Skip to main content
IOSH Magazine: Safety, Health and Wellbeing in the world of work - return to the homepage IOSH Magaazine logo
  • Visit IOSH Magazine on Facebook
  • Visit @ioshmagazine on Twitter
  • Visit IOSH Magazine on LinkedIn
Non-verbal communication
How to build trust
March/April 2023 issue

Main navigation

  • Home
    • Browse previous issues
    • Member accolades
    • Member tributes
  • Health
    • Mental health and wellbeing
      • Bullying
      • Drugs and alcohol
      • Mental health
      • Stress
      • Wellbeing
    • Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)
      • Ergonomics
      • Manual handling
      • Vibration
    • Occupational cancer
      • Asbestos
      • Hazardous substances
      • Radiation
  • Safety
    • Incident management
      • Chemicals
      • Electricity
      • Fire
      • First aid
      • Slips and trips
    • Non-health related fatalities
      • Road safety
      • Work at height
    • Risk management
      • Confined spaces
      • Disability
      • Legionella
      • Lifting operations
      • Lone workers
      • Noise
      • Personal protective equipment
      • Violence at work
      • Work equipment
      • Workplace transport
  • Management
    • Human factors
      • Accident reduction
      • Behavioural safety
      • Control of contractors
      • Migrant workers
      • Older workers
      • Reporting
      • Safe systems of work
      • Sickness absence
      • Young workers
    • Leadership and management
      • Employee involvement
      • Management systems
    • Management standards
      • ISO 45001
      • ISO 45003
    • Planning
      • Assurance
      • Compliance
      • Emergency planning
      • Insurance
    • Rehabilitation
      • Personal injury
      • Return to work
    • Strategy
      • Corporate governance
      • Performance/results
      • Regulation/enforcement
      • Reputation
    • Sustainability
      • Human capital and Vision Zero
  • Skills
    • Communication
    • Personal performance
      • Achieving Fellowship
      • Career development
      • Competencies
      • Personal development
      • Professional skills
      • Qualifications
    • Stakeholder management
    • Working with others
      • Leadership
      • Future Leaders
  • Jobs
  • Covid-19
  • Knowledge Bank
    • Back to basics
    • Book club
    • Infographics
    • Podcast
    • Reports
    • Webinars
    • Videos
  • Products & Services
  • Management
    • Human factors
      • Sickness absence
      • Accident reduction
      • Behavioural safety
      • Control of contractors
      • Migrant workers
      • Older workers
      • Reporting
      • Safe systems of work
      • Young workers
    • Leadership and management
      • Employee involvement
      • Leadership
      • Management systems
    • Management standards
      • ISO 45001
      • ISO 45003
    • Planning
      • Assurance
      • Compliance
      • Emergency planning
      • Insurance
    • Strategy
      • Corporate governance
      • Performance/results
      • Regulation/enforcement
      • Reputation
    • Sustainability
      • Human capital and Vision Zero
  • Health
    • COVID-19
    • Mental health and wellbeing
      • Bullying
      • Drugs and alcohol
      • Mental health
      • Stress
      • Wellbeing
    • Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)
      • Ergonomics
      • Manual handling
      • Vibration
    • Occupational cancer
      • Asbestos
      • Hazardous substances
      • Radiation
  • Safety
    • Incident management
      • Chemicals
      • Electricity
      • Fire
      • First aid
      • Slips and trips
    • Non-health related fatalities
      • Road safety
      • Work at height
    • Risk management
      • Confined spaces
      • Disability
      • Legionella
      • Lifting operations
      • Lone workers
      • Noise
      • Personal protective equipment
      • Violence at work
      • Work equipment
      • Workplace transport
  • Skills
    • Communication
    • Personal performance
      • Career development
      • Competencies
      • Personal development
      • Qualifications
      • Professional skills
      • Achieving Fellowship
    • Stakeholder management
    • Working with others
      • Leadership
      • Future Leaders
  • Transport and logistics
  • Third sector
  • Retail
  • Mining and quarrying
  • Rail
  • Rehabilitation
    • Personal injury
    • Return to work
  • Utilities
  • Manufacturing and engineering
  • Construction
  • Sector: IOSH Branch
    • Sector: Northern Ireland
    • Sector: Midland
    • Sector: Merseyside
    • Sector: Manchester and North West Districts
    • Sector: Ireland East
    • Sector: Ireland
    • Sector: Edinburgh
    • Sector: Desmond-South Munster
    • Sector: Qatar
    • Sector: Oman
    • Singapore
    • Sector: South Coast
    • Sector: South Wales
    • Sector: Thames Valley
    • Sector: Tyne and Wear
    • Sector: UAE
    • Sector: West of Scotland
    • Sector: Yorkshire
  • Healthcare
  • Sector: Fire
  • Sector: Financial/general services
  • Sector: Energy
  • Education
  • Sector: Communications and media
  • Chemicals
  • Sector: Central government
  • Catering and leisure
  • Agriculture and forestry
  • Sector: Local government
  • Sector: IOSH Group
    • Sector: Financial Services
    • Sector: Sports Grounds and Events
    • Rural industries
    • Sector: railway
    • Public Services
    • Sector: Offshore
    • Sector: Hazardous Industries
    • Sector: Food and Drink
    • Sector: Fire Risk Management
    • Education
    • Construction
    • Sector: Aviation and Aerospace
Quick links:
  • Home
  • Categories
  • Topics
  • Management
  • Leadership and management
  • Leadership
Features

