Ep 16: Health and safety career advice – your wellbeing

Adam Clarke 0:01
Welcome to risk sleep repeat, a podcast that features influential guest speakers from the world of fire, health and safety. We’re going to focus on trust based safety, owning and embracing risk and the importance of people over paperwork hosted by me, Adam Clark, Managing Director, and Mike Stevens, CEO of practice 42. If you’re a fire, health and safety professional, join us for inspirational conversations about the future of our industry. Today I’m joined by Fiona O’Donnell, global HSE strategy, lead, and Jacobs. Fiona is dedicated to the promotion of mental health and well being and it’s driven to ensure that the workplace can keep people safe, and has a positive impact on their health. So the owner won the shp Trailblazer workplace wellbeing award in 2022, for the 1 million lives campaign, a free mental health checking tool designed by Jacobs to enhance user’s understanding of their current state of mind and provide proactive strategies, personal mental health development. Gianna, thank you so much for spending some time with me today on the podcast. And like I do with all guests, it’d be really great if you can give me a bit of an overview of of your career to date, and where you currently are and what you’re currently doing, if you don’t mind.

Speaker 1 1:17
Yeah, absolutely. Hi, Adam, and hello to everybody that’s listening. I’m delighted to be here today and really looking forward to this. So my name is Fiona O’Donnell, and I work for Jacobs Engineering, our large I suppose, traditional engineering organisation, we work globally. So we’ve worked in most countries around the globe, we’ve got just under 60,000 employees, scattered everywhere, in offices and projects all around the world. And my role with Jacobs, I’ve been with them a long time now nearly 18 years. My role with Jacobs is I manage our health and safety strategy globally. So I started off in the Irish operations. And when based in Ireland, where I live, I started off the Irish operations before moving to where European role with the business. And most recently, over the last couple of years, I’ve transitioned into a more global role. So I work with our health and safety team globally, really driving our strategy, trying to ensure this kind of a consistent approach. And it’s difficult sometimes when you think about some of the countries that we’re working in different cultures, different levels of maturity, when it comes to health, safety, and indeed well being. So really, really challenging to try and get that consistent approach. Because our aim is the same for everybody and our desire and our vision around our health and safety strategy. You know, we want everybody to, to go home in a healthier, better way than then than the way they came in. So yeah, the new role has been challenging, but I really, really love it, enjoy it. In my in my personal life, I have three girls, three daughters, I had 1311 and eight. So lots of fun in my house trying to manage a full time career and, and three girls can be difficult at times, let me tell you about just as just as rewarding, there is no balance, right? It is an absolute miss, there is no balance, sometimes it has to be work. And sometimes it it has to be the kids. And I think once you’re you have that level of self awareness, it’s a much easier road to walk once you kind of have that awareness of that. I think where I’ve certainly tripped up over the years is trying to find that balance. I think I’m a lot more effective now. Because my mindset is is one where sometimes it absolutely has to be work. And sometimes it absolutely has to be family,

Adam Clarke 3:33
with having a career and with a with success comes a level of level of sacrifice. And, you know, squaring that off to yourself, you know, it doesn’t make it easier, doesn’t mean that it’s not tough. And at times, yeah, those those days, weeks months, when you feel like you’re treading water is, yeah, it’s hard.

