, HR might have a driving for work policy, but it'll stop short usually of adding things like daily vehicle checks before you set off is the vehicle fit and proper. Are you safe and healthy to drive that vehicle? And so that's an example of working together where the policy could mention the daily vehicle check and things like this that just reinforces you have a duty to do before you get behind the wheel of that vehicle. - Next sort of section, we're gonna look at when things go wrong, which they do inevitably, don't they, in all sort of walks of life? And when the incidents do occur, what would you say in your experience with a wider consequence of businesses? So do I have a policy in place? Is it legal, financial or sort of business like reputational, do they lose customers? - Thanks for that, I'll leave just answer my question. - I'll follow you. - No, no, no. (laughing) - It was a good start. - It was a good start. Yeah. You're quite right. When things go wrong, I think a lot of businesses don't appreciate just how much time and money is involved and repetition, as you say. So if you have somebody that has an accident and, you know, let's say it's one that you must report to the HSE, whether they investigate it or it's just added to the statistics or not, it's the fact that that accident has happened. And then it has implications on insurance premiums, morale in the business itself. Well, if they don't address this happened, the reason it happened and let's learn from it, if they just carry on as normal, then that will have an impact on people. Particularly if someone's fallen off a ladder, for example, in the hour in hospital, which is actually that would be reportable. But all these things, the unknown side of it, you know, like I say, insurance premiums, crisis management. So if the HSE are involved, it's, you know, you've probably got about an hour to put a crisis management plan together, which isn't enough time after the event. Yeah, because you're going to get your local newspaper, your radio stations. Yeah, they want to know. And my advice is any company should have a crisis management plan ready to go. Because, you know, if you don't respond to the press within that time frame, they'll soon dig out ex employees or competitors and the narrative suddenly changes from what you want to actually get out there. So, you know, having a good crisis management planning place as a start point is quite important. Okay, we hope most accidents never happen. And we hope if they do, there are only minor accidents. But, you know, the odd one, somebody falling off a three-step-up ladder could actually, on the face of it, it doesn't sound that bad. Well, it could be quite a serious accident, depending how they fall. We do a lot of damage. Yeah. So, crisis management planning is certainly an important factor in that. You're currently writing a book titled Stop Choosing Between Safety and Profit. Yes. So, what's the core message that you're looking to get out to small businesses and to take away? Quite often when I speak to businesses, they're worried about the cost of health and safety. Yeah. So, the idea behind the book is to sort of dismiss that as an issue, because a well-run company that involves health and safety in its normal day-to-day operations is thinking about its profit. Because, you know, if you've got your processes in place, you've got your safety in place, you've less likely to have accidents or less downtime, less investigation, all the points that we've talked about just before in terms of the damage and a tea reputation, etc. and cost. So, I'm trying to show, and I can give an example, actually, of where health and safety can actually save money. So, if you have high-risk activities at work that a standard risk assessment just won't cut it, then you would write something called a safe system of work. And that's a set of instructions of how to do something safely. So, whether it's handling their piece of glass on a cutting machine, it's something that you feel you need to spell out. Now, quite often when we look at that, we involve the employees well that's actually on the operator. And we can find things like, hang on a minute, that piece of glass has moved four times before it's actually ended up at this machine to be cut. And we could just take it from one place straight there, get the glass cut off it goes. And that's because we've taken the time to look at the processes. So, what I'm trying to say there is that there's a lot of time and effort into moving glass, for example. Whereas, if it's actually in the right place at the right time, then we've saved time. So, that's just one little example of where when you actually look at a process in detail, okay, we're talking about health and safety, but we're actually looking at the process. And there might be some time saving or some money saving aspects to that role, to that process that we just not thought about because we haven't taken the time. So, health and safety can actually save time and save money just by the fact that you're looking into that particular process from a safety perspective, but it brings along other operational money saving and time saving as well. It makes me think about like Jenga, you know, if it was stacked correctly, it would never fall. Yes, absolutely. So, you