The UK Psych Health and Safety Podcast

Peter Sanders, Co-Founder and Group MD of identifi Global, speaks to Sheila Lord, Director at BMR Health and Wellbeing about what makes a happy, thriving work environment in 2022. They discuss important topics around workplace happiness, mental health while working remotely, how to empower employees, and what makes a great manager. As we’ve completely changed the way we work over the past two years, taking a long hard look at what makes a positive working environment is crucial.

In August 2020 the Lived Experience Wellbeing Project surveyed over 2,000 safety-critical aviation workers, and examined levels of psychological distress and the supports being provided to and availed of by these workers. One year on, we want to see how things have changed. Is it better? Is it worse?

In this episode Lucy Tallon, Head of Mental Health and Wellbeing at The Film & TV Charity, joins us today to talk about how the Film & TV industry can improve the mental health of the massive workforce that enables the artistic work that we enjoy. Lucy started her career at The Economist as an editorial assistant. Throughout the years, Lucy has worked at several well-known organisations, and she has worked in media & mental health-related positions for more than fifteen years. We start the conversation with her career journey and her leadership at The Film & TV Charity.

In this episode Peter Griffiths, CEO and Co-Founder of the Mind Take Away and host of the Mind Take Away Podcast, is speaking to Sheila Lord, Director of BMR - Health and Wellbeing, about the importance of listening to your employees and why we need to take a systemic approach when it comes to workplace mental health and wellbeing. We often hear leaders saying we do not need to implement a workplace wellbeing initiative because things are good in the company, and they don't have any issues with mental health. The challenge with this is that it's just the perspective from the leadership team, and quite often, it is not a reflection of the employees' day-to-day reality.

The management of the overall organisational Mental Health & Wellbeing function within a Health, Safety & Wellbeing team and the importance of support from senior leadership

Today we are talking to Laura Thomas, Barrister, Safety Strategist and Risk Leader about the legal obligations for employers when it comes to health and safety and why taking a risk-based approach to workplace mental health is crucial.

This week Peter Kelly and I have been chatting with Nick Pahl who is the CEO at the Society of Occupational Health. We spoke about the role of occupational health in organisational wellbeing and how it is vitally important to look at a preventative approach to avoiding workplace-related issues and the processes that can be put in place to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of all employees in the workplace.

This week Peter Kelly and I have been chatting with Amy McKeown who is an Award-Winning, Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategist and an advocate for women’s health. We spoke about how having an end-to-end workplace mental health strategy is so important. This requires businesses to assess the root causes of the issues that are contributing to workplace stress and address these rather than being reactive in their approach and purely treating the symptoms.

This week we have been chatting with Hayley Farrell from Emcor this has been a real treat as Emcor are the first company in the UK to have been awarded the ISO45003 certification. The commitment Emcor has to creating a psychologically safe work environment is fantastic and the fact that they have managed to achieve accreditation for a standard that was only released in June 2021 is testament to that.