Speaker 1 3:50
There’s no easy areas here. They’re all hurt. It is a really difficult line to walk. And there are sacrifices and I look back on my own career. And there are times there are things that I’ve done in my career where I have where I’ve absolutely put work first where I’ve had to put my family and there’s been there’s been serious sacrifices that I’ve had to make. Do I regret them? Some of them absolutely no, I’ve as I as I mature and as I get get older and as I kind of climbed the ladder, there’s some stuff that I did, you know, I came back very, very early after, after my first two daughters were born I came I came back to work really early, I basically didn’t really take maternity leave. And that was for a number a number of reasons. It wasn’t that you know, Jacobs made me or a dough but there was no pressure whatsoever put on me. There was my own internal pressure there was you know, it was working in a male dominated industry there was definitely a feeling while so probably didn’t recognise it at the time and wasn’t able to identify it. And it was a subconscious thing but it was definitely that feeling that you know, I have to come back because I’m working with a bunch of a bunch of men and you know, they’re not taking time off. So what what impact is this gonna have on my career? Now as my kids are a little bit older and and I look back on that. And I think, Oh God, I didn’t you know, I didn’t take that time when the babies with my babies when they when they were very young. So that was definitely sacrifices that I made that I probably regret, really. But it’s so yeah, back to your original point or did it none of this is easy. Like it’s just not and and you know you will meet people along your career that that make it look easy but that that’s just some people are better at wearing a mask than others,

Adam Clarke 5:26
the best leaders, in my opinion are those who are willing to share the vulnerabilities and the people who appear at face value to have it all together. Well, you know, trying to avoid talking about icebergs in our industry, but it’s what’s below the surface, you know, and talking about it, and putting it out there that actually if you getting to the top comes with certain rewards, responsibilities, etc. But there’s a level of burden there and trade off. And yeah, there’s times where it’s, it’s really tough. Whoever coined the term, it’s lonely at the top here, it can be

I mean, the catalyst for me was very much around I had some business coaching, that’s primary thing that I’ve been interested in. And I feel like I so know where you are, in terms of that. I’m self aware, far more self aware than I ever have been. And very aware of my of my triggers. But God I so with you on the ball still go up to the limit?

Speaker 1 6:32
Oh, to limit? Yeah, I’ll go I’ll go over, I’ll go over it. I think in an age of like, oh, yeah, sometimes I have to be sitting there scrolling on my phone, on Instagram, or whatever. And all these motivational quotes, fly atcha. And the whole business culture thing, I think is a funny thing now because you like your phone is your business coach. Now you just go on to Instagram or any of the social media platforms, there’s there’s your business coach, but it’s connecting your own personal journey with the messages that are out there. And I look, I think not everybody is lucky enough to be in a position where they can get a business coach, and I think our younger generation or younger population, they have so many challenges now, how do we as senior leaders in business, how do we help and influence that younger cohorts to learn the lessons that I took off for a long time to learn because they’re they’re like sponges, right? They’re, they’re just they’re like birds waiting to be fed with, with information and with, with health. And I look into the influence. So we’ve got a real responsibility as senior leaders across our industry, we have a real responsibility to those younger people and younger age demographic of people coming into our industry, you know,

Adam Clarke 7:39
yeah, totally, totally agree with you. And I don’t think we’ve cracked that yet. We, you know, if you think about natural progression, when people start somewhere, and the, when you really start to add on those kind of additional skills seems to always be when someone’s a manager for the first time. Well, actually, you now need to understand how to manage people, but actually primary today is how do you manage yourself? How do you how do you stay calm? But actually, why wait until someone’s a manager? Why can’t that start on day one, when when someone’s in an in an organisation? You know, you’re you’re an apprentice, you’ve never experienced working, you know, perhaps five days a week with all sorts of different people, you’re gonna start with, hey, after the first week, you’re gonna be feeling this, this, this and this, and guess what? It’s normal, that’s fine.