IOSH 2016 Conference diary: Day 1

Open-access content Wednesday 22nd June 2016
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Reminding delegates in a morning plenary session that work is self-rated as the most stressful factor in people's lives, Emma Mamo head of workplace wellbeing at the charity Mind announced that her organisation will launch a public Workplace Wellbeing Index this autumn, recognising good mental health policy and practice in UK offices and worksites. Mamo said the index will help employers assess where the gaps lie between their intentions and staff perceptions of mental health policy and practice.

In a later session summarising the work to date of the Health Leaders in Construction Group, Martin Coyd, European safety and health head at Lend Lease announced that the Mates in Construction initiative has trained more than 100,000 Australian workers in awareness of stress symptoms and mental distress in their co-workers. Coyd said getting British men to talk about their feelings took time. If you asked the average male worker how they felt, he said, "They'll say 'fine' for the first six months of conversations", but would open up eventually.

In a session in the "How to influence" strand, Dr Shaun Lundy of the University of Greenwich asked his audience whether they saw themselves as leaders or followers; most opted for the former. Lundy suggested their choices reflected a stigma we attach to serving rather than being served. But a world full of leaders would be impractical and impossible, he said. Followers, he said, can be both sophisticated and complicated and early followers are "wonderful assets" to any project.

IOSH made two announcements during the day. The first, made to delegates by executive director, policy Shelley Frost in a plenary session, was that the competency framework it launched for the OSH profession in March has a new name: Blueprint. The second was that this is the last year the conference will be collocated with the Safety and Health Expo in London. Next year members will gather in Birmingham.

"Twitter will win every time," said Alicia Custis, talking about the speed that bad news can spread about an organisation in a crisis. Custis was head of communications at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust in 2010 when a nurse killed three patients by deliberately contaminating saline solutions on two wards with insulin.

Custis described an almost instantaneous link between events and press demands for comment ("They charged him [nurse Victorino Chua] at midnight on Saturday -¦ five minutes later I had my first media call," she said), thanks mainly to Twitter. She said it is impossible to treat traditional and social news media as separate entities when the BBC News UK Twitter account has almost seven million followers.

Her advice for anyone managing a crisis covered in the media included being as open and honest as possible ("the truth will come out") and analysing the media output and responding selectively with consistent messages.

The hummingbird was introduced into the conference in a presentation by Malcolm Staves, group health and safety director at cosmetics maker L'Oréal. The group recently launched a new environment, health and safety policy, said Staves, but the detail of the policy had less impact than its associated hummingbird logo, intended to remind employees of the legend of the tiny bird trying to put a fire out one drop at a time. "If 83,000 L'Oréal employers do one little thing every day, that's one big thing," he said. "We put a symbol behind out EHS policy that goes beyond words."

Day one ended with a bang, as a worker on the Thames Tideway Tunnel drilling into some concrete at a worksite in east London struck a cable and collapsed in flames, screaming. The action took place partly on the conference stage and partly on screen, was an excerpt from the tunnelling project's day-long safety induction, named Epic, which dramatises events leading up to the cable strike and those after, including police and health and safety executive interviews and the consequences of the worker's death on his family. Delegates were invited to question the dead worker Michael Clarke's supervisor, who admitted he only "assumed" Clarke had cable avoidance training and that his priority had been just to "get the job done" rather than checking whether his charges were likely to carry on beyond the limits of their permit to work.

Delegates emerged from the session into an evening drinks reception clearly impressed by the performance's realism.

You may also be interested in...

