The Impact of Wellbeing on Workplace Safety

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Jason Anker, an author, motivational speaker and consultant who was made a Member of the British Empire in 2015 for his contributions to the world of health and safety.

Jason was paralyzed from the waist down due to an avoidable accident on a construction site in 1993 when he was just 24 years old. He only started speaking about this devastating incident in 2009 and now openly shares his experiences to show EHS professionals how important wellbeing is to workplace safety.

Jason is convinced he would have made different decisions leading up to his accident if he was in better mental shape -  that would have kept him safe. He discusses how organizations can focus more on common wellbeing issues and create environments that break the stigma of mental health - where it’s ok to speak up.

In this inspiring interview, Jason explains what individuals and organizations can do to improve wellbeing. He believes safety is a byproduct of a positive working environment and that people should always come before rules and regulations.

- [Mary] Hi, there. Welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." What is the link between well-being and workplace safety?

How does a person's life outside work contribute to their safety choices at work? What's the role of safety professionals in boosting well-being? Is any of it the company's business? Jason Anker joins me today to talk about all these questions and more surrounding well-being and workplace safety. Jason's story gives him a unique perspective into workplace safety.

In 1993, he was injured in a workplace accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. The result was devastating for Jason and his young family. In the years that followed, Jason became a sought-after inspirational speaker describing how the fallout from this event led him to rock bottom and how he managed to pick himself up, move forward, and commit to making a difference for others.

He's the author of "Paralysis to Success: Bouncing Back From Adversity." And in 2015, he was made a member of the British Empire for his contributions to the world of health and safety. Jason is the Anker in the UK-based consultancy Anker and Marsh which offers expertise on health and well-being, culture change, behavioral change, and inspirational leadership among other business improvement topics.

Jason joins us today from Manchester. Welcome.

- [Jason] Welcome, Mary. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm really looking forward to it.

- Great. So I'm going to start. For many years, your speaking career focused primarily on your accident. You connected with your audiences to help them understand the true cost of a workplace accident and what it takes to move forward from hardship. But more recently, you shifted your focus a little bit to workplace well-being. Can you tell us a bit about why you felt that shift was an important one?

- I actually started speaking 16 years post my accident. So initially, probably for the first eight, nine years, I thought by sharing my accident story and the impact on my life was enough to change behaviors at work. And then about four years ago, I started to talk about well-being because I was very aware, because we're talking safety about the gut instinct, when you believe somebody is unsafe that you should stop.

And what had always troubled me about sharing my story where I'm trying to ask people to stop and speak up was that without my accident I can vividly remember stopping, thinking about the job, realized it was unsafe, and I still did it. And that part of the story has always, you know, why did I do what I did? I know what I did was wrong, I know what…I should have spoken up, but I chose to carry on working.

And that part of my story has always, it's probably been the bit that's always been missing from a presentation. And then obviously, you mentioned Tim. Prior to his…starting our business together, Tim was a [inaudible]. I mean, you know, Dr. Tim Marsh is known globally around the world for his contribution to safety. And he had a conversation with me. And just said to me, "Look, there's more to your story than just an accident story. I think why you chose to do what you did is really, really important and we need to share this."

And it was sort of Tim's early probes into my story and looking at my well-being at the time of my accident, you know, how I was going to work. I even go back to my presentations the year prior to my accident and look at how my life outside of work had started to fall apart, how that transgresses into what sort of person you become when you're at work.

And that was really the start. So I sort of looked at the well-being side of my accident, and then with Tim's expertise, really helped me shift my presentation. The responses, you know, and I think if anything about the pandemic, whatever we'd like to call it, the last couple of years we've all experienced, I think the whole arena of well-being has really come to the front.

And so what we was talking about pre-pandemic, some clients were sort of saying to us, "Yes, we like the sounds of that, but just stick to safety." You know, and I think now we've become so aware that persons…because everybody has been affected by this. You know, some people have lost family members, more people have lost careers, more people have, you know, long COVID, but everybody has been affected somehow.

