• When virtual training isn’t enough. A description of a day’s ladder user and inspection training, demonstrating when only a hands on approach will work.
• Manual handling training: the evidence for, and against. Is there any evidence that manual handling training is worth the time and money, and how can it be improved?
• Back on course. How training providers have adapted essential health and safety training to cope with social distancing (written with Louis Wustemann)
• The Right Fit. How different learning tools can be blended to create a great learning experience, from traditional classroom, to new experiences with virtual reality
• Learning and forgetting. The problem of skill decay, and suggestions of how to overcome it.
• Learning in style. The myths and dangers of learning style theories.
• A PowerPoint well made. Some tips on how to make better use of PowerPoint as a health and safety training aid.
• Letters of distinction. Rote learning is not the ultimate goal of health and safety education. Understanding, attitude and application are critical, and these require a lot more effort than a few mnemonics. But there are times when an aide-memoire can prompt a sequence that helps us to focus a risk assessment or audit –  or even to pass an exam!

I was a panelist on this webinar in 2022 which discussed the need to rethink workforce safety and health learning and training. Register to watch the recording.

An older article in HSW magazine asked for my thoughts on using drama in training.

Artificial intelligence

I monitor reports coming out of organisations such as EU-OSHA, the ILO and the UK government on technology relevant to safety and health. Examples of my summaries include:

• Augmented work for an automated, AI-driven world. A report based on a global study of 3,000 executives across 28 countries by the IBM Institute for Business Value.
• OSH challenges from AI-based systems in the workplace reviews some of the findings from an EU-OSHA study published in Advanced robotics and AI-based systems in the workplace: OSH challenges and opportunities originating from actual implementations
• AI: Building trust through persuasion or regulation? in which I reflect on whether the UK Government’s Pro-innovation approach to AI regulation is enough.

I’ve written multiple blogs and longer pieces on how AI can contribute to occupational safety, including:

• How to integrate AI into health and safety – an article for RoSPA inckluding case studies on computer vision and a large language model.
• 5 ways AI is transforming the workplace – why occupational health and safety must get left behind in the technology race (again).
• How to use AI to promote a proactive safety culture – how using AI to improve reporting, to demonstrate a just culture and to accelerate improvements will promote a proactive and learning safety culture. If you like the blog, there’s a longer ‘whitepaper’ here.
• How AI could alter EHS training forever – I’ve been excited about the possibilities of VR for a long time, but cost and time to a develop products are barriers for many. In this blog I imagine how AI might finally make VR a widely used and valuable tool for safety training.
• Getting senior management buy-In for your safety AI project – three steps to will help you to convince decision-makers to invest in Artificial Intelligence for the safety function. If the blog whets your appetite, register to download the full whitepaper.
• AI: from nice to have, to need to have – why AI will become the reasonably practicable option.
• 5 Ways AI/Computer Vision Is Reducing Risk in Warehousing – a look at common causes of accidents in the workplace, and how AI could tackle them.
• How Bow-ties and AI will improve your safety – exploring how a traditional high-hazard safety analysis tool can work with AI to make the workplace safer.

You’ll note that with blogs, someone else gets the credit, but my involvement with webinars demonstrates my credentials in the industry. See AI v the EHS manager in 2022. Further recognition from my peers came in an article for RoSPA magazine in 2023, How AI could transform workplace safety.

Augmented and virtual reality articles include:

• Augmented Reality. A brief introduction to AR and its possible benefits in safety (and a few precautions to take)
• Alternative Realities. Provides an introduction to health and safety professionals on VR, and how it can be used in occupational training
• Feeling the heat. A summary of a visit to see the Nottingham University project to use heat and smell with VR to create a multi-sensory experience as part of fire safety training.
• Virtually perfect. How do the outcomes of training using virtual reality stack up against conventional, real-world training?

• Robots & cobots – meet your new colleagues. Some of the opportunities – and challenges – of working alongside robots.
• Robots at Amazon UK. An account of a visit to the Amazon warehouse in Tilbury, where robots work alongside pickers and packers.

