• 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
• When forgetting is part of learning. 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!
• Safety training: beyond the screen. A look at how new technology can enhance health and safety training. Written in 2012, so some of this has been overtaken by advances in AR and VR. However, there are some ideas in here that people have not yet capitalised on, so watch this space!

• 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 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 – or 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.
• Smart technology in the workplace.  A short look at how UAVs (drones), wearables, hearables, geographic positioning and IoT could enhance health and safety in the workplace.
• Safety net. A look at the advantages and challenges of the Internet of Things.

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 a near miss?
• What is competence?

Although not strictly part of this series, I’ve included an article here on Heinrich’s accident triangle, and its variations. Does it still have any value in modern healthy and safety practice?

In relation to ALARP and reasonably practicable, two articles about calculating the financial value of a life challenge the idea that ‘you can’t put a price on safety’:

• The price of a life
• Everything in proportion

• Sit-stand desks: are they worth the extra cost?
• 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.
• Hearing protection: why noise controls aren’t working
• 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?
• E-cigarettes: the smoke screen around the ‘95% less harmful’ figure
• Workplace stress programmes: how should employers spend their resources to reduce stress-related absences?
• Ergonomic interventions for display screen equipment: which ones are worth it – and which are just gimmicks?
• 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
• AGFA case study

• Taken to task (links to IOSH Magazine) explains how task analysis should be as much of a tool for OSH professionals as is risk assessment.
• 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.