And so I think a positive to come from this is that well-being is now really, really looked at, and rightly so.

- So well-being, I just want to make sure that we're clear, it can be understood in a lot of different ways. I think most commonly people associate it with mental health, but can you give us a full picture of what you mean when you say well-being?

- I can't say that my mental health had been affected by at the time of my accident, a reason why I was suffering a mental disorder, because I really wasn't. But my mental state…well, I call it mental well-being. There's mental health, mental well-being. And my mental well-being was really tested. I was 24 years old. I had been made redundant in '92, from a job I absolutely loved. I was a signwriter.

I'm very artistic. So, it was a job I just got, you know, from leaving school, the job I dreamed of, you know, the job I wanted to do. I was very fortunate to get an apprenticeship and it was like the dream come true. Not necessarily the best-paid job in the world, but I really loved it. So for me, being made redundant, it was just, you know, one of them things happening in life, but also, I was suffering from marriage problems, a young marriage with two young children.

So, debt, young marriage, losing your job, and working in jobs that I didn't want to do, so low morale. So when we talk about mental health and mental well-being for me is the physical state you come to work in the morning. You know, are you having breakfast? Are you drinking properly? You know, I was drinking alcohol heavily at the time because my marriage was failing.

So I'd go into work in the morning, a little bit hungover, not eating properly. Working jobs I didn't want to do. So my work morale was really poor. And then back home to the marriage problems at home as well. Not sleeping properly. So these things for me, it's only now I can look back and these things are so visible, "What's happening to you, mate?"

You know, and I think that we sometimes get a bit lost in the word mental health, you know, and we just think of people really struggling at the edges, either with depression, or anxiety, or, you know, bipolar, all these sort of recognized conditions. But the majority of people are people with just well-being issues. It could be marriage problems, it could be debt issues, it could be problems with the children, it could be a fatality, it could be children in hospital.

So, I believe that those affect so many people. It's just like yourself, Mary, you just mentioned you've come off of the back of COVID. You're not yourself, you're not 100%. But we come to work and we give our best. And people will always try and give their best. But if they're struggling, their best, but you know, it might just be barely minimal. And I think that's the area where we've got to focus because it's not just about safety.

I think that's the area we've got to try and go. People talk about safety because we can measure safety. But when we talk about things like production, and quality, and absenteeism, and presenteeism, how much of a discretionary effort do you get from a worker who's in a good place or having a bad time at work?

So, for me, and what Tim's learned me, is really understanding that my accident had so much more…it happened for so many more reasons than just making a safety error, ignoring a safety rule. And I think that is like the [inaudible] for me.

- So I was going to ask you, actually, about…there's no scientific answer to this, but how much do you think your well-being before your accident… And it sounds like you're talking about sort of struggling that falls short of an actual diagnosis, but struggling nonetheless. How much do you think that contributed to it as opposed to other factors like safety procedures on the worksite or, yeah, the way safety was handled generally on the worksite?

- Yeah. And it's something I talk about towards the end of my presentations, my accident was a rush job, end of shift, lack of planning. There was many factors, maybe could have prevented my accident. But because I actually stopped and thought about it, I've always struggled using those excuses, shall I say, as the reason I had my accident. But I know if I lived in a place where I can express how I was feeling or maybe somebody would have noticed I was not myself, today, I'll say 99% I'm convinced that my well-being, on the day of my accident, was a significant factor of why I chose to work unsafely that day.

And I don't think another safety rule or safety procedure would have actually stopped me in that moment not climbing that ladder.

- The last time we spoke, you talked about flaws and incident investigation. And here's how you put it, "Everybody looks for a broken rule or a broken procedure, and yet nobody really looks for a broken person." So can you expound on why it's important then to include that extra realm of information when we're investigating accidents?