Speaker 1 8:20
But we’re not, we’re only starting to connect the dots on this whole area of investment in human beings, we really are only starting to scratch the surface. And I know some people, some kind of pockets of industry have been dabbling in this for quite some time. But as a general kind of population, we’re only starting to connect the dots on this whole human capital piece and, and the value that are, particularly if you look at health and safety, the value that our health and safety programmes can bring outside of risk mitigation, because that’s primarily we’re focused, and we have been focused for a very long time on, let’s get rid of the risk. But actually, let’s look at our health safety, let’s start looking at our health and safety programmes and how we can create real value for individuals and society through the programmes that we have. For example, within Jacobs, we have a work related road risk programme. And that programme seeks to reduce the risk that is people are exposed to when they jump in their cars or when they’re travelling out the road for us. But actually, if you look at the value that we could bring by by not having people in their cars out with the risk mitigation, right, you know, they might be because they take public transport, they’re less stressed or they’re not exposed to, to obesity, which we know is an issue for people to drive long term. They might get to spend more time with their family because they actually don’t have to take that trip or they you know, so what are the benefits to the individual and therefore the what is the outcome for society. It’s a really interesting area to work in on something that through through what I’m doing with Jacobs, who are really starting to change the narrative on our health and safety programmes, so less about risk mitigation or more about the actual value they can bring, it has to come back to how does how does this benefit the individual? Okay, how do we invest fully in our people, because, you know, there’s obviously, um, quite rightly, a huge focus on the planet and trying to save the planet. But actually, it’s people that are going to do that, ultimately. So the investment should start right at the start to the chain, it should be in the person. And, and there is a look, as time is moving on, there’s there’s a lot more common on this and, and there’s a lot more interest in this whole area of human capital. But I think they’re looking at it through the lens of health and safety is a really interesting one that we’re gonna see a lot more on in the future. What I’m

Adam Clarke 10:53
really interested in that is not the feeling that is in front of me now with lots of lots of experience will to go back to Fiona at the beginning of her career coming into your knees, you’ve already said it a male dominated area and kind of heavy heavy engineering and construction, what drew it to you? And how did you find your initial experience in it.

Speaker 1 11:10
So I grew up in in leixlip County Kildare. And I was lucky enough that Intel actually based their Irish operations in my small village, so I was exposed to kind of construction and, and my village is only is quite small, it’s obviously developed over the years, but when, when Intel first landed, I suppose it would have been a very, very small community. So it was kind of the hub of the community here for a long time. And it’s a massive plant huge development over the years. And that’s really, really good for the community. So I kind of as I was, as I was going through secondary school, that was the backdrop of my community. So it made sense that I kind of started my career there. And I was lucky enough to kind of have a couple of different roles there with different different people certainly not safety, it was always something that really interested me, the fact that you’re able to influence how somebody behaves on a given day, kind of really interested me and, and that’s what safety is all about. It’s about trying to influence people to make a different decision to benefit from them. So I went to college came out and and got a job with a small contractor who had a job in Intel. And and and that was really the start of it, I kind of grew there and moved through the ranks I suppose with a couple of different indexes then landed, landed with with Jacobs, but just loved that whole. Firstly, the balls of construction, I remember my first day on site, watch and 1000s of construction workers walking into, you know, walking into fab 40, down down the hill into fab 14, all with different coloured hats on they used to do as an American organisation. So they used to do stretch and flex in the morning, which in Ireland at the time, nobody was doing so to see a couple of 1000 construction workers walking into a big pit every morning and doing a stretch of Blackstone taken off the hard hats to do and a neck exercises in the morning was just, oh my god, this is insane. And, and everybody loving it and just the balls and the vibe on the project. And then very quickly realised that I actually was good at influence. So that was my first kind of, I don’t know, when I got into it first was did I think I was going to you know, did I think this was going to be the career I was going to have the rest of my days. I suppose you don’t probably think that far ahead when you’re when you’re so young. But I remember that feeling of God, I can actually change how people behave here. That really interested me. And I suppose drove me on to try and understand safety and a bit more and try and understand behavioural based safety. A little bit more. And and yeah, I suppose the rest is history.

Adam Clarke 13:47
That’s me. I’ve always been fascinated about human behaviour and psychology and how you can get people to try and help them to help themselves. You can get that wrong very easily, sometimes just in choice of words, tonality, I guess then what I’m interested in is, at that time when you were realising that you were starting to get into this, and you know, if we’re starting to fast forward a little bit more then now you get to do it on a much bigger scale.

