E004: Balancing Leadership, Innovation, and Care

Mark McBride-Wright 0:01
Phil, welcome to a new podcast episode of the safe leader. I’m delighted to be joined today by Phil Clark, who is head of health and safety at care UK, seeking a new challenge in the army, after 12 years in the Intelligence Corps, Phil fell into the environmental health practitioner role in the Royal Army Medical Corps after retiring from the army after 19 years, Phil focused on the health and safety pillar of environmental health, and worked for 10 years in private health and social care as the head of health and safety, with his role also encompassing environment sustainability, food safety, fire safety, quality and business continuity planning. Phil followed an opportunity to work outside the health and social care sector in construction and facilities management, before returning to the health and social care sector as head of health and safety at care UK, one of the largest providers of residential care in Britain, with over 160 care homes supporting over 8000 residents, Phil is now on his PhD journey researching how he can Enable and encourage operational colleagues to carry out risk assessments before and whilst carrying out their work at Sunderland University on their professional doctorate program. Phil, delighted to have you here today. How you doing? Hello

Phil Clarke 1:37
there. Mark, yeah, I’m doing doing really fine. It’s as a recording this. It’s coming toward the end of an extremely busy week, made very busy because I’m now on leave. So it’s all that mad rush to get things done before you attempt to turn off your phone, attempt to turn off your emails and make

Mark McBride-Wright 1:56
sure you do. Make sure you do, although I’d be a hypocrite to say that I do when you know, when you run your own business, something, there’s some things that you can’t do but, but I do genuinely try and do that now properly, and it’s just a skill, you know, it’s something we really have to role model as leaders and practice and and I admire you making Your life even busier with now pursuing a PhD. Well,

Phil Clarke 2:23
you know, I’ve got to, got to do something in my spare time. It used to be playing probably too much World of Warcraft and too much Middle Earth strategy, battle game, if people want to Google that, but perhaps still do a bit of that. But a lot of my focus now my spare time is, is my research and and it’s incredible. I’ve been on that journey a year now. Okay, almost everything I see in the news or do at work or just observe, I’m thinking, I wonder if I can put that in my PhD. I wonder if I could reference that book, that article, not necessarily learned articles and peer reviewed articles, but an article I see they’re going to reveal. The newspapers I read The Telegraph, or the times, or the Guardian as well. I read that. So

Mark McBride-Wright 3:07
you’re basically becoming a researcher. So you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re going to move into academia at some point. No, no, no, no, no,

Phil Clarke 3:17
no, no. I had an opportunity a few years ago to move into academia as a lecturer. But I thought, No, I like, I like the operational aspects of moral far too much. To me, it is trying to balance the two, trying to get that because I think sometimes it’s easy. I’m gonna use a bit of a cliche now, do forgive me. You can scrub it out of the recording. But it’s very easy as a senior leader or as a head of health and safety, direct health safety, whatever title you’ve got to sit in your ivory tower and dictate and say what’s going Yeah. And I think that’s probably quite an easy trap to fall into in academia. I think it’s important to marry the two things. I think the important thing to me is having that academic lens to look at what I’m doing my professional practice, but also have that operational lens when I’m looking at my academic research, there is a massive scope for purely operational people, for ops people who couldn’t exist in any of our roles, and any any jobs that you may have done in the past, and I’ve done Without good operators, and we do need the people who research for the sake of research, not necessarily being able to monetize their research. Yeah, so it’s important we get that aspect. But I like to be in that what I think I’m now in the sweet spot, in between the two operational, pragmatic side and that academic side, from still going on that journey. It’s part time. People take five to six years to do it. I’ve only done one year. So we’ll see. Well, see, I don’t want to move it. I love where I work. It’s,

Mark McBride-Wright 4:50
I totally, I know what you mean. It’s, it’s, I was on a call leaving this morning, actually, with talking to an academic, and I. Yeah, you know, they had moved back to the university that they worked at, that they’re now working at from having been in industry. And we, we shared together some perspectives of, you know, if you just stay in academia and you haven’t done any time out in industry, I think it’s really, really valuable if you have spent some time to then come back to the academic setting, because you’ve then got context of the work environments that the students that you’re teaching, where the majority of them are going to then end up be, you know, not everyone’s going to do a PhD or stay, stay working in the university, you know, so it’s, it’s good for academics. I always find with the engineering students that we work with equal engineers, their gateway, their perception of what engineering is like beyond the time that they’ll be at the institution, it’s a little bit skewed. If a lot of it’s, it’s through the lens of the academics, because they’re, they’re the they’re the elders, they’re the superiors that have done the degree, potentially that the students are then they’re being educated to get and so if you’ve got a composition of your academic, academia, academic team, that don’t have that, then that’s where there’s a bit of, a bit of a disconnect. So you, I mean, you’ve got a wealth of experience in health, safety and environmental management across multiple sectors. If we, we just wind back a bit, then what? What first drew you to a career in in this space?