- Absolutely. You know, I mean, Tim's comment during an accident investigation at the moment and because he know… he's probably aware of this. It's like taking me a couple of steps back from the incident. You know, you might see somebody working unsafe or there's been an accident and say we always talk about a broken rule or broken procedure. But just by maybe asking the person how his life's has been over the last couple of weeks, a couple of months, over the last year.

And I guarantee that 9 times out of 10 you'll hear something, probably answers a lot of the questions you've got about the accident. You know, I've gone to a lot of sites today and, you know, say, for example, a company's got me in to speak to the scaffolders about working at height. I mean, I go in there and say, "Look, you know more about working safely at height than me because you do that as your profession. So I'm not going to sit here and go through all the rules and reasons why you should work safely at height. I want to talk to you more about why do you choose not to work safely."

And 9 times out of 10, what I'm getting at the moment and the conversation I have around mental health and well-being, more people talk to me after my presentations about well-being than they do safety. And I think that is the indication for me that this is touching on something different, that people are coming to work and, you know, the rules and regulations are always going to be needed, you know, procedures and all these are significantly important to working safe.

But understanding the impact of someone having no sleep. No, in fact, only last week, a young guy coming to speak in young presentations because they're in my presentation, sorry, in my presentations. I basically said to the audience, "If anyone's been affected by anything I've said or you want to have, you know, a private chat with me after the presentations." And a young guy came up to me, he said, "Look, I really like working for this company."

He says, "This is a really good family company. I've worked here more or less since leaving school." He says, "Unfortunately, my second child has just been born. He's quite poorly. You know, he's not long-term, not life-threatening, but he's still in hospital. So I look after the other child in between working, in between going to the hospital as the parent, my partner and the child."

He says, "I'm having no sleep." He says, "I'm absolutely worn out. So all the things you talked about before your accident, in a similar sort of way, even though I haven't got marriage problems, I feel I'm in a similar place to what you was, trying to juggle my job, trying to do this, trying to do that." He said, "I'm very fortunate I work for quite a good company." He says, "I can't imagine what I'd be doing if I was working in a poor workplace."

So, that sort of makes me very clear. I think individuals have a massive responsibility to look after their own well-being, you know, by doing things like what they eat, what they drink, keeping hydrated, sleep. We also believe that the companies themselves have a responsibility to make sure that workers come to work and work in a great environment.

So for me, there's two sides to this, the workers themselves, and the company themselves playing their role.

- I'd like to talk about both of those. But just as you've mentioned that people come up to you after, I'm curious, do you think people…first of all, do people put up their hand and share these stories publicly, or do you find that it's mostly people coming up afterwards to have a more private chat?

- Great question, the latter. Yeah, people will certainly span out. I'm speaking from the UK. And, you know, I think most people say the British are quite reserved. And people aren't still, even though there's more awareness around mental health and well-being in the workplace people are still very, very reluctant to speak up.

I try and speak to the others, but it's the person, you know, the leader, the supervisor, the manager, if they can come forward and share a story about their mental health issues, it creates that environment where it's okay to speak about it. You're probably not aware, over the weekend, there was a UFC fight with a fighter from the UK. He's quite brash, he's very likable, but he's from Liverpool, he's a cheeky chap, but he's very good at fighting.

And he won his fight. And straight away, afterwards, I was just doing an interview, he just said, he went on this thing and said, "Look, my friend, unfortunately, committed suicide." He got a call at 4:00 in the morning. "I dedicated my fight to him." Well, then he went on to talk about mental health and speaking up. You know, he says it's not a weakness to speak up, it's a strength. And he gave away a present, you know, he spoke in the ring for just a couple of moments, a couple of minutes.

Well, the impact that's had on the UK over the weekend and even now because he's a rough and troubled fighter, but he spoke about his own mental health as well. So, I think, one of the charity, one of the men's mental health charities have had a 50% increase in people coming forward. So the answer to your question is it is difficult to speak up. And I think it's really vital that people who have confidence and who appear strong, if they can share their own stories around mental health.