Speaker 1 14:12
I remember an incident that happened. I must have been on the project. Yeah, I had moved. It was just before I took up a role Jacobs, actually. So I was with I was with a contractor. And we were moving compounds, we were moving from one form five compound set up to another. We had a couple of containers, and we had a crane in for the day that was lifting and bringing the officers on the back flatbed back to the other other compound. And I walked around the corner and I saw a guy that I had worked with for maybe two years. And I saw a guy on the top of an A frame ladder underneath a container that had been lifted by crane and has come around the corner and it all happened very very quickly. But as it was coming around the corner, I was conscious that I could hear an alarm. I want to walk around and I saw On the top of the iframe ladder, I just I roared out to get down to something that I had rent, there’s an alarm he’s under, under a cabin. And I don’t know why the alarm is coming from, he shouldn’t be there in the first place. And I let it roared, I probably cursed at him. And I probably said things that I shouldn’t have said too. But I walked out into down off the ladder, he jumps down and he came charging towards me, I think with something like, don’t do speak to me like that, or something like that. And with us, the crane, the outriggers on the crane started to lift. So the crane had actually lifted out, arrange and had and the riggers start to lift and the crane driver very quickly had to drop, the container has dropped the chains on the container. And the container smashed to the ground in front of us. So I stood with my mouth open, he stood with his mouth open. And you know, a lot of stuff happened in the aftermath of that. But I left that project that day, saying, I was never returned. Like I couldn’t take the weight of this on my shoulders. That’s when I realised that I actually cared. And I had a real passion for this because I honestly felt sick, didn’t sleep that night, just replay the whole thing in my head over and over again, the top guy could have died. So there was a real conflict there in my mind, because I knew I realised I was passionate about this, I frightened the life out of me, because of what could have happened. I didn’t ever want to be in that situation again. So I was never going back onto the project. But yet had I not walked around the corner and how to not call them and have not been focused, as he wasn’t, I don’t know what would have happened. And the next day, I got a phone call from his now wife. And we had a conversation about how he felt. And she was just thanking me, you know, she obviously realised what had happened and and said, Look, I know you said words yesterday or whatever. And, you know, you kind of saved this lifetime. And I was like, Yes, I did. And I now know that I need to I can’t not walk back to those gates. So walked back through the gates. And yeah, I have, I’ve always had, and I recount that story, you know, when things are kind of challenging, because in this role, you know, you tend to act as the conscience on the shoulders of your business. And that can be really hard, because you’re talking about knockbacks. Like, it can be really hard to influence change. And it can take a long time. And perseverance is a skill or a trait that we need to have in abundance or safety professionals. Because you’re not always going to get a yes. So it’s going to be difficult sometimes. Bush, I think back to that story about that guy on the crane, or on the on the A frame ladder and think what could have been? And it always spurs me in those moments where things can seem like it’s just not worth it. I remember that. And I go no, do you know what is actually worse? Because this is about people. And this is about doing what’s right for people. And you need to just keep on going.

Adam Clarke 18:16
On it’s about perseverance and communication. Because you’ve you’ve hit on as you come into more of a strategic roles. And then you’re looking at influencing change outside of you know, what, you know, is the right thing to do. It’s not as simple as you just saying to somebody. Yeah, we should do this now because it’s because of x, y and Zed. It’s how do you go through that that process? And how do you do you get to be comfortable with being knocked back when you don’t get what you want? First time?