Phil Clarke 6:37
It’s a health and safety joke. So you want. I don’t expect to laugh, but I fell into it. I’ve spent, I’ve spent about thank you for laughing. I appreciate that. I spent, spent 12 years in the Intelligence Corps, and mostly on the intelligence side of things in the intelligence called is intelligence and security, that the two aspects of that, and while it’s interesting, it’s not something I felt I wanted to do for the rest of my life, that it’s not a path I wanted to follow. And so I thought, right, I need to do something in the army. I did tie with leaving the Army, I’d already completed a degree in history through the Open University, which is a magnificent institution. I just wish they’d had facilitated my professional doctorate journey. But so I did explore being a history teacher in a secondary school, but I spent a few days in a local secondary school and thought, You know what? It’s probably not really me, not for you. So I made a I made a list of jobs in the military which I could transfer to that civilian qualification and direct experience and relevance to civilian jobs. And identified three environmental health technician in the medical corps, surveyor in the Royal Engineers and a pharmacy technician in the medical corps. Many years ago, before I joined the army, I was an engineer, but it was a shop floor engineer, a semi skilled sheet metal worker, so got bit of metal bashing, welding and things like

Mark McBride-Wright 8:20
that, which are quite enjoyed to be perfect. Well, they’re highly sought after skills. Now

Phil Clarke 8:26
it’s quite a few years since I did that. It’s moved on a little bit, but I suppose the concept in welding is still very much the same, isn’t it? And initially I was going to join the army in the Royal Engineers as a surveyor, but was that towards the tail end of the Cold War, and there was still this. There are other ways you can serve your country, sort of thing. So I ended up in the intelligence core, and I looked to this when the courses were starting and environmental health was starting first, and I thought, Ah, I don’t really know much about environmental health, but it looks okay. Let’s see if I can get on to that next course. But it wasn’t looking likely, because it was only just after Christmas. It was going Christmas. It was going to start. This was just before Christmas. But long story short, I ended up, a few days later, sat in a classroom with lots of people a bit younger than me, brilliant, and I just really, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed learning. I’ve always enjoyed learning and developing, but I suppose, moving into environmental health profession, it sort of codified that, CPD, what irrespective. And so I did that for about seven or eight years, until I had an opportunity to retire, I suppose, and I ended up in the health and safety side of it. So environmental health got five pillars, health and safety, food safety, environmental protection, Disease Control, or public health and housing, and maybe a bit mercenary, but I saw health and safety jobs paid more than environmental health officer roles. So. So I’m an eho, but I’ve never worked in a local authority Environmental Health Office, which is where most people have an interaction with an eho. Can’t you look at it from the food safety side or the environment protection side? Can you just talk

Mark McBride-Wright 10:13
to us a little bit about that transition there now, of serving and then moving into civilian life, civil life?

Phil Clarke 10:22
My my transition from soldier to civilian, I found it extremely easy, and I think it’s got a lot to the jobs I did in the intelligence court. It’s very, very small units, very highly specialist. The jobs I was doing, particularly for the last six or seven years, the vetting that I had was the highest that the UK had to offer at the time, right? So there’s very few of us, and so I wasn’t really involved in what people might see as the regimental system that you might see marching up and down or and I was, you know, combat service support or combat support, whatever the phrase they use these days. So I wasn’t a soldier, soldier, yeah, on the battlefield, I was there supporting the soldiers, supporting the the leaders. And then when I transferred environmental, again, very similar. There was only 70, I think 76 or 72 of us in the in the military. Okay, so again, really small trade operating, really small teams half the time you’re in your city clothes. Anyway, my last four or five years, I live in my own house. Okay, I got you. I didn’t have that issue that many, many soldiers do have in that they’re very regimented. Yes, they’re used to living within the system, yeah, but many people, unfortunately, do find it quite difficult about

Mark McBride-Wright 11:42
transition. But yeah, when you’ve been brought up from a young age as well, sometimes trained up and well, in order to be able to operate in such environments that you may be sent to, you kind of have to be malleable to then become have that mindset. And then when time has then been served, and then you’re exiting from that system, that’s where the challenges then come in, transitioning in. I mean, even, even the language is different. You know, being in a hierarchical I can always tell when you get an email from someone if they’re if you know if they’ve served, or if they’re very recently out, because it’s there’s a very fixed way of thinking, of structuring things, and you know the I always when I when I set up equal engineers, and we were looking at different diversity groups and different sources where there may be talent potential to then bring into an industry that needs it. I remember when I first sort of discovered veterans and having and being made aware of the fact that they, some have challenges transitioning into civilian life. I I found that. I found it surprising that, you know, some employers would like why they wouldn’t be snapped up. Because, you know, that commitment, that dedication, that focus, the trust, you know, I think there’s much more we could do in that, in that space. Yeah,

Phil Clarke 13:16
I suppose I’m possibly a bit of an unlikely soldier with perhaps more lighter vocal, be vocal about my opinions, but I’m not a big fan of the this veteran hood. No, I’ll take all the discounts and freebies I can get as a veteran. Okay, my fourth is discount rail card, and I’ve got the defense discounts and some really good discounts involved in that, but to me and that, perhaps that’s why I found the transition very easy. I’ll never saw it as a job. I was being paid to do a job. Yes, I knew the risks involved, but I only saw it as a job,

Mark McBride-Wright 13:53
interesting rather than a way of life. It wasn’t it wasn’t your identity. No,