You know, it's that phrase that breaks the stigma. You know, I think sometimes we hear it so many times, it loses a bit of power. But it's all about that [inaudible] It's all about the more we speak openly about this and make it just a normal conversation, a normal thing to speak about, the football, the soccer, the things

[inaudible] weekend, or, you know, "I've had a bad weekend." "All right. What's the problem?" We tend to shy away from those conversations. And then, unfortunately, when something bad does happen, we all then say, "Oh, yes, I knew something wasn't right." So it's like we're behind, aren't we? We are still in a place, I think, where we are reacting to mental health and well-being.

We need to be more proactive.

- Let's talk now about sort of responsibility. How do you see it? Obviously, there's some individual responsibility, there's some organizational responsibility. Let's start with the individuals. How much of a person's well-being would you say is their personal responsibility?

- I struggled with my mental health 25 years after my accident. And I tried to hide it. I didn't tell a soul. I used alcohol. I wasn't an alcoholic, but I'd go out on a weekend and I'd drink far too much. Mainly to get me at… I was anxious, my anxiety level, it was anxiety I suffered from mainly. So going out to a bar, I'd be anxious about my wheelchair.

So I'd pre-drink before I went out. I'd get out, I'd be nervous, you know, I'd be able to access from toilets, was it access, will I get in even? So all these anxieties have followed me around. So then I'd go out because I was anxious, I'd drink far too much. And then I'd obviously make probably a bit of a fool of myself. And the next day full of guilt and anxiety because you're doing it again, you drank too much.

So I start skipping meals. So my sleep pattern was all over the place. And I could never have sleep. And I've tried so many things over the years to try and help myself. Or, I'll say the turning point you mentioned like in the book, and I had a ghostwriter help me write the book, that process of writing the book was really difficult. So I had to start to speak about how I was really feeling.

So all the things I've hidden for so long came out in the book. And it was like for the first time realizing that speaking up about how he was feeling, and I've, you know, got a lot of people, after the book came out, read it and said, "We never knew. We never knew you were struggling at the time. If only we knew." You know, and I think from me speaking up about how I was feeling was probably the first big turning point in my life.

You know, so from the injury and what I've done now, I always say, there's no one big thing that changes. So it's the small things. And the small things can be really, really small, but you practice these things over and over again. And then the next one comes along, and these little things just start to add up a little bit. So the first…what I did for my anxiety was learning how to breathe properly. It sounds… Learning how to breathe.

Well, everyone breathes all the time, but when you actually look at how you do breathe, you know, with anxiety, you take short breaths anyway, but learning to breathe properly when you get anxious. I mean, everyone knows, when you get mental imbalances, what do you always say? Take deep breaths. So we know these things work. Well, now I wake up in the morning, I do my breathing exercises every morning. And then during me day, if I notice anything, sort of slapping me a little bit, just calm myself down, take some deep breaths.

That went into my diet, it went into drinking more water. I've stopped drinking alcohol completely. I'm not a drunk anti-drinker, anti-alcohol person. But for me, personally, the realization between my bad sleep, anxiety, and alcohol. So two Christmases ago, I stopped drinking alcohol and I'm still here. And for the first time, for what, it was like my head's clear.

I'm sleeping better, so I'm less fatigued. You know, I'm not tired all the time, making better decisions, lost some weight. So all these things slowly started out. But it's probably a bit, the last three years, you know, it wasn't overnight. Now I'm in a place, I think I'm in the best place I've been mentally since my accident, if not before, but definitely, since my accident, I'm now in a better place than… You know, going back over what you've asked me before, I believe if my accident happened, you know, if I was the person I am today with things that I do for my well-being, look after my well-being, would I have spoken up on that day?

I would say, yes, I would have spoken up. I'll tell you a stage further, I would not have even been doing that job. I would have walked off-site weeks before it even happened. This shows to me that by looking after your own well-being, and I practice gratitude, every single day. Look after my well-being. Not meditation as such but I have some breathing exercises very similar to meditating.