• Safety net. A look at the advantages and challenges of the Internet of Things, with examples of how UAVs (drones), wearables, hearables and geographic positioning could enhance health and safety in the workplace.
• Tech top to toe. Looking at the benefits and barriers to using wearable technology in personal protective equipment (PPE) and other safety and health applications. I devised a workshop for the annual IOSH Conference in 2017 to bring together providers of wearable tech and OSH practitioners to invent new wearable solutions. Ideas included safety boots that warn you when they need replacing, and a lab coat that detects hazardous. If you’d like to know more about this, get in touch.

One of my early, peer-reviewed papers on Human–computer interaction in safety-critical systems looks at how menu structures in the user interface impact choices made by operators.

I was asked to write this article about software to manage environmental control actions on the IEMA website.

I am often asked for comments on how technology can support safety and health management. See my contribution to Is EHS software the Holy Grail? in IOSH Magazine (quick answer: no), a panel discussion on digital technology hosted by HSW Magazine, and my predictions for 2023 in IOSH Magazine.

The What is.. series was originally published in Health and Safety at Work Magazine (which is no longer available). The aim was to challenge received wisdom on the meaning of terms we use in health and safety. We use the terms inconsistently, haphazardly and without always thinking through the implication of their use. In many cases my ideas have moved on since I wrote these articles, but the challenges presented by each article are just as relevant now as when they were written.

• What is a hazard?
• What is foreseeability?
• What is a control?
• What is reasonably practicable?
• What is significant?
• What is suitable and sufficient?
• What is competence?
• What is a near miss?

I’ve written other articles that while not part of the original What is.. series, have a similar approach. These cover:

• Human error, looking at the problem of blame, error proneness and the benefits of human variability
• Heinrich’s accident triangle, and its variations. Does it still have any value in modern healthy and safety practice? I was delighted to find this article referred to in an NHS report on health, safety and wellbeing.
• The price of a life – it turns out you can put a price on safety.
• Everything in proportion. How ALARP and practicability apply in financial terms.

• Sit-stand desks: are they worth the extra cost?
• Ergonomic interventions for display screen equipment: which ones are worth it – and which are just gimmicks?
• Financial incentives: can we bribe people to be safer and healthier? (Updated June 2021)
• Manual handling training: why manual handling training might not be the most effective way to reduce manual handling injuries
• Pain factory: it’s more than physical ergonomics looks at why we need to look beyond purely mechanical explanations for pain in musculoskeletal disorders
• E-cigarettes the smoke screen around the ‘95% less harmful’ figure, and what you should consider in your workplace smoking/ vaping policy.
• Hearing protection: why noise controls aren’t working
• Generations: what young workers really need, and why we should stop talking about ‘Gen Z.’
• Older workers: an asset or a liability?
• Health promotion in the workplace: can employers have any impact of employee health and wellbeing?
• Smoking, alcohol and drugs: should employers have a role in managing people’s bad habits outside work?
• Workplace stress programmes: how should employers spend their resources to reduce stress-related absences?
• In-car safety systems: what’s available, and how can employers make best use of it for fleet drivers?
• HGV: how can heavy goods vehicles be safer for cyclists and pedestrians?

This series was published in IOSH Magazine, so these links will take you to the IOSH Magazine website:

• Quality managers know that quality has to be part of the process, not an ‘add-on’. How can this idea help us to build safety in?
• Software developers have made great strides in the past decades. Gone are the thick manuals we had to read to use an application on a computer. So why are we still asking people to read safety manuals and procedures?
• Behavioural economists know that you get more from people by nudging than nagging. How can we use the same principles in health and safety?
• Safety critical assurance involves detailed analysis of systems to prevent fatal and wide-spread errors. In occupational health and safety it’s not reasonably practicable to apply the same techniques, but can we adapt some of their tools and techniques? Read how SWIFT (structured what if technique) could improve your risk assessments.
• Health psychologists have developed tools to pick and choose the best ways of supporting behaviour change – so why do health and safety professionals resort to ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ approaches?
• Cognitive psychologists can warn us of the mistakes how minds can trick us into during accident and incident investigation, and how to overcome unconscious bias.
• Lean Sigma Six black belts have lots to teach us about how to improve safety without increasing bureaucracy.
• Expert Witnesses get to look at the evidence when it goes wrong, so they know a thing or two about what we should be doing to prevent accidents, and where they happen, to provide a defence.
• Magicians are perhaps the least likely profession we might turn to for lessons. However, both magic and accidents make use of the same cognitive loopholes in how we see and think.

Although not part of the above series, these articles also illustrate how to learn from other areas:

• K is for Kanban as part of the Lexicon series.
• AGFA case study following a visit arranged by Onsite Insights.

• Taken to task (IOSH Magazine) explains how task analysis should be as much of a tool for OSH professionals as is risk assessment.
• Reality check (IOSH Magazine) considers the role of audits in effective health and safety management systems, with views from those who use – and don’t use – audits. If you want a more recent scientific view, read this paper (not mine!) in Safety Science.
• Not my article, but I was asked for my advice on preparing for crisis management.
• Shaken and stirred (IOSH Magazine) in which I attempted to referee the debate between providers of hand-arm vibration measurement tools and experts.
• Contractor management: prequalified successes. The first of two articles on managing contractors safely, focussing on selecting contractors.
• Contractor management: agents in place. The second article, focussing on what to do once the contractors have been selected.
• A term for the worst. Although based on cases up to 2015, this article on health and safety practitioner liability still has lessons for professionals on not overreaching their competence.

In a series of articles for IOSH Magazine covering research on health and safety topics, I’ve included reports relating to wellbeing and mental health, including:

• Taking care of key workers, learning from an ILO report on the value of essential work.
• Should senior leaders disclose their mental health stuggles? A critical review of the (lack of) evidence from the InsideOut LeaderBoard
• Psychological injury most common workplace harm reviewing an ILO survey on Experiences of violence and harassment at work
• Economic change impacts workforce health and safety summarising some findings from the ILO World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023 report

Please note that the IOSH Magazine links to the original reports often don’t work, so use my links above, or just Google the name of the report.

Psychology comes into a lot of my other articles, but I’ve linked a few items here that don’t fit well into the other categories.

• Supporting suicide prevention in the workplace. This is a blog I wrote on LinkedIn, as my response to a powerful event I attended (online) in 2021.
• Suicide myths and evidence-based rebuttals. This was a second LinkedIn blog prompted by material from the 2021 Suicide Prevention Summit.

Many of my articles have a Human Factors aspect to them, but I’m working to link all the ones with a more specific focus on human factors and ergonomics into this section.

• Beyond training and procedures  (IOSH Magazine): When doing a risk assessment, more training is sometimes suggested as an additional control to avoid accidents. But is more training really the answer? A look at an evidence-based approach to improving human reliability.
• Sit-stand desks: are they worth the extra cost?
• Manual handling training: why manual handling training might not be the most effective way to reduce manual handling injuries (but changing the physical and psychosocial environment might be).
• Pain factory: it’s more than physical ergonomics looks at why we need to look beyond purely mechanical explanations for pain in musculoskeletal disorders. 
• Behavioural economists know that you get more from people by nudging than nagging. The EAST framework provides some useful pointers for non specialists.
• Health psychologists (IOSH Magazine) This article outlines how the Behaviour Change Wheel and COM-B principles can identify human factors that need to be changed.
• Cognitive psychologists  (IOSH Magazine) can warn us of the mistakes how minds can trick us into during accident and incident investigation, and how to overcome unconscious bias.
• Taken to task (IOSH Magazine) explains how task analysis should be as much of a tool for OSH professionals as is risk assessment.