Phil Clarke 13:59
no. It is very much part of my identity of who I am today. I can’t dismiss that 20 years or whatever. Of course, this of not shaping me. But it’s not, it’s not 100% like some people. They’re still, they’re still the way the regimental blazer and the regimental cap badge on the blazer and the regimental tie and things like that. I tend to use it when it helps, right? And also, I must admit that when I have been recruiting, if anybody’s been ex military, I’ve generally given them more time to look over the CVS and perhaps find ways of offering them interviews, knowing that a lot of soldiers said earlier, found that difficult using that language and many, many employers these days, don’t I don’t have that military understanding and background. You know, I’m in my I’m still in my early 50s, until few weeks time when I’m in my mid 50s. But I grew up in. Time when there was 155,000 people in the British Army, yeah, many people, especially senior positions, who had served in the Second World War. Yeah. So most people knew somebody who’d been in the army or was serving in the Army or the Navy or the Air Force, yeah. But nowadays, there’s What about 70,000 soldiers, and perhaps not more than 120 service personnel altogether. Yeah. It’s been a long time since it was conscription, national service and major wars like the Second World War, yeah. So I don’t think there’s as many people today understand that military side of things true. So I suppose you know, obviously I’ve got your book in front of me, plug for your plug for your book.

Mark McBride-Wright 15:45
Fantastic as a signed one, you did for me as well. Oh, yeah, into the book, the book, yeah,

Phil Clarke 15:51
and it’s, you know, is it is being a veteran, one of those characteristics or or not, I suppose. And when you’re looking at diversity with an organization, when you’re in the army, everyone’s all those feet civilians work with you, but perhaps sometimes you don’t have that diversity of people, which diversity of thoughts, because you’re all from a very similar background. Yeah. Well, maybe it’s just the way you use that influence to guide you and use those experiences when you make decisions, when you make assessments. Yeah,

Mark McBride-Wright 16:23
so how? So you’ve, you’ve, you’re now pursuing your PhD, and I’d love to, like, dig more into that, but to bring us up to that point in chronology, can you just talk us through? Then, what through? Through? You know, what brought you to be head of health and safety at care UK, you know, that sounds like such a broad and interesting remit, especially in light of the fact that we’ve had a global pandemic within, you know, this decade. Can you just talk us through, through some of that, that experience,

Phil Clarke 17:01
I suppose when I when I left, when I left the military, I got myself. In fact, I went to university full time for a year to do my Masters, because my environmental health and my history degree there were open university and within the Army. So I wanted to experience life as a full time student, which perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps a slightly different experience age 40, than than perhaps yourself or others who may be listening or watching this, who went to university 18 or 19, and I had a couple of interim jobs, I still really wasn’t 100% sure What I was going to do, not really sure what industry I was going to work in. And I saw this advert for for Nuffield health, and I thought, Oh, I’ve heard of the term field before. It turns out that Nuffield gave, gave their name to lots and lots of organizations, some military connected, some in Oxford University about medical research and things, yes, yeah. And it turns out Hill College, yeah, a nursing home in Bournemouth that morphed into a hospital and leisure center or well being center organization, largest health care charity in the UK. And I’ve never worked in private health care before. I’ve never worked in hospitals before. Never worked in the gym center, gyms, gyms either. But I thought, you know, it sounds interesting, a country wide job. So I applied for it, got the job. The person who gave me the interview, the recruiting director, he was ex military as well. So I think you know that perhaps that Military Connection helped in the ex military and I covered the hospitals, the 31 hospitals we had at the time. That was my remit, and I really enjoyed it. And it was there was a reorganization, and so my director had been were in quite a large department, and so the health and safety bit was hived off, and they created a head of health and safety role, which I was in pointed interim. And to be honest, until that time, I was happy doing what I was doing, the lead for the hospital division. But, you know, happy that there was a director above me. So I hadn’t really thought I want to be a head of health and safety, Director for Health and Safety, whatever term you want to use, and I quite liked it. So when the job was advertised, I thought, I want the job, and successfully got it. And yeah, the rest of say is history.

Mark McBride-Wright 19:39
So how did that so that? So you said, Nuffield. And then did that become care UK, or did you No,

Phil Clarke 19:45
no, no, no, there was another, another reorganization. So I had an opportunity to move, and I thought I’d been there nine years, and thought, You know what, it’s probably about time for me to achieve some. Indifferent. I was thinking I go outside the healthcare industry, but I ended up as a temporary job with another hospital group called Aspen healthcare, right? And slightly different, because it’s a smaller organization, my reported direct to the chief executive, which was not something I’ve done done beforehand. Yeah, that was new for you. It was new for me. And I really enjoyed, enjoyed that. And then say that was a sort of, very much an interim type role, and then they had an opportunity to go and work for mace, which is a large construction focus, yes, and I worked in the FM side of things, facilities management got you, and I? I’ve got to say I really liked working at mace.

Mark McBride-Wright 20:46
I’ve heard positive things about as an employer. Yeah,

Phil Clarke 20:49
really good, really good organization to work for. Maybe because the people who set it up were still involved in the ownership and the ruin of it. That’s why it’s a more long term outlook. I don’t know. I’m just guessing. I really, really enjoyed it, the people I work with over 20 odd different countries, and looking at different jurisdictions and how safe is in other places. However, I I thought being head of health and safety in the healthcare I’m not going to become head of health and safety in big construction company that was a social director level. You know what? I realized, I miss being the head of health and safety, right, right, right. Miss being the decision maker. I miss making those decisions. Yes, my line manager was a really awesome person to work for who, yeah, you know, supported my decision. So I have, you know, you know, on paper is all really good, but I knew there was somebody above me in the organization, yeah. And so when I saw this opportunity at care UK, I thought, You know what? It’s a head of health and safety job. I can do that. Fantastic. And as part of the recruitment, I’ll still let me know whether should leave mace, because it was a really good company to work for. But then second round, I went to one of one of our care homes, and I met Regional Director, and to me that sold it. It was being in the care home. I thought, this is, this is an amazing place to be. And the the enthusiasm for the regional director was absolutely super valuable, infectious. Yeah, yeah. And I thought literally within seconds of meeting them, it was, I really want to work for work with you, support you. I really want to work in the in the care in the care sector, fantastic. And I love it.