But other people are noticing as well now. So it's not just me thinking I'm better, it's other people noticing there's been a big change in me.

- It sounds like it's, practically speaking, it's a bunch of small habits. But really, the big picture is that it's the habit of taking care of yourself.

- I can't do it any better, and that's, it's taking care of myself, taking care of myself physically, you know, the things like a bit of exercise, drinking more water, but also mentally as well. I think I spend time, you know, when you look after your physical health, people say, "Oh, yeah, I do this to improve my physical health."

How many people actually take their time to look after their own mental health as well? And I think that is so important in learning how to unclutter your mind, how to calm your mind. You know, that's all part of not sleeping properly. You know, I've learned ways now that when the mind's really racing round and just to notice where it is. And a lot of the time, I've drifted to the future again. I'm worried about things that have not even happened.

And staying in the present moment is so calming just to stay in the present. Yeah, it has taken a little bit of time. And I have not lost any friendships over this, but I didn't mix in circles that I used to mix in all of the time because they're still in a mindset that doesn't help my mindset. So I've still got my friends, I still pop and see them all, you know, pop and see them.

But I'm not into the things I was doing before because learning how to look after your mind is like…it's why you say practice gratitude because you're always practicing it. It's not something you do for a short period of time. And it's a bit like being on a diet, or eating healthy, you may lose weight. Why are you doing it? But it's when you stop, the weight goes back on. So you talk about your mental health.

All these things you need to do to look after your mind are a constant. You can't go so far then stop and think everything's going to be fine. So yeah, on that side, I think that's what it is. Yeah, it's practice, practice, practice.

- Yeah, it's practice, practice, practice, practice.

- Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

- You know, I think people are working on speaking up and more people because of COVID realize the importance of well-being, but there is still a bit of a stigma. It's considered a private matter. So, when an organization wants to start taking care of their employees or being aware of their mental well-being, is there a risk that organizations could overstep the balance of privacy in trying to learn or improve worker well-being?

And if so, how can they do it in such a way that that won't happen?

- That is one of those, I call reasons why people are still scared around mental health. I call it like a barrier. "Oh, I'm not doing that because if I did it might get up to HR, I might lose a promotion," all these. And I think, you know, initially, there may be some instances where it seems like this is not going to work or this is probably the wrong way to go because there may be a…it's like the safety story.

There's always that story somewhere where somebody raised a safety concern and got sacked. But I don't know if it really did happen, it was an urban myth, but that gets mentioned. And I'm sure the same thing is going to be put out there about our mental health. And again, it goes back to the more we can speak up, the more senior people within an organization can normalize this conversation around mental health, that it's not a stigma. In fact, you know, if someone comes forward with a mental health issue, it's shouldn't be something that knocks their career back.

If anything, it should actually expand their career forward because you've got somebody in your organization who's confident enough to come forward and tell you a problem. Because just by not sharing that problem, it doesn't make the problem not there. And that person then may get promoted into a position that they can't handle. You know, good work is good for everybody. You know, you start saying good work is good for you. So people, in a lot of careers do not get paid for having time off work.

So the old thing about people, oh, we'll lose so many staff to mental health and people won't be coming to work. No, people at the moment are coming to work with mental health issues. That is fact. You know, and these people with mental health issues, you know, might not be as productive because they're going to work and doing the best they can possibly do in that moment.

But are they more prone to making a mistake? Are they more prone to not speaking up about a safety concern? Are they more prone to just do their thing, "I've got so much going through my mind at the moment. You know, I can see somebody else doing something wrong. All my energy is going into me doing my stuff." So again, not quoting stats. I'm not a statistician and all of this. But I think companies are scared that the well-being aspect is going to cost money.

But actually it's the opposite. The amount of money you will gain by looking after your workforce, staff retention, increased production, increased quality. Safety is actually a byproduct of all this. Because if we get all these things right, the well-being right and workers... It's something I said only this week actually on a presentation, anybody who knows me, my presentations change all the time.

