Tim Marsh’s Musings: Wisdom and Wit from a Safety Psychologist
In partnership with the British Safety Council, Dr Tim Marsh reflects on decades of safety psychology in his new collection of writings. Exploring the evolution of workplace safety, wellbeing, and mental health, he highlights the urgent need for proactive action—both in and beyond the workplace—to protect lives.
I’m delighted to have been given the opportunity to revisit my old articles, partnering with the British Safety Council to publish this collection, and raise money for two wonderful mental health charities, Mates in Mind and Brawd.
Collating these articles has been a fascinating way to look back over the evolution of thinking about safety through the decades. From the now-total acceptance of culture as key, through to the emergence of our understanding that wellbeing, mental health and general mindset are vital risk factors that also need the most practical, constructive and pro-active approach possible.
My first job as a psychologist was studying suicides in the military, some 30 years ago. So, in some ways, this means that my career has come full circle.
Last year, in the UK, we celebrated the 50th year of the famous Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). It’s enabled the UK to become a world leader in the field of workplace safety with a recent average of less than 200 people killed at work annually. Yes, of course, that is 180 or so too many but international figures when it comes to wellbeing and mental health are nowhere near as impressive – very middle of the pack. So, we must compare this figure against the estimated 4,200 working-age people who kill themselves in the UK every year.
In recent times, in the UK, it’s reached a place where more students and pupils take their own lives than people killed at work.
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These students are the next generation moving into the workplace and more funding is urgently needed to deal with acute mental health issues, let alone long-term cost-effective and proactive initiatives and investment. We’re going to have to sort this risk factor out for ourselves inside and outside of work.
There has been a sea change in our perception but there’s still mountains of work to shift. In August 2024, Graham Thorpe’s family talked openly about the fact that his death was a suicide and about his long-standing struggles with depression. (A few years ago, it would almost certainly have been announced that a famous ex-cricketer would have died at 55 of an ‘undisclosed cause’).
The same week, an Australian weatherman announced live on TV that he had to hand back to the anchor as he was having an on-air panic attack. Encouragingly, the weatherman (Nate Byrne) reported that the public response afterwards was ‘entirely positive’ - essentially ‘good on you mate for being open about it’.
Where we once took confident-looking people at face value, increasingly, we know that we very often don’t know what’s going on inside. We know a stiff upper lip can be hugely useful on some occasions – but a killer on others. We know that sitting around any table of ten people, typically two or three will be really struggling.
We know we need to not accept ‘I’m fine thank you, how are you?’ at face value but to ‘ask twice’ if their first answer is not altogether convincing. More proactively, we need to ask ‘high value / critical incident’ based questions like ‘how did you sleep last night? And gently ask ‘why?’ if the answer is ‘terrible actually’.
As part of making this book available both online, and through a limited number of hard copies, we are seeking to raise money to support two charities; Welsh mental health charity Brawd, and Mates in Mind, a sister charity to British Safety Council which works to support better mental health in the construction, transport and logistics sectors.
Digging through my early pieces for this book, I realise that all of the early writings are about safety leadership, behavioural safety, and safety culture. However, about 8 years (or so) ago, when I returned from a few years off dealing with a family illness, they started to focus more and more on wellbeing and mental health at work. Initially, talking about mental health at work was quite controversial (it came long before we considered things like victim blaming). However, I’d argue simply not at all, now, as we increasingly take a holistic, integrated and humanistic approach to human error and risk management.
So, as we look to the future, and consider health, safety and wellbeing at work, we need to remember that good work is good for you (because it brings meaning, purpose, banter and camaraderie) but bad work is bad for you, so it’s important how we treat our colleagues and what our organisational cultures are like.
Looking out for one another in work and outside of work is a small thing that we can all do. As Brawd say in much of their literature: we need to ‘listen and be listened to’.
Allow me to slightly paraphrase the famous Hollies song, ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’: The road is long, with many a winding turn … be a ‘brother’.
Tim Marsh’s Musings: wisdom and wit from a safety psychologist can be downloaded, on receipt of a small donation, via this link: Download your copy of: Tim Marsh’s Musings – Wisdom and Wit from a Safety Psychologist - JustGiving.
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