Mark McBride-Wright 22:35
Fantastic, fantastic. So what, um, I mean taking the care sector as as a sector with similar challenges to engineering in the sense of recruitment, lack of people, you know, weight waning interest in coming into it as a profession, or a lack of understanding around all The diversity of opportunities that are available within it. How do you find challenges within care? UK, with recruitment, is that a sector wide thing like, what’s your sort of opinion on on this stuff?

Phil Clarke 23:13
It’s, it’s a sector wide issue is attracting people to work in the care sector. It’s a relatively low paid job, working as a carer, working as a housekeeper, working in the in the kitchens. It is difficult to recruit and be too controversial, but perhaps Brexit and recent within the UK, changes in immigration rules

Mark McBride-Wright 23:44
has affected, yeah, you know, perhaps it

Phil Clarke 23:49
may, may may. With the new government, there may be changes, there may be changes, but I think it’s, it’s not a job that everybody can do, working, working with working with residents, as predominantly elderly people, but the care sector also encompasses adults with with mental or physical health conditions who need that Support, yeah, but it’s not. It’s not for everybody. And

Phil Clarke 24:23
I’m not so sure I like talking with the residents, talking with their families.

Phil Clarke 24:31
I’m just in awe of the way that our carers care for careful, yeah, for the residents. It’s just, you know, it’s that compassion that love the show towards a resident. Yeah, to me, that’s that’s a unique skill that I think we do very well in nurturing that many. And it is difficult to recruit people, to recruit people. How

Mark McBride-Wright 24:54
do you find then? So with, with, you know, the safe leader framework that I’ve. Created. I’m trying to, I think even at the book launch, actually someone asked the question, or maybe it was another session I was at. I got asked the I’ve been asked it twice, and so it’s made me think about, is it a linear process? Do you have to start its share and end at Empower? And we’ve now actually got some visuals where it’s actually a more circular process, and where you come into it, and then you might leave it, but then you always have to come back to it, because we’re always learning. We always need to be doing work on ourselves, but also learning about others. And even today, we’ve redesigned the graphic to have sort of like a little person at the center of a circle. And then the circles like a target diagram, where each quadrant is S, A, F, E, and it made me think, well, we should be at the middle, at the heart of it, you know. And then the tone there, when we were talking about the workforce in the care sector, of it being hard and challenging, but for those who love it, it’s, it’s very, very rewarding and and maybe for them, it doesn’t like the way you felt doing environmental health, where it didn’t feel like a job, or you treated it like a job, but it felt, you know, it felt like you were there. You know, how, how do we create that uplift, that empowerment. Are the are there? Because I can imagine it can be a sector where it can be quite, yeah, they’re capable, like any sector in life. There’s ups and downs, you know. But I can imagine it can be very, very challenging. So how do you maintain staff morale, maintain that fun, that joy, the when, when they are a stretched workforce, it is a bit it can be a very stressful environment. And you know, mental health, ill health rates within the care sector I’ve read are quite high as well. So how do you create that fun in the world. I

Phil Clarke 27:02
look from it, through that vision, from from for my core role and health and safety, is that, what, what part can I do in that, in that developing those, developing our workforce, and to me, it’s, it’s having trust in them to do the right thing, but giving them the support, the training, education, the awareness and giving them confidence to do things and link to the PhD that I’m the area of research in at The moment is, is, how can we empower people to do things? And for me to help empower people to make risk a sense. When they’re lifting a resident or or the the alarms go off, and it’s how they react to it, to keep the residents safe. And I think by by having trust in your in in your colleagues and and there’s some things that have been involved in so we have a colleague voices, where colleagues from the homes can speak with with, with leaders within the business to to give feedback and to show that we we do listen, and we do very much take into account what, what our operational staff and our operational colleagues are doing, because, to me, it’s very much focused about our operational teams and supporting them, because they’re the people that are providing the care or getting a wider perspective there that the phrase perhaps seen recently that we don’t use coal anymore for our power abuse, to use the When the phrases come out of use, people at the coal face, younger people might not understand that too. Maybe people

Mark McBride-Wright 28:48
at the wind turbine face. We’re gonna have

Phil Clarke 28:52
to change our terminology as

Mark McBride-Wright 28:54
we found that, like, language evolves, language, language, yeah, language grows, but

Phil Clarke 29:01
I’ve always found language is really important. No matter where I’ve worked, I’ve always to myself. I’ve thought, I don’t talk to people. I don’t talk at people, I talk with people. Yeah, and when you’re a specialist or a leader, it’s it’s very easy to think you’re talking to people. They’re hanging on everywhere, because you’re giving instruction, command or whatever. And I think where I work, and I’ve been very fortunate, where I’ve worked in the past, is very much you’re talking with people, yeah, and, you know, another cliches and stuff, people go on the journey with you because they under they know that you actually, genuinely do care. Yeah, it’s not just paying lip service to some things. I think that really helps as well, and it’s also celebrating people.