Speaker 1 18:46
I don’t think you ever get comfortable with us. I genuinely don’t think you ever get comfortable with it. I think as you mature and you get older, your level of emotional intelligence increases. And that’s what helps you to deal with the setbacks. I mean, you can still and I do still get really pissed off because in my head I’m like, this is absolutely the right thing to do. Why can they not see that this is absolutely the right thing to do. How I am how we because I work with an amazing team in Jacobs and our global vice president Paul Hendry is is is brilliant at this, and brilliant at instilling in us as a health safety team. How do you demonstrate the return on investment? So it’s all about demonstrating that return on investment, knowing your numbers and being able to articulate to the business through through that return on investment, how it’s going to benefit the business. And a lot of the times we we know it’s the right thing to do because we’re a safety team. Well, we don’t always have the data to back it off, I suppose and Jacobs one example of that is through our to our mental health matters programme that we’ve been on a journey with, I should say since kind of stays 15 2016 When I suppose we’ve been talking about for a long time, right? To those and 50, when industry probably was talking about, and it was really important for us to try and get better investment in it, and we and we tried doing it there, this is the right thing to do. We were actually when you’re talking to senior business leaders, and you’re talking to them in an organisation the size of ours, there’s no what’s in it for me. So what’s in it for the business? So we’ve been on that journey with mental health within Jacobs for a long time. And, you know, we can delve into some of the kinds of initiatives that we’ve, we’ve come up with to get that return on investment, you know, we started off really small with a small cohort of, of positive mental health champions that we trained within the business. And it was kind of a grassroots swell from that, which allowed us then to go to leadership and say, look, the business actually really wants this. And here’s the evidence that they really want us to get to get more investment in that right through to launch and our 1 million lives platform, which is a digital platform to allow people to check in on their own mental health that we rolled out in in 2021, that’s given us is that data we spoke about to really demonstrate return on investment and make data driven decisions. And now we’re in a position where when we go to leadership, with ideas or with initiatives, or with a request for investment, we’re able to back it up with the data. And that’s really important in terms of influencing and perseverance. Now, look, I know there’ll be people listening that aren’t at that stage yet know, they’re still after we know, what’s the right thing to do. But having some form of of data to demonstrate how we can get that return on investment is absolutely vital, vital, to ensure it’s properly

Adam Clarke 21:54
Yeah, and like you said, you know, return on investment is, is critically important, and bridging that gap from people who are a subject matter expert, who are then, you know, having a little bit more responsibility in terms of putting pushing these programmes forward, and having to put together the business case for the for the first time. And using what’s data data’s available to them to be able to influence that implements that changes, you know, first of all, it’s difficult if you haven’t done it for the first time. And I think certainly I went when I had to do with the first I’ve had it quite intimidating, because, quite frankly, I was going outside of my outside of my comfort zone. And talk to me about mentors that you’ve had throughout your, throughout your career. So when you’re coming up with situations like this, when you were experiencing it for the first time, did you have the people around you in your network, who were able to support you or to be a sounding board for you.

Speaker 1 22:47
And from a leadership perspective, the most important thing, certainly the most important thing for me, but I you know, I think for most people, is your, the people that you have around you. Because your network is is absolutely vital. You’ve got to have people around you that you trust. And I have been so fortunate in my career to have had people around me to have mentors around me to have bosses that I’ve worked with through the years that have really supported me and supported my, my journey. I mean, you look at the life that I have now have three small kids, I’m trying to run a house and trying to build and maintain a career. And I wouldn’t be able to do that if it wasn’t for the people that I have around me right back to like I can I can I can name them. You know, I’ve worked with amazing people all throughout my career, There’s been loads of people in my life, who are still who I’d still be close to who I would still reach out from time to time, even though we’re not working the same companies or we’re not working the same projects would still reach out to from time to time your crew is everything you’re at the people that you have around you are everything on it’s it’s it’s vitally important. As a young person coming into the career into your career, it’s vitally important that you surround yourself with people that you trust, because you’ll meet lots of people along the way as well, who you won’t trust and, and who won’t have your best interests at heart. And again, that’s a maturity thing in in recognising who the people are that you can trust and that you don’t that you don’t trust you know.