 Bright ideas

Monday 27th June 2016
Words: Rob Cooling and Waddah Shihab Ghanem Al Hashemi If there was one thing that as an OSH practitioner you would want to be known for in your organisation, surely being innovative would be high up on the list. However, far too often a copy and paste approach is adopted towards OSH management; systems, processes and tools that have been used in the past are regurgitated and relabeled.
Open-access content

 IOSH 2016 Conference diary: Day 2

Thursday 23rd June 2016
Smith said attempts to create an international standard in 1996, 2000 and 2006 had foundered partly on the wariness of the US standards organisation, since the risk management approach proposed for a new standard was at odds with the American prescriptive approach.
Open-access content

 Human after all

Monday 27th June 2016
Words: Tom Stewart Seven pillarsAccording to ISO 27500, there are seven principles that characterise an organisation as human-centred:
Open-access content

 Unified theory

Tuesday 14th June 2016
As any fan of sci-fi films knows, the first thing invading aliens always say when they slither, swoop, or step down from their landing craft on to planet Earth is “we come in peace”. As we also know, this rarely proves to be the case. No sooner have they withdrawn their spindly green arms from the friendly handshakes with the (usually) American president than they’re running amok with laser weapons, annihilating the planet’s occupants in their real quest, which is to commandeer our water, or our brains, or something.
Open-access content

 The way forward

Tuesday 24th May 2016
Words: Rob Cooling and Waddah Shihab Ghanem Al HashemiIllustration: Gary NeillStrategy has long been a vogue term in business. Executives say that strategies are needed before rushing head-first into tactical decision making. However, they sometimes struggle to understand the nature and content of effective strategies. Fundamentally, strategy is about making choices; typically concerning what you want to do and how you will achieve it. From a wider business perspective, this may include what products or services to offer and how to execute business decisions.
Open-access content

 IOSH and EBRD join forces to enhance safety and health standards

Monday 20th June 2016
Today, (Monday 20 June) the two organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that lays out a programme of joint activities to create safer, healthier and more sustainable workplaces in the countries where the EBRD invests. Under the MoU, IOSH and the EBRD will work together to influence policy and practice in occupational safety and health. They will also jointly seek to improve safety and health standards at industry level.
Open-access content

Latest from Features

gy

 A big push on peat bog safety

Thursday 2nd March 2023
Adman Civil Projects’ new emergency rescue plan has claimed top prize for innovation at the SGUK awards. We find out why it’s so important.
Open-access content
jy

 The Musculoskeletal Health Toolkit

Thursday 2nd March 2023
We take a look at three recent papers to see how their findings can inform OSH.
Open-access content
6

 The latest research

Thursday 2nd March 2023
We round up some of the latest research and reports relevant to OSH professionals.
Open-access content

Latest from Leadership

web_p37_We're-all-ears_NicoleR-4155.png

 Interview: Nicole Rinaldi

Thursday 21st April 2022
Nicole Rinaldi became director of professional services at IOSH in October 2021. Here, she looks back over her first few months and towards an exciting future for the OSH profession.
Open-access content
web_p62_Your-brain-a-users-guide_CREDIT_iStock-1133618377.png

 Ignoring your brain can endanger your safety

Tuesday 15th March 2022
User guide to your brain
Open-access content
web_p66-67_Future-Leader_Jessica-Sales_CREDIT_Stuart-Kinlough_IKON_00026716.png

 From safety champion to future leader

Wednesday 1st September 2021
IOSH Future Leader Jessica Sales explains her journey from lab quality control apprentice to QHSE manager with global commercial real estate services and investment company, CBRE. 
Open-access content
Share
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linked in
  • Mail
  • Print

Latest Jobs

Senior Health and Safety Manager

Reading
Up to £65000.00 per annum + Great Car Allowance & Benefits
Reference
5452983

Regional Health and Safety Advisor

Northampton
Up to £53000 per annum + Travel & Excellent Benefits
Reference
5452982

Global Health, Safety and Environment Director

Up to £150000 per annum + Excellent Benefits
Reference
5452980
See all jobs »

Sign up for regular e-alerts

Receive the latest news and features, free to your inbox

Sign up

Subscribe to IOSH magazine

Receive the print edition straight to your door

Subscribe
IOSH Covers
​
FOLLOW US
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
CONTACT US
Contact us
Tel +44 (0)20 7880 6200
​

IOSH

About IOSH
Become a member
IOSH Events
MyIOSH

Information

Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Cookie Policy

Get in touch

Contact us
Advertise with us
Subscribe to IOSH magazine
Write for IOSH magazine

IOSH Magazine

Health
Safety
Management
Skills
IOSH Jobs

© 2023 IOSH • IOSH is not responsible for the content of external sites

ioshmagazine.com and IOSH Magazine are published by Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part is not allowed without written permission.

Redactive Media Group Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