Mark McBride-Wright 29:49
But even as a leader, it’s nice when you can build that relationship with people. I mean, obviously people do look to you to lead and be. Led, because that’s the role you’re in. But sometimes I can feel, I’ve felt sometimes when I’m I’m in that role, and I’m reading the room, and that’s the energy of the room. But actually, I want to be supported with input, and it’d be a collective thing that we’re working on to try and problem solve. And rather than, you know, a bunch of people looking to me for the answers and don’t have the answers, well, I want us to try and create the answers together like I’ve kind of done what I think I can do to, I mean unknown territory. Now, I’ve got no reference points for where this opportunity or problem or whatever might go you know, and

Phil Clarke 30:42
but isn’t that part of being a leader is that you don’t know the answer every question, but you can go back to look at what you’ve done in the past and how you’ve come to decisions, yeah, and use those lessons that you’ve learned. But I think also it’s about having a having a good network. You’ve got your work network, your formal network. I’m very fortunate that my contemporaries and people I work for are very open to discussion and got a very open, open, open style, yeah. But it’s also the informal networks you build up within a workplace as well. And I’m very much and I was taught this as I was progressing from from from a safety and standards Assurance Manager to a head of health and safe days that, yes, you’ve got your formal structures in place in your work, but as a leader, is important to have informal structures in place as well. So yes, I was taught this concept of having a work friend, okay, somebody who’s on a similar sort of and use military, similar sort of rank to you, similar sort of level within the organization, but they’re not in your direct chain of command. They’re in a different department, yeah, but being able to talk with them, discuss things with them, you know, no judgment, because you’re what you’re doing has, obviously has impact, because all the business is very much interlinked, good business, but you’re not part of that direct link. Yeah, good to be able to, yeah, have that different perspective as well. And I’ve, you know, I’ve just, I’ve just thought of something that’s coming to mind now is when there’s your book launch that was at, is it Arup? Was it? Yes, yeah, yeah. Arup in London, yeah. It was James pomeri was saying, you know, having these different perspectives. And he was saying that the PPE we’re wearing and lots of the ways we work in and the way we do things were developed 3040, years ago by a very similar group, white, male, middle aged. So they saw it through that lens, yes, and it’s that’s that’s just come to me thinking, I whenever I’ve got an issue or just want to talk, to talk through something, my work friend is looking through a health and safety lens. They’re looking through another lens from one department. Yeah, it gives me a different perspective. Absolutely so. And these things sometimes you need somebody to say that you don’t realize that perhaps you’ve been working that way in that Yeah,

Mark McBride-Wright 33:14
totally. And that’s partially learning, and you doing your research as well, you’ll start to make cross connections of experiences you’ve had in your life, either through attending a talk, and you’ll realize that you’ve actually been applying the theory of that practice already. You just haven’t had a name for it, or realized there is what has been described. And I guess part of the challenge is for those who are not doing it to encourage, encourage people to it’s the whole classic, diversity doesn’t come naturally. We have to proactively seek it in order to enrich our in our frame of reference, because we do surround ourselves by people who look like us, sound like us, or are from our communities,

Phil Clarke 34:02
going going back to my early military days, it was very much white. I was in one of the few jobs where there was the lower and medium levels. There was a very healthy mix of male and female, but there was very, very few different colored faces. Yeah, people were mostly from a Christian sort of background. Been an atheist for as long as I can remember, but you still brought up in that sort of manner from

Mark McBride-Wright 34:30
the similar so, yeah,

Phil Clarke 34:32
and in when I was in the in the military for my first half of the career, being gay was, was, was a criminal act being in the military. So, you know, you almost been anti diverse, and almost encouraged not to, not to not have a diversity of thought, in particular because of the nature of work I was doing, it was very difficult for people from overseas to you. Have that history where they could be vetted and interviewed people about the past. So there’s self selecting barriers you put in place, but there’s barriers that other people put in place, but naturally the way you brought up as well.

Mark McBride-Wright 35:15
And I guess on that in the military, you know, there’s been a movement in the last decade to really shift. You know, actually, I was at the Stonewall workplace conference in I think it was two, I don’t know it was either 2015 or 16, when whoever was head of the ministry defense at the time, Ruth Hunt was the CEO at Stonewall, and it was the they did a public apology for, well, it was for how Alan Turing had been treated. So they sort of issued a formal apology to his family and and what have you. But no, when I worked in, I used to work in a government services business unit within and a lot of the people in there had had served. And because the company had a lot of government contracts, you know, it was, it was actually a really good source of recruitment, bringing former veterans into the business. And so I met people in there who hadn’t been out, you know, throughout the 1980s and 70s, 80s, 90s, um, in fact, wasn’t it this year that it was a landmark anniversary since the five years? Yeah, 25 years, when, when you’re it got, it got challenged in the court and in the European

Phil Clarke 36:37
Court. So I remember, not long before the the announcement that all these reminders came out that it’s been homosexuals incompatible with service life, and then, yeah, luckily, the the powers that be in the military, they embrace the decision

