Safety And Risk Success

Hosted by Christian Harris

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286

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Aug 2026

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About the show

Bring the benefits of proactive safety and risk management to life, through insights, experiences and stories. Every week, host Christian Harris - the UK's leading slips, trips and falls specialist - presents a new episode, typically with expert guests, to discuss: - Safety - Health - Wellbeing - Insurance - Risk management - Claims defensibility

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60 recent

September 4, 2026Episode 28714 min

Launching Sliptember 2026: Why Almost Every Organisation Is Getting Slip Safety Wrong

Christian Harris opens this year's Sliptember campaign with the story of Dennis Satchell, who suffered multiple hip fractures after a fall at a Tesco Extra in 2015, and what environmental health officer Justin Strange uncovered when he led the prosecution that followed. A known hazard, managed with signs and boom socks instead of being fixed, is the pattern Christian says he sees at organisation after organisation. The episode covers the scale of the slip and trip problem across the UK, why matting, cleaning, signage and insurance don't solve the underlying issue on their own, and the CHIMES framework and Slipology method Christian has developed over more than thirteen years working across 4,000 client sites. It also marks the launch of Sliptember 2026, including thirty free slip tests being given away across September, a live masterclass on 9 September on preventing slip incidents, and a conversation with Peter Bennett of the No Falls Foundation on 23 September. It's not a slip problem. It's a grip problem, and this September, the message is simple: measure, don't guess. Get entered for a free slip test or access the Slip Prevention Scorecard: [scorecard.slipsafety.co.uk]

August 28, 2026Episode 28646 min

Why You Might Be Letting Your Employer Own Your Career (with Paul Goodreau)

Christian Harris joined by Paul Goodreau, a former hydrogeologist who went on to become a CEO, business leader and now author and career coach, for a conversation about ownership, career planning and knowing when you're on the right track. Paul shares the career life cycle model behind his book, Own Your Career, No One Else Will, and explains why so many technically skilled professionals in safety, risk and engineering struggle to think strategically about their own path forward. They also discuss why AI is reshaping entry-level roles across the industry, how to build a genuine advisory team, and why your career aspiration should be reviewed and allowed to change over time. The episode closes with a question Paul says he's never been asked before: how will you ultimately score your career? Find Paul on LinkedIn or at paulgoodreau.com. Curious where your own organisation stands on safety? Take the free Slip Risk Scorecard: [scorecard.slipsafety.co.uk]

August 21, 2026Episode 28558 min

Louise Hosking: Inside the Choice Chain, a New Way to Think About Organisational Decisions

Christian is joined again by Louise Hosking, who has spent the last six months developing a new framework called the Choice Chain. It started with a question Christian asked on a webinar about why more data and more effort do not always lead to better outcomes. Louise draws on 35 years of experience across risk, safety and membership organisations, and on recent study at teh Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership, to explain her constellation of decisions model. This model shows how purpose, signals, interpretation, trade-offs, learning, and conditions all interact to shape whether an organisation gets a positive or negative result. Louise talks through real examples of major organisational failures, including how a warning signal about structural risk failed to reach the right decision makers in time. She also explains signal equity, the idea that some voices in an organisation carry more weight than others, and why the quietest signals are often the ones worth listening to most closely. The episode closes with Louise's environmental health roots and why she believes this lens, covering clean water, safe food, safe workplaces, and protection from pollution, is central to understanding organisational wellbeing today. Find Louise Hosking on LinkedIn, or visit her website at thechoicechain.co.uk for her ongoing series of Choice Chain articles.

August 14, 2026Episode 28448 min

State of Safety 2026: Why the Biggest Risks Get the Least Attention

Christian Harris shares the results of the third annual State of Safety survey in this Safety Roundtable session. The data reveals a clear priority gap. Manual handling, slips and trips consistently cause the most harm, yet they rank far lower when it comes to management attention and resource. This episode covers the confidence gap between how safe organisations believe they are and how much they trust their own safety data, why testing for slip risk remains low despite 90% of respondents agreeing more could be done, the jump in safety technology adoption over the past year and why trust in AI still lags behind, and honest feedback from safety professionals on leadership, culture and change resistance. Get the full State of Safety Report: https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQEqi546ov8yWg Ready to find out where your own risk really sits? Take the Slip Risk Scorecard .

August 7, 202646 min

Amar Shahzad: Rethinking Safety Metrics, Human Factors and the Future of the Profession

In this episode, Christian Harris speaks with Amar Shahzad, founder of the Occupational Health and Safety Institute Sweden and host of the Safety by Amar Shahzad podcast. Amar opens up about the workplace accident that first drew him into safety. He unpacks the difference between compliance and genuine understanding, and reflects on the mindset shifts that came from interviewing respected voices in the field, including Todd Conklin and Sidney Dekker. The episode explores why a good process can still end in a bad outcome, why lagging indicators alone do not capture the full picture, and what real engagement with frontline workers actually looks like. The pair close with a look at where safety is headed over the next decade, and the role AI is likely to play. Listen in for a grounded, practical discussion on human-centred safety, drawn from real experience across Pakistan, Qatar and Sweden. Find Amar Shahzad on LinkedIn and on YouTube at Safety by Amar Shahzad. This episode is brought to you by Slip Safety Services. Find out more, and get your copy of Slipology by Christian Harris.

