SHP is interviewing speakers featuring at our partner show, Anticipate London – combining Safety and Health Expo, FIREX, Facilities Show and IFSEC for cross-industry sharing, between 2-4 December 2024.
In this article, we speak to Andrew Sanderson, Partner at law firm, Fieldfisher. His session aims to focus on a case study around psychosocial risk in the workplace, and here discusses the importance of a focus on mental and physical health.
Andrew Sanderson, Partner at Fieldfisher
Andrew Sanderson (AS): I think whatever we are doing in the working environment especially around topics of health and safety, it’s important for senior leadership is to be out there, to be seen to push good behaviours – ‘leading from the front’ as it were.
Where you have problems is when organisations introduce a policy, procedure or way of working and it often comes from board level or senior management which filters down the business – that’s fine, but then you’ll have different levels of the business who will often say ‘we’re being asked to do this, but we know that senior management aren’t doing the same as us’. I know people’s roles within organisations are very different, but I think it’s essential that if you are saying to your team ‘you need to be doing this’, then you have to be seen driving it forward and setting the standards for it.
More importantly, you have to be calling it out when it’s not necessarily being followed.
When there’s a policy or procedure asking for changes in attitude or behaviour you’ve got to be doing and leading in that as well. The best practice approach is always appropriate.
AS: For me it’s the construction industry. If you look at the construction industry in 2024, it is still at certain levels heavily male-dominated, and that comes with its own problems, especially in terms of getting men – who are working on the ground as it were – to take wellbeing issues seriously in terms of health; medical, dental, stress.
I think there are a lot of construction companies out there who have taken the lead on that and have said for big projects we are going to have onsite doctors or onsite physiotherapists or stress councillors – and having those available means it’s easier for a colleague to say to another colleague ‘you’ve just hurt your arm go and see the GP that’s on site’.
It also opens those conversations up about mental health and dealing with stress, which traditionally in a lot of industries in the UK – is not talked about. I think it’s important it is talked about. When you have a serious incident and look back over the weeks or months prior (to the incident) a lot of the time some of the driving factors of why the incident happened was due to fatigue for example, stress, overwork or ill-health. If you’ve got an industry that’s taking the lead in terms of looking at those driving factors, those negative factors, and putting things in place to help address them, I think that’s only positive.
The rail industry has also historically been very good at that especially around stress and having the support structure in place to address it.
The more that industries can show they are leading on this, the better – it helps the employee, it helps the employer, and it reduces the chances of incidents related to stress or fatigue.
AS: Having the ability to work flexibly is a positive. I think it can deal with a lot of problems that are stress-related, so for example, where you have people in the workplace who have child responsibility – if there is a degree of flexibility available to them it takes the stress out of having to do the school run and rushing around – or if there is a problem with their child at school they can fit that in, so I think that’s only a positive.
Something we have been talking about with clients is psychosocial risk and how that’s built into how organisations operate – I think it’s absolutely key there is a focus on that. The thing that always gets missed often in my view is the health element of it, we focus on safety – rightly so – but we miss the health element.
A stress and mental health focus is well overdue and having a focus on it will help honest conversations at work.
My hope is that the next 12-18 months will have more of a focus on physical health and mental health, whether that’s through legislation, employers or highlighted more through the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Andrew will be speaking at Safety and Health Expo, Anticipate London, on Monday 2 December. To register for the event for free, click here.
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