Speaker 1 24:32
When you think about safety, and you think about the decisions people make, and you think about how they are influenced, it’s all about relationships. So if we know each other, Adam, are much more likely to tip you on the shoulder and go, What do you put your hand there for? You know, or you’re much more likely to say, are you okay today because you don’t seem yourself. But when we don’t have that built up relationship, which I think is has been a real victim of this hybrid work there is going through is not going to be there actually is there’s an impact on on safety now. And we can see it right across our industries. Because those relationships are all very contrived now. And they’re virtual. And it’s, it’s much more difficult to build up that trust where you can tip somebody on the shoulder. So it’s, I’m worried, I’m worried about hybrid work. And I’m worried about what this is going to lead to. And not just our industry, like everywhere, we know social isolation is is an issue. We know people get stuck in a rut now. I mean, I’m, at the moment stuck up here in my, in my office in my in my attic, do I think I should be going to the office more Absolutely. But sometimes I just don’t have the motivation. So I’m in this kind of hamster wheel of I really want to go to the office, I’m really craving that interaction people. But yet my backside is stuck to this chair, and I don’t actually have the motivation to go and iron clothes and sit in traffic for an hour. Do you know what I mean? The effort, the effort that it takes now. But I think as businesses, we have a responsibility to try and find a balance here with this hybrid work because particularly for younger, and our younger age demographic, and I know definitely something that we that we got out of the data was million lives was that we knew that I wanted 30 fives we’re struggling with social isolation, because they told us through data, we got unwomanly knives. And we were able to prioritise that that demographic coming back into the offices when when we recently started to open up our offices again after COVID. So I just think as businesses we have, we have a responsibility to look for a really balanced approach to this hybrid work and and sometimes the mandate is what we need so So like, if my organisation decided to mandate a Tuesday and Thursday, that would actually force me into having to I wouldn’t be a decision, like, that’s just what I would you admit it absolutely make it work. The benefits of that are just are just, you know, twofold. There’s, there’s organisational benefits, and there’s individual benefits. And I think, I think we need to get really serious as a business as an industry sorry, around this, this hybrid working model that we’ve all kind of fallen into.

Adam Clarke 27:16
No, I agree. And I’m also looking at it from the young person’s perspective, because typically, the people who are going to making will be making the decisions on what hybrid approach looks like. They’re not going to be the 1819, early 20s 20 year old. And they’re also unless they’ve got kids of a similar age, might not appreciate the impact on them. So we need to have their perspective into how does that work? Because young, like we mentioned already, young people are like, sponges, they do absorb, they absorb things. But if they’re only absorbing things when they’re on a team’s call from their bedroom, and they’re not, you know, in an environment where they’re listening, and they’re hearing and then and when they’ve got an issue, there’s someone there, they can just not have to go and see if the lights green on teams and pink being on a message, they can just casually say, hey, what about what about this?

Speaker 1 28:04
And we never like as an organisation we would we would never have made that decision about prioritising the under 30 fives had it not been for Oh ml. And the data we were getting back from like, we would have just assumed that the under 30 fives should look the ground or the ground. You know, they they come in when they want it, but actually as as a business saying, no, we want our own 30 fives back in our offices that kind of caused our staff to do their ears prick because they were like, oh, okay, they’re listening to us now. You know, they they’re doing something for us. And then they’re actually actively listening to us. So that was a really positive thing from an adult. Well,

Adam Clarke 28:42
let’s delve into that a bit a bit further than because we’ve talked about, you know, the sacrifice that comes occasionally from the responsibility that you have. But being able to influence change. And, you know, one meal house is a great example of a project that influences change. So totally, from your perspective, how did that end up from an idea to being, you know, really, really impactful for the organisation? And you know, the legacy? What will the legacy of it might might look like,