Mark McBride-Wright 36:56
very, very quickly. So it shows you how much that’s fed into the psyche of the country, because, you know, I mean, I was growing up knowing that in that decade, in the 90s, knowing that I was different, but not knowing what it was, you know, and so, and I remember, re looking back on it now, like quite homophobic stuff In the papers, in in on billboards, you know, and in everything. And I only now look back on it, doing the work that I do now, understanding the historical context of what was happening at the time, you know, Section 28 being repealed, the new labor government coming in, and a wave of equalities legislation then coming forward in the next decade. And for me, you know, I met Sam, my now husband, when I was 17 at uni in 2005 and that was, I remember. I remember being Imperial. I don’t know what game we’re playing, like a drinking game, you know, but we had the TV on for some reason, and BBC News came up with Cherie Blair celebrating a reception at Town 10 Downing Street for the civil partnership act 2005 and I was like, wow, wow. I was so disconnected to what was happening in terms of equality, progress, social justice movements, completely ignorant to what obviously was going through, so much so that even a year prior to that, when I was at school in my final year and I was studying French, I remember learning about this lupax. It’s called in France, and it’s essentially an arrangement that they had where, if you were a couple, you could get some sort of recognition or some sort of legal protection statement. I remember thinking, what I’m going to have to move away from the United Kingdom if I ever want that sort of that sort of protection. But then, since then, things have just gradually, I appreciate. Recently there’s been a, you know, things have gone backwards. But for a good 2005 to 2015 there was a good run of 10 years. It just lots of progress on on LGBT, LGB, at least progress, you know, and, and, yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting older now as well. So social justice movements go round in circles. Don’t need

Phil Clarke 39:33
it in common. We’ve got pendulum in common. Mark I got my spouse at university as well. Ah, Open University summer school, my now wife, many, many years, was met at university. Yeah,

Mark McBride-Wright 39:48
fabulous, fabulous. Well, meet on apps these days, don’t they? They do? They do. I saw, I saw a. All data visualization, graphic on LinkedIn. And it was saying about it showed you where people met in the 19 well, it went back to, like, the 1920s Did you see it? And it was timeline. It went really, really fast. And then online appeared in the like the 90s. I think it came up, maybe it was later than that, and then it went up to, you know, I don’t know, something like 60% of all people meet online

Phil Clarke 40:35
progress. And you think I live through that time when you’re going back to, we’ll talk about earlier, about earlier, about homosexuality being incompatible with service life? No, it’s not considered an issue whatsoever, as far as I’m as far as I’m aware, that’s only 25 years ago. Yeah, and yes, that’s, you know, that’s only one generation. And you and you look at this so much change and and I think looking at my profession. Now we’re on the cusp, but another big change with as AI is coming into place. I’m going to be hopefully living through another major change. And, you know, another 25 years time, hopefully

Mark McBride-Wright 41:11
fascinating to think. What crap? Well,

Phil Clarke 41:15
you know, the Cold War was still in existence when I was at school. That proved a bit older than you. And you just think, I’m gonna bit, sir, we talked about things going round in loops, but, you know, there’s perhaps another Cold War at the moment, but that’s, I hope not, yeah, but it just looking back, there’s so much has changed, but another important anniversary, because I love safety, so I’m going to bring everything back to health and safety. It’s a 40th anniversary of the enactment of health, safety, work, etc. 1974

Mark McBride-Wright 41:43
such a good point. Yes, 1974

Phil Clarke 41:47
and so what? 5050? I can’t count, yeah.

Mark McBride-Wright 41:51
Level has health and seeks. The executive been doing anything to celebrate, or

Phil Clarke 41:56
I can hear a few bits and bobs. But it was an act that came in in 74 and the first, the first chapter reading your book is your chapter on the history of health and safety, factory action stuff,

Mark McBride-Wright 42:11
yeah, movements and all that 10 hour movement and movements

Phil Clarke 42:15
and all the, you know, the trade unions and their influence on that. But it came in slowly, over two or three years part. It didn’t all suddenly start in in 1974 75 and 76 various bits and bobs came in. But no, it seems to have stood the test of time. It’s still very much. Where do

Mark McBride-Wright 42:37
you think we’ll be going then in this future? What are the challenges and opportunities for health and safety professionals and for the profession in general? How do you think the profession is going to evolve health and safety?

Phil Clarke 42:50
I was actually looking at looking at this, and I’ve got a few points, maybe, is that there’s a perception that here in Britain, we’re very much moving, we’ve moved away from being a manufacturing country. We’re very much a service based economy. However, we’re still, I think, that six or seventh largest manufacturing country in the world. Wow, surprised me, but, yeah, but, but we still have a lot of manufacturing here in in Britain, so we still have those hazards that people have got to face. And ultimately, people have to be protected. Work with mitigations put in place to keep people safe. And to me, still all going to boil down to, oh, this is seamless. Bringing it back to my research, bringing you back to the risk assessment. It’s just that different mitigations and different hazards may be emerging. So you’ve got the Nano technologies. How’s that going to impact? You’ve got the AI. How is that going to impact, if you’re if something goes wrong, can you take AI to court?

Mark McBride-Wright 43:52
Oh, yeah, I don’t know. Wow, yeah. Will there be virtual court cases in the future, or remember,

Phil Clarke 44:03
we still just spark the matrix anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Just get reset every now then.

Mark McBride-Wright 44:09
That’s fascinating. That’s fascinating.