I hear something, or I come on a show like this, I hear a comment and it stays in my mind a little bit. And somebody said that a lot of CEOs will get on stage at the annual conference and without, you know, few exceptions will… First line of the comment will be safety down to one priority. And yet there's people in the audience thinking, "If you only you knew what I was doing last week, you won't miss it. I got away with it."

But to me, it should be people first. People should be first because if people come first, you look after well-being, you look after all these other things. And if you've got your safety… Safety should be a byproduct. Good safety should be a byproduct of coming to work, having a good day at work. Where I can come to work in the morning and I speak about, for so many people, companies will say, "Our number one priority is that people go home in the same way they arrive in the morning."

What if we could create a workplace where people feel valued, where people feel part of the team and they could come to work maybe after a bad weekend at home with the family or for whatever reason, come to work, have a really, really good day at work and actually go home better than they arrived in the morning?

- Yeah, I mean, that would be, it would be wonderful. And for organizations who see the value, like, there's always going to be some that don't see the value and they will show themselves through their actions. But for ones that do see the value in that, there are certain things that they can't control. They can't control how much a worker sleeps or if they eat in a healthy way or not. So what do you think they can do?

Like, where, practically speaking, what can organizations do to lift up their employees?

- Yeah, okay. So, I'm quite fortunate to work a lot with the big clients. And some of these modern young companies, you know, the Googles, the Facebooks, with young staff, they're aware of this. So, you know, you go into some of these offices of some of these companies and some of the rooms, some of the floors to the office suites are very, very similar probably to a nightclub.

You know, they've got chill-out areas because they've realized that we've got young people working for us. And I don't know which client it was, I went to the office and I said, and I actually said the words, "This looks very very similar to me like a nightclub." He says, "But we have to do this. If we want to attract the people we need to attract today, we need to do these things." However, what we found is that you can work somebody for eight hours behind a desk and making sure they don't leave the desk only for breaks, but if we gave them the flexibility to do their work, and yet, if they're feeling tired, there's even sleeping pods in some of these buildings where they can go and have half an hour of sleep.

He says, "Our production levels are higher than what they were if we would stand over them for eight hours." So I think you're right, it is the young, modern companies of today who recognize… You know, I went… and I present in, after me, or just before me, was talking about lighting and plants. And I thought, well, he's now coming on board, I thought, "This presentation is, what's going on?"

By the end of it, sort of then realizing that the impact that the environment has on the workforce is quite eye-opening. You know, and I think we need to appreciate that the older companies in their old ways are getting what they've always got. You know, you just get what you always get. And the new companies are trying to do something different and actually wanting staff to remain with them.

They don't want staff to leave and be recruiting all the time. They want the staff to come, to get someone to stay within the company. It's not all about pay. Pay is always going to be important. But if that's all you've got for someone working for your company, as soon as somebody offers more money, that person will leave. But if you can create an environment where people actually enjoy coming to work, they're fairly paid for the work they do, yeah, they have a really, really good day at work, it's just a win-win.

So they go home happy, have a happy weekend, come back to work for the following week raring to go. So it's just realizing that side of looking after your staff, and the value that can bring your staff is unbelievable.

- Yeah, and as you're pointing out, it makes business sense too. So last time we spoke, you said something really powerful about what might have prevented your accident. You've done a lot of thinking about this and you say that the signs that you weren't in a good place were fairly obvious. Do you remember, what's the one thing you feel that might have changed your choice that day? I can tell you what you told me.

- Yeah, I will do because I'll probably then, I mean, it's probably someone asking if I was okay. Because people knew that something wasn't… It was a day after my accident that other people who was working there came forward and then started sharing, "Oh, I think he's having problems with his marriage. I think he's drinking far too much. This isn't right. That isn't right." Well, they didn't speak out till the day after my accident.

So there's a couple of ways of looking at this that, yeah, I had a responsibility of speaking up, because mental health 29 years ago wasn't really talked about. However, other people recognize I was under... So for whatever reason it was, people knew I wasn't myself. It wasn't just that day, it was probably for a good month prior to my accident, I didn't see myself. I had Christmas coming up. I had no money, so marriage problems.