know, save money that way. It's time spent for the sake of long-term efficiency. It is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And the cost of health and safety, I mean, a claim for an accident would outweigh that cost. So, actually, you save money by putting the practices in place as you. You are. And you're also influencing cultural change. And so, it's leading to a happier workforce. And a happier workforce is a more productive workforce and more willing to put themselves out for you because they feel valued. So, yeah, it's, again, that's another another aspect that that helps with profitability. I do like numbers. Can either of you give me a number of a money number that swarm up your liables like for like to receive if like they lost their ligots on them? Crazy, like sort of thing, but yeah, they lost their ligots. Well, it's top of dramatic. Yeah. But we're looking at there. Yeah. Are you thinking is it worth losing the ligots? Yeah, but I don't think they'd be right one really. I mean, there's two aspects to this. There's first of all the HSE investigation and they're fine. Right. So, that's the only one aspect. And that's a percentage of turnover when they find somebody, a company, a culpable. So, it's a percentage of turnover. So, if they find the company, yes. And the employee will receive the money. No, no. So, this is the hate. This is the HSE find. Right. Okay. And this is what most people don't realize. Once that, or sometimes alongside that has happened, then the individual makes a personal claim for loss of income, et cetera. Adjustments. Yeah. Like a lack of, you know, for a lack of leg. So, what's that restrict to them? If they are on the way up, this is now stop that. What, what loss of earnings they're going to suffer over that lifetime. So, I mean, I'm not a legal expert, but, you know, you can tell by the conversation that it's, it's a lot of money. There's a few different things and they are up to a big one. Yeah. The HSE side is paid by, obviously, the company. Everyone thinks that, oh, insurance will pay it all. Well, that's, that's not the case. So, it is quite important to get it right. And is it always a company? Or is it ever an individual person that works for the company? If in the investigation, there is evidence that the directors have knowingly tried to do things or hide information about the accident or being negligent, knowingly negligent, then yes, they, they personally can, at the worst case, well, worst case, depending on which side you're talking to, they could, they could end up with imprisonment. And so, you know, yes, they, they, they are responsible. It could be fines, it just depends on the actual circumstances of the, of the case. All the important stuff, that's for sure. Moving parts. Final question, very brief one. I don't expect to have an answer to be honest, but what gets would you invite on to this if you're to choose anyone? Well, the obvious answer is somebody that's started off where I talked at the very beginning that has no health and safety support or practices in place has gone through the process and has now recognized that health and safety is actually not a business disruptor, but actually helps business move along. So, having somebody on that, um, would be a advocate of had a, um, what's it called? Is it for me? That's not one. And it's finished in each other's sentence. It's only been half an hour, Simon. Absolutely. We like to see that. Anything you want to, I don't ask for sure? No, I look forward to reading your book. Yes, yeah, I really do. It is impressive. It's not a heavy book. The idea is it's more, I need to get on top of my health and safety. I'm not ready for an external consultant yet. I need to get started and it's practical steps with template documentation for them to have a start point and make that first step really. They grow so much needed full-time health and safety in house professional or they can reach out to a consultant. I love a book that you can pick up and put down, you know, you can just tap in and out of when you get a minute. I like a book like that. Yeah, I'm doing it again like a blueprint. Yes, a blueprint for people, isn't it? It is, but you know, it's all the heavy words are taken out. It's literally written simply. because that's what small businesses we like. - Well, I think we'll sit there. - Yeah, short plug before we go, we've got health and safety, e-learning costs available. If you want to inquire about it and you're interested, please give us a call. I'm not very good at sales, as you can tell. But yeah, we'll go to fun that for your first podcast. I think I hope you enjoyed yourself, mate. - I did, thank you. Excellent. - Thank you very much. - We'll see you next time. Like, comment, subscribe. Cheers. - Until next time, where your host signing off from HR here, take care of your HR and may your workplace and be disaster free. Before we go, a big thank you to you for tuning in and don't forget to subscribe. If you have your own ER stories or suggestions or future episodes, reach out to us at heroes or on social media or even HR ER at heroes.co.uk. As we navigate the maze of workplace blunders, remember that no organization is perfect. But by sharing these stories, we can all work towards creating healthier, happier and more productive workplaces.