July 31, 202649 min

The Human Side Of Safety, with Wyatt Bradbury

Wyatt Bradbury of Avetta, ASSP's 2026 Safety Professional of the Year, joins Christian for a Safety Roundtable on building genuine safety culture across an interconnected workforce of direct staff, contractors and gig labour. They discuss why the newest or least familiar person on site often carries the most risk, why certain contracted staff can end up caught between two organisations without full support from either, and why so many safety metrics track activity rather than actual impact. Wyatt also shares practical examples, from a major transit project's contractual culture assessments to simple language changes that can either build or break a sense of shared team. Connect with Wyatt on LinkedIn: [ LinkedIn link ]

July 24, 202645 min

The Hidden Cost of Heat, with Anna Albright

In this episode, Christian Harris speaks with Anna Albright, founder of Klima, about the true cost of heat on worker safety and productivity. Anna shares the story of a delayed flight that revealed ground crews, not aircraft systems, were being grounded by extreme heat, and how that realisation led her to leave a career at J.P. Morgan and BCG to build a wearable cooling device for industrial workers. They discuss why global heat related productivity losses are estimated in the trillions, why current cooling solutions on the market fall short, and why Anna believes heat safety needs to be framed around return on investment rather than treated as a cost centre. Try the heat cost calculator: [ calculator link ] Connect with Anna Albright on LinkedIn: [ LinkedIn link ]

July 17, 202640 min

Safety Roundtable: The Safety Confidence Gap

In this Safety Roundtable session, Christian Harris explores what he calls the safety confidence gap. Early data from our State of Safety Survey shows 94% of respondents rate their safety performance as average or better, but only half are confident their risks are measured rather than assumed. Christian shares a case where a 91 year old fractured his hip in a Tesco store, resulting in a fine of nearly three quarters of a million pounds for systemic failings, alongside the BP Texas City disaster, a ketchup factory with a red floor, and NASA's approach to weak signals. Attendees Shona, Steve and Richard join the conversation with their own views on culture, process ownership and management training. Take the State of Safety Survey here: [survey link] Results will be discussed at the next Safety Roundtable in two weeks.

July 10, 202648 min

Brad Johnson: Why Compliance Isn't the Same as Safety

Would your workplace still be safe if every regulation vanished overnight? That question sits at the heart of this conversation between Christian Harris and Brad Johnson, safety coordinator and author of Noncompliant Safety. Brad talks candidly about breaking into safety with no formal training, learning the hard way that a fully compliant team can still be carrying real risk, and why he now treats risk itself as the metric that matters. He and Christian discuss the myth of the perfectly compliant workplace, why accountability needs to shift toward the organisation rather than landing solely on the frontline worker, and Brad's SLOW framework for challenging "we've always done it this way" thinking. They also touch on Brad's win of Safest District of the Year in 2024, and the practical, risk based tools any safety professional could start using this coming Monday. Resources mentioned: Brad's book, Noncompliant Safety, plus free risk conversation guides and presentation resources, available on his website. Connect with Brad on LinkedIn as Brad Johnson, CSP. Enjoyed this one? Subscribe to Safety and Risk Success so you don't miss next week's conversation.

July 3, 20261 hr 2 min

Qualifications vs. Competence: Is Health & Safety Really a Profession? (with Dr. David Thomas)

Are more letters after your name actually making you a better safety professional, or just better at collecting certificates? In this episode of the Safety Roundtable, Christian Harris is joined by Dr. David Thomas, Senior Lecturer and Programme Lead for Health and Safety Management at Middlesex University, for a candid and at times controversial look at how the industry qualifies, and misqualifies, its people. Drawing on 30+ years of practice, including his time as a Section 98 appointee under the Mines and Quarries Act, David shares the story that first got him questioning "competence": a safety professional from head office who could flag a loose drainpipe but had no idea whether a 33,000-volt electrical supply was safe. From there, the conversation ranges across NEBOSH certificates and diplomas, degree apprenticeships, IOSH accreditation limits, the IIRSM competency framework, and the murky gap between what a Level 6 or Level 7 qualification is supposed to mean and what it actually delivers on the ground. Topics covered include: - Why "competent person" doesn't have to mean "health and safety professional" - The mismatch between academic qualification levels and professional membership grades - Why recruiters default to naming a NEBOSH award without understanding what it actually assesses - Career ceilings in OSH; and why safety professionals rarely make it to MD or Chief People Officer - How generative AI is upending assessment and forcing universities to rethink how competency is tested - Advice for people starting out in safety, risk, and OSH careers today With live audience questions from practitioners across offshore, construction, education, and consultancy, this is a wide-ranging debate about what it really means to be "qualified", and whether the profession has been chasing the wrong metric all along. Got thoughts on qualifications vs. competency in health and safety? Join the conversation on LinkedIn and let us know where you stand.