Speaker 1 29:11
this has been probably one of the most challenging and one of the most definitely one of the most rewarding projects that I have ever had the privilege to work on. And we knew we needed to do something very different as an organisation. In terms of proactive approach, we put in place a positive mental health champion network globally. But that was really reactive. It was it was reacting to the fact that we knew people were off to work. And anecdotally, we, we knew that a lot of people were off with stress or perceived stress. But either way, they were asked, they were after work. And we we had somebody on our own team who struggled with their mental health and being really honest, it was it was really frustrating because he would be really capable, really competent, able to do his job able to deliver, and then he just wouldn’t. And he disappear off Raider. And as a team, you’re kind of going off, take us off again. But actually, we had a choice to make around 2015 2016. And that was, do we get on the bus here? Do we get off? Do we? Do we stay still? And not do anything with this? Or do we try and deeply understand where he’s coming from. And that just opened up a whole new world for us as tea, though, at the time and the business to wellbeing. Piece sauce with us. And we were we were trying to understand it a little bit more. We were trying to get data at HR, we were trying to help the business make better decisions around the well being of our people. But really it was, it was dealing with this particular individual and understanding the frustrations that really caused us to sit up and go, Okay, we need to we need to do something different here. So we worked with him, we developed the positive mental health champion training, we started rolling it out. Across the business, people loved it. We had like within two months, we had a weakness to 400 people on the sweetness to be trained. They were lanyards in the offices because obviously this was before COVID, they were lanyards officers, we started to collect anecdotal evidence about some of the some of the issues that our staff are facing through the positive mental health champion network. But around that time, our global vice president Paul Hendry, he started to have this idea about wanting to do something a little bit more proactive. And at the time, he was having conversations with a psychologist called Peter Slocum, who works out of Perth, Western Australia. And between Paul and between Peter and between both their experiences, the the the idea of 1 million eyes was born. And what we really wanted to do was implement something really proactive that would help our staff primarily, and the business. So we launched the platform, obviously working with Peter, and based on the Kessler K 10 model, which is a model that doctors, some doctors will use. If you go in and say I’m not feeling great today. And I don’t really know what’s wrong. So it’s a series of questions, there’s a short check in and a longer check in. And which gives a full kind of analysis on your on your mental health. And, yeah, we launched it in 2020. And around the time of COVID, we probably would have been ready to launch it a little bit sooner at that. But we had to go through rigorous checks and balances with with legal from a GDP or an approved data privacy perspective. So this thing has all the belts and braces on from it, she or perspective, but we launched us and you know, it’s been amazing, watch this tape grow, we have been able to make some really data driven decisions as a business based on the data that we’re getting back from it. But I suppose we never, we never launched it formally. And we always taught look, we need to do a kind of a big launch of this thing. We also initially launched it for our own staff. But very quickly, we started to have a conversation about well, actually, if our staff are at home, with family members, friends that are really struggling with their mental health, that’s going to impact how they rock up to work. And it’s going to impact them as an employee to Jacobs. So we said, Well, why don’t we give it an Office for free to the family and friends of, of the people who work for us. And then that kind of developed into, look, we are a big, global corporate machine, we really need to give back to society. So let’s look at the cities and communities that we’re living in. And let’s offer this let’s make it open source. And it’s offered this out to anybody that can that can and wants to use it. So out with the data that we get from it. The feedback that we’ve had from this has been just, you know, stuff, getting your shocks type stuff. We’ve had people emailing us telling us that they’ve had conversations with their partner, for the first time in 25 years better mental health never had the language to have that conversation before and are now getting the help that they need. We have had some of our staff tell us that they are able to have conversations with their teenagers around suicide. Again, a really emotive, really difficult conversation takes a lot of bravery. But what this platform has done, and some of the other initiatives that we’ve built around us, what that’s done is given people the confidence to have discussions. We have a guy in the business who again had no language for how he was feeling, took a check in it showed that his he was he had poor mental health. He went to the doctor, he was diagnosed with severe depression. And he was off his work for two or three months getting the help that he needed. And he’s back now. And he’s really well, and he’s doing amazing. This is the proactive approach that we were looking for. We really wanted to do something in terms of a big form a large this, or we don’t think that this is something that we could solve on our own. Right? Although we are a massive company, and we have loads behind us and we’ve we’re behind us, and we’ve resources binders. We don’t think this is something that we could do on our own. So last summer, we came up with the concept of the world’s biggest mental health check in and this was what we really wanted to do was come together on one day, as an industry and even out with our industry. Anybody that wants to get involved in this was more than welcome to and stand down on the 10th of October, which is World Mental Health Day and take part of the world’s biggest virtual health check in and come together they did you know, I think we’d worked 40 organisations last year, who joined hands with us, we reached out and asked for anybody that had a similar type of mental health check in tool to offer it for free. This is never something that Jacobs will commercialise. So we reached out to our competitors, we, you know, and that was met by some of our competitors with kind of raised eyebrows initially because, you know, why would we work with you. And this was really about us coming together on the day. So yeah, it was it was an enormous success last year, and this year, we’re doing it again, but we want it to be bigger and better. And I’ve spent the last couple of weeks talking to organisations across all different kinds of industries. There’s a gigantic groundswell starting to start to bubble away on this thing. And I would urge any of your listeners who who want to get involved to reach out to me and we’ve done all the heavy lifting on this, so So although we’re hosting it, this is this is about us all coming together, we’ve done the heavy lifting on it, we have produced campaign materials, it’s ready just to drop into your organisation, or indeed complements what you’ve already got in play. But yeah, let’s let’s all just try and get together and do something really special on the 10th of October because we have an opportunity on that day to kind of take a step back