Phil Clarke 44:11
And there’s always, always developments coming on. So the the increase in robotics, so you can, when you’re looking at health and safety of that hierarchy controls, and the first one is, can you eliminate the hazard. You know, we’ve done a lot of that, so we’ve got less hazardous paint, for example, less hazardous processes. You’ve almost eliminated that. But can you put in engineering controls? Let’s let the robots, let the machines do the job. You’re protect against your barriers. You’ve got your barriers between the hazardous the sharp point, yeah, sharp pointy bit making the product. And I think if you look at the way our society is developed, we always there’s a fear that the robots and AI is going to take over everybody’s jobs. And you shouldn’t just stand on your laurels and think it’s always going to be the same. Same, but society does seem to develop to the new technologies, the new Yeah, new jobs come up, new requirements, yeah, so there’s always going to be that. So it’s just, how can we as safety professionals be flexible and adapt to that? I work in industry where it’s person centered care, so you’re always going to need people to provide that care. How the population is aging, so perhaps that’s a growth sector in the future, people to jobs in this you know, and how much are we going to get more leisure time. So opportunities there, yeah, well being kind of a warm well, because it’s important that, you know, some people are very critical of the role of mental health and well being within health and safety, I see very much that it’s part and parcel of safety in that if someone’s tired or distracted, whether it be because they’ve got stresses at work, stresses at home, stresses in society, what’s happening in the news? Yeah, and then they’re having to make decisions, yeah, totally distracted because they’ve got poor well being, poor mental health that results in a safety incident. So yeah, I

Mark McBride-Wright 46:19
remember being at a conference last year, and that’s been a topic of conversation. And I was like, What is this even a thing? People are questioning, like, the placing these two aspects together. I’m like, oh, you know, it’s amazing. The amount of things in life sometimes that you waste energy gets wasted on, like, considering if that should be a thing like to be that obvious should be a thing, and therefore we should focus on how best to support the double focus and align in the two, you know.

Phil Clarke 46:49
But perhaps it goes back to language. And language, to me, said earlier, is really important the language you use. It’s to make people feel inclusive and to not put any barriers in the way. And whether it’s, I suppose, public things like in cricket, they’re no longer called batsmen and bats, women just called batters. No issues with that, but it makes things more inclusive, yeah, but it’s the language you use and the terminology we’re using. And I’ve just realized I’ve forgotten the point I was going to make before I use that example,

Mark McBride-Wright 47:22
right? It’ll come well, maybe you’ll come back to it. How about we do some of the Quick Fire question, right? What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Phil Clarke 47:32
Best piece of advice I’ve ever received, I suppose, from a professional perspective, is find a work friend.

Mark McBride-Wright 47:43
What’s your proudest professional achievement?

Phil Clarke 47:47
My proudest professional achievement was at a previous employer, myself and a colleague. We worked really hard and very well together to ensure that we had defibrillators or ad at every one of our sites. And the proudest moment was when a 18 year old person would develop the training as well to go with it, give them support and awareness and confidence to use the defibs. And an 18 year old picked up the DFI because somebody in one of our sites had a medical emergency, and they used that to bring them, bring them back and give them another chance. And to me, I was a mid 40s, thought I’d been there and done it, and I was just so in awe of that person who, without thinking, just got, did the CPR, did the compression, put the defib on, and it then he did his job. And to me, you know that that that, to me is the Yeah, that’s a great one. That’s a great one. That is to me, is these, yeah, in Yeah. Anyway,

Mark McBride-Wright 48:49
yeah, yeah. My town had a heart start program because we were 20 minutes away from Edinburgh, and for every minute that passes that you don’t receive CPR, if you need it, you have a 10% less likely chance of survival. So basically, people were who had heart attacks in Pennycook were didn’t stand a chance, because it takes a good 20 odd minutes, at best times, to get an ambulance from Edinburgh to Penny cook. So So yeah, the local community heart start program. I think there are many more defibrillators now, but we had one in the community, and we had a community first responders that were trained on how to use it, and it saved quite a few lives. So for organizations to then think, let’s have that in our sites, that’s, that’s, that’s a really good achievement. What’s one skill then that you think every health and safety professional should have listen tea or coffee.

Phil Clarke 49:40
Tea, of course, Earl gray without milk. Oh,

Mark McBride-Wright 49:43
right, not from me. What’s your go to productivity hack

Phil Clarke 49:51
I have just started using with my studies, and I’ve got my little timer here. I forget what it’s called, but you study for 25 minutes, then you have a five. Wright break and it’s on your little on the door, yes, my daughter or something, yeah.

Phil Clarke 50:06
It works for me. Okay. It works for me. After all these years of trying various different techniques, that one works.

Mark McBride-Wright 50:13
If you had could have dinner with any health and safety expert past or present, who would it be?

Phil Clarke 50:20
Hmm, robins, Lord Robins, Alf Robins, or whatever it’s called. He was the one who led the commission that created the self and safety work, etc, Act, which focused on the risk. You know, it’s the people who ran the business, who worked in the business, best place to do the risk assessment and put in place mitigations, because I would ask him, How can somebody who was so useless as a politician, so useless as a chair of the NCB, etc, create such a wonderful, almost perfect Act of Parliament?

Mark McBride-Wright 50:56
What’s the one piece? What’s your favorite piece of health and safety technology or innovation.