I was bringing these problems to work, not sharing them with anybody. And yet other workers had recognized there had been a change in my behavior.

- I bring that up too because you were talking about what organizations can do and you said that you get the sense that some organizations feel that it's costly, like, that they have to put in these elaborate well-being programs when really asking someone how are you doing is free.

- Without a doubt. Without a doubt. The problem of asking someone if they're okay and that's it, is everybody, especially when we talk about it in the UK, but it's probably a global thing, if someone asks you if you're okay, the normal response everybody gets is, "I'm fine." It's just what people say. "How are you today?" "I'm fine."

But it's the second time you ask that question. "No, you didn't seem yourself? Are you sure you're okay?" And you might hear some people who crack straight away but, "No, I'm all right." And then the bottom language changes a little bit. And then, "Come on, let's go for a cup of tea. You're fine?" If it's not the second time you ask, on the third time, people normally crack. And then they'll tell you what is actually going on.

So yeah, I think that's the thing, the law of I'm fine, as Tim Marsh pens it. It's law. If someone asks you, by law, if you don't say, "I'm fine," is your response, you can get arrested. And it's a great joke on stage, but it's very similar to what you've said, the law of I'm fine. We're all so guilty of it. You know, we find it very difficult to…even if we're really, really struggling, if someone asks you, "How are you today?"

I mean, you'll say, "I'm fine." And some people have asked that question not wanting an answer apart from I'm fine.

- Yeah, I think that's the kernel, that's the core. And that's why asking it the second time is what cracks, or third, is what cracks them is because they realize, "Oh, you really want to know, you actually want to know."

- Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, it's a quiet thing. You know, and what we're seeing at the moment is that's where we'll be training around mental health, and mental well-being, and all the stuff. So what we do is learning to want to know the answer. You can ask how are you in a way that you might say to a person, "Don't say anything else apart from you're fine." And then when something goes wrong, you finally say, "Well, I asked if you're okay and you said everything was fine."

So, yeah, and they're always going to be people out there who do that. But if we really want to move forward with our mental health, is we need to learn how to have those conversations. And if someone comes back and says, "No, actually, I'm not fine," is what we do next.

- Yeah. So I was going to ask you, our listeners are our occupational health and safety professionals. So, what do you think their role is in all of this? One person maybe can't change an entire organization, but are there specific improvements that a safety professional is in a position to make to start to shift that conversation?

- Yes, I've been through this. I know, again, speaking from the UK that there is some pushback from the safety professionals, more or less saying we can't get involved and we've got so much now…you know, working so much underway around health and safety. Why is this following up? And then I always respond to it and say, "Isn't that the job of HR?" You know, we're kicking back saying, unless we do take a holistic approach to health, safety, and well-being, we're championing the phrase well-being, health, and safety because we believe well-being is fundamental to health and fundamental to safety.

- There are a few questions I ask every guest. The first one I'm going to call this the university of Jason. So if you were asked to develop a curriculum to teach soft skills to future safety professionals, where do you think you would focus?

- Communication. I think it's all I've talked about all evening on the podcast of all the things that may or may not pertain to my accident, may not have… Speaking, learning how to communicate, you know, fairly. If you're a manager, you know, there's ways you have to talk to your staff, there's ways you have to train morale, all these things. So, communication is absolutely massive.

And learning how to… I always say we need to learn how to speak, and the biggest thing we need to do is learn how to listen. You know, we're very good at talking. I can ramble on and on for hours and I've been accused of it before. And one thing I'm learning for myself, on some of the coaching I have is learning how to listen, learning how to pause.

So when you've asked a question, are you listening to the reply, or are you waiting for an opportunity to speak again? And I think that, you know, with closed listening. So you've asked the question, and so you're not really listening to his answer. All you're actually doing is waiting for a pause while they're speaking so you can start speaking again. So, obviously well-being is a thing, that, you know, I'm trying to champion at the moment.

But I like to say I think communication, because if we can learn how to communicate with people, that means we can be more open about how I'm actually feeling. So it goes back to your previous statement, "How are you today?" "Oh, actually, I'm okay. However, this happened or this." So, you must understand how quickly that this could sort of build, you know. I didn't think this is this big scary monster that people think it is. I think it's looking at this from a slightly different viewpoint that if we can communicate better about how we're feeling, I think we'll work safer as before, we'll work smarter, so the company is going to generate more profit, you know, quality wouldn't be an issue.

So yeah, to champion it around communication that we can speak openly, you know, and I think that would be quite amazing, and achieve so much as well.

- Yeah, and I think it goes well with what you're saying about asking, as you said, "How are you doing?" and listening to the answer because there's a big difference between, "I'm fine," and, "I'm fine." You know, and that's part of communication is listening to tone and that sort of thing.

- Which leads on to, we're losing a lot of communication skills because of things like text messages. As I say, text message, "How are you today?" "I'm fine." How'd you read it? Do you read it in bold language? No. So again, I think the whole thing is actually face-to-face asking someone, "Are they okay?" than sending, you know, the email or the text message, "How are you?" "I'm fine."

How can we start to learn that someone's not quite right or not feeling themselves just by sending text messages or emails?

- Yeah, it gets rid of the tone which is a huge part of it. So the next question is, and this might seem obvious, but if you could travel back in time and speak to yourself at the beginning of your career, so not necessarily about the accident, and you could give yourself only one piece of advice, what would it be?

- Probably be more confident because I wasn't a confident person anyway. You know, leaving school didn't do great at my exams. I was very quite shy, not very open speaking up about anything, you know, as a young person. And it's only now that I'm doing a lot of…doing... I'm actually being a lot more confident when I speak to people.

You know, if something's not right or I disagree with something, instead of just agreeing blindly, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll tell people. So I'm 54 now, so I'd say for the last, sort of, getting on for 40 years, I've been very good at not being confident. Been a master of it. So being more confident, which leads back into the accident. If I had been more confident would I have spoken up that day?

So, you know, this is, you know, if someone asks you, "Are you okay?" If you're not very confident, you're going, "No, I'm fine." But if you are a confident person, you'll say, "Great, I'm fine. However," So, for me, confidence would have been a big change through my life and through the recovery of my accident as well.

- So, you've written a book about your story, and I'm sure that listeners will want to look that up. Are there any other resources that you recommend that you think are really helpful to learn about the role of well-being in workplace safety?

- I'll plug Tim Marsh's latest book as well. Obviously, the issue was health and safety, and he rewrote it. I think he's done another edition at the moment, actually. But, you know, health, safety, and well-being. And looking at that role, taking that holistic approach to health, safety, and well-being. Obviously, my book is just a story of my accident, my life, whereas Tim's is a lot more in-depth.

Personally, now, I just read anything that boosts me. Anything to do with positivity, anything like that. Because it's not just in your own personal life, anything you learn around positivity and improving your own life can be pushed into workplace and shared with colleagues.

- So where can our listeners find you on the web?

- www.ankermarsh.com. My daughter has a…the motivational speaking side of Anker and Marsh, Proud2bSafe, that's www.p2bs.org, where she's got a list of speakers, you know, survivors of accidents, and people involved with accidents. I will now have moved the story into the well-being arena as well, looking at other accidents from a well-being point of view as well.

But Anker and Marsh is the main site.

- Okay, and we'll have that in the notes, by the way, but Anker is spelled, A-N-K-E-R. So, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks to our listeners for your support, and a big thank you to Jason for sharing your hard-earned wisdom.

- Oh, thank you, Emily. Just really enjoyed it. All right, thank you.

- And the last thanks go to the "Safety Labs by Slice" team who care about and support each other so we can all do our best work. Bye for now.