Adam Clarke 37:29
last question then for me, then it is anybody who is considering getting into engineering construction or or safety, what would you encourage them to join? What what is it that as a as a career it can offer them,

Speaker 1 37:44
I think you get to be part of, of a lasting legacy. Like you, you look at some of the unbelievable projects that Jacobs work on around the world, particularly in our say Life Sciences, part of the business where you get to be involved in the design, construction, maintenance of some of these unbelievable pharmaceutical projects and plants around the world that you know, develop, manufacture drugs to save people’s lives, you know, or we will project out in Saudi at the moment neon the line, which is an absolute phenomenal programme to be involved with. So, you know, and from a safety perspective, it’s that whole scam back to the whole you can change people’s lives. Like we say this every day in Jacobs, we save lives. We save lives, whether it’s through our our policies and procedures that we have and people are working for us, whether it’s through our well being and mental health programme, but we are actually influencing how people are living and we are influencing how people go home. And now we’re also starting to influence how they’re coming back into work because we will we really want to get it is it’s not good enough to say we just want people to go home same way they come in, we want them to go home healthier and better mentally physically, whatever we need to do we need that progress now. You know, I don’t I just don’t think we can rest on our laurels anymore. We need we need people that are mentally and physically fitter and better working for us and contributing to society and trying to save the planet. No pressure

Adam Clarke 39:23
no pressure and and that’s it, isn’t it you know, the world is just evolving so fast, so much faster than ever, ever has and keeping on top of that needs people who are have better mental fitness. You know, I really like that that mental fitness because we think about physical fitness you know I can go and go and do reps with some dumbbells and I can build myself up and you can start to see that I’m physically fit a lot harder to check on your your mental, you know, and but we need to we still need to do it. reps we need to build, we need to start small and build and build up. And that’s I’m absolutely with you. I think that’s a great reason to get in and and help that movement help push it forward. Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your incredibly busy, busy schedule to talk to me today. You know, I hope the listeners get a lot out of this, please check out 1 million lives and and spread the message. Your mental health is just so important to everybody. And that’s, you know, duty to do is to get out there and do as much as we can to help support everybody, because we all have we all have issues and a lot of the issues we share. We just need to be better at talking about it with each other.

Unknown Speaker 40:40
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Millie and Adam,

Adam Clarke 40:42
thank you. Thanks so much for listening to risk sleep repeat, if you’d like to appear on the show. If there’s a topic you’d like to discuss, or if you want to let us know your thoughts, please do so using the hashtag brisk sleep repeat or get in touch via our website at praxis42.com