Phil Clarke 51:07
I love technology, and I’ve had computers as far as I remember. And I remember the dial up days that most people don’t We don’t remember, you know, the nine, 600 boards per second speed, yeah, but still, the best innovation are you eyes in your ears. Nothing’s beaten that in technology since your eyes and ears. So you can look and you can listen. Get your

Mark McBride-Wright 51:29
instinct, what’s your what’s the one thing you do to relax after a long day. It

Phil Clarke 51:35
used to be play World of Warcraft, or go on the gone, the battlefield on the table and playing the Last Alliance led by Elendil and isledore, a game of Middle Earth strategy battle game. Or I like watching a big Lord of the Tolkien fan? Oh yeah. Constantly rereading the books. Constantly listen to the books. Amazing films are not bad in this TV show. But sometimes I’ll have, I’ll have a in the background, one of the films or one of the TV shows.

Mark McBride-Wright 52:09
What’s the most exciting project you’ve worked on?

Phil Clarke 52:13
The most exciting project I’ve ever worked on, at times, anything exciting in health and safety I’m working, well, working on a project to bring some various checks and stuff we’re doing online, that’s that’s good, that’s a that’s been, that’s been really useful, and the trials have gone really well, and it’s really engaging and and helps our people. But going back to I said about the DFID project, that was, that was something that, yeah, I’m really proud of the work we did there, really proud of the case we put forward, and the complete buy in from the leadership of the organization, and that was good as well. What’s

Mark McBride-Wright 52:57
the one piece of advice you’d give your younger self,

Phil Clarke 53:02
just cracking and do what you did. I don’t like I don’t believe in looking back and with regrets. It’s life too short to live a life full of regrets.

Mark McBride-Wright 53:11
I think, yeah, I totally agree with that. Well, thank you very much for your time today. Really enjoyed the chat, if, if people want to get in touch with you, find out a bit more about your research and the areas that you’re that you’ve spoken about on here. How do people do that? How do they get in touch?

Phil Clarke 53:34
If want to get in touch, and I’m, I’d be really happy for not just fellow health and safety professionals or environmental health officers, but anybody who wants to continue the studies as a mature student, I thoroughly recommend doing the professional doctorate program that I’m on a number of universities here in Britain offer that route. More than happy to chat with anybody about that. I’m only my first year of it. I’m thoroughly loving it. Looking forward to the next 2345, or however many years it takes me, complete the research and find me on LinkedIn. Phil Clark, search that. And if you look in town based in Manchester and the head of health and safety at care UK, you should be able to find me quite easily. Fabulous,

Mark McBride-Wright 54:14
fabulous. Well, thank you very much, Phil. Thank you very much for your time, and I will look forward to getting this out so all our listeners can can can listen to it. Thanks.

Phil Clarke 54:30
Really enjoyed the chat, Mark. Thank you very much, and it’s good to catch up with you again after, after the book launch, I did plan to try to reread it before, before this conversation, that’s all right, Warcraft had a great, great to catch.

Mark McBride-Wright 54:45
The audio book might be out soon, so you could always listen to that. I still got some bits I need to do on it, but yeah, that will be out. So, so yeah, you can, you can I found recording it a different experience to write. Writing it, and I found it easier to, ironically, like, understand my own content through reading it in a single setting. You know,

Phil Clarke 55:09
just a quick question, and so you’ve written the book, do you still see it as the book that you wrote? Or can you now look at it as though, now it’s been published and it’s out there, as though it’s a book that I had certain thoughts on other people may have different thoughts on and yeah, the learnings from the book thing you hoped for or maybe expected, the Yeah, the

Mark McBride-Wright 55:27
it’s now that it’s out there, and people are starting to read it, and people who, then I’ve never met are like, getting in touch. That’s where I think it was actually the book launch that I had that it’s surreal experience where, because up until then, it had been people who’d like my team, people who I trusted to like, do a copy edit, or, like, read proof, read it, stuff like that, do the developmental edit, my publisher, family and stuff. But it was when I was it was out there meeting people then who’d read it in its final state, and were then repeating back to me content that was in the book. I just found that just a bizarre experience, you know, because I’m like, I remember having the conversation with someone, it was one of the case studies they were recruiting to me that’s in the book. And I was like, yeah, how do you know that? Like my internal voice was thinking, How do you know that? Are you reading my brain? Well, of course, they’ve read it because I’ve written a book, and they’ve read the book, and that’s what they’re talking about. So I just, I’m adjusting to that as an author, which is, uh, if anyone’s written a book out there, you know, maybe that’s happened to them. So it’s that that’s quite a different experience. So what, what I’d like to do now is get it more embedded, you know, I’m I’m told that, if you ever it’s a bit like doing a PhD, you know, it is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. So, you know, the book launch and seeing it through its first year, and celebrating all the milestones and getting out and talking about it. That’s why I’m doing these podcasts to, like, bring the community together. I’m building out, like, a newsletter as well where I’m going to be doing more regular posting. And, you know, I’m interested to know if there’s a community of safe leaders. You know, could we build a community of, like, safe leadership? And can be, yeah, yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Well, thank you. I’ll be so, yeah, I’m just in content creation mode right now. And, yeah, just, you know, I’m in New York now for a few years, so just seeing what, seeing what happens, and well, nice to know community will have at least one member. Brilliant. Thanks so much.

Phil Clarke 57:38
Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot. Tight you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai