On this episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking with Shabbir Halai, who is a health and safety expert based in Croydon in the UK.
Shabbir goes around businesses like mine, like yours, and like construction sites and various companies around the UK showing them what they need to do to keep their employees safe, to keep their workers safe, to keep their customers safe, and to keep everybody generally from having nasty accidents. But above all, he also helps people stay out of prison, stay out of fines, and stay off the radar of the Health and Safety Executive. But don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a dull podcast about health and safety. Shabbir is an extremely interesting and engaging person, and he has also got some stories to share about accidents on the Harry Potter film set and meeting Barbara Windsor on the set of EastEnders. Oh, get out of my pub!
Let’s have a word with Shabbir. I was reading a little bit about your history and the stuff that you’ve done before your health and safety journey, and one of the obvious things that caught my eye was the fact that you have been an extra in several films and TV shows, including Harry Potter. How did you get into that, and what was it like doing that sort of stuff?
Shabbir Halai
Yeah, it’s really weird actually. I supplied a lot of stuff to a client. He moved and went into a modelling agency, and then I got a phone call from Marky saying, “Oh Shabbir, we need you for an upcoming thing. I’ve got a job. They want an Asian-looking man but with a British voice.” I’m like, “Okay, what does it mean?” And it was extra work. I said, “Mark, I’m not an extra. No thank you.” He phoned again the week after. The client’s still looking. No. Phoned again. Then he said the third time, “Look, the client really wants to see you. They want to interview in Switzerland. Would you just go and talk to them?” I’m like, “What? Switzerland?”
So yeah, they said, “We’ll send you to Switzerland, they’ll talk to you, and that’s it.” Sign me up. So I went over to Switzerland, saw Credit Suisse, did an interview, came back, and they liked me. So I did a film for them, a little film, and I said to Mark, “That was great but I hated learning all these lines. Is there anything else that’s easier?” He said, “Oh, extra work should be you just have to pop on to a set, smile, pretend to talk to someone, and you get paid at the end of the day.” That’s me. I said, “Let me do that.” And I just did lots of extra work. It’s so easy. I love it.
Darren Jamieson
So you originally wanted to be an actor?
Shabbir Halai
Absolutely not. I think people think I want to be an actor because I love presenting, I love health and safety training. I’m out there, quite vocal, but no. Actually being an actor, learning lines is the most fearful thing to me. Really scary. That particular job took me two weeks to record my lines and listen to them every day to memorise them. I’ve got an awful memory. I did it. I said, “Mark, never again.” So he signed me up for what I now know is extra work.
Darren Jamieson
And what fun that is. So is it really like what the Ricky Gervais TV show Extras shows? Is that genuinely what being an extra is like?
Shabbir Halai
I recognised so many aspects in that. That was brilliant. I now know that a lot of extras like to nudge forward, nudge forward to get closer to the director, get closer to the actor or the actress. A lot of extras want to be actors. I do admit that. But because I didn’t want to learn any lines, it was quite horrifying sometimes when you’re as an extra on set and the director comes up to you, “Oh, can you just say this line? And action!”
I’m like, “Oh no.” I said, “I don’t want to do it.” I remember the first time that happened, the director said, “Oh, you need to say this line. We’re in a hospital scene. Surgery. We need to get the baby out now.” I told my assistant, and he said, “Well, the director said it. Say it.” Action. “We need to get the baby out now.” Cut. “Can you say it with more verb but not as slow?” I’m like, “I don’t know what that means.” “We need to get the baby out now.” Cut. “Say it quicker but with more passion.” “We need to get the baby out now.” Luckily the third time that was it. I said to Mark, “No more. I don’t want to say any lines.” And that was fine.
Darren Jamieson
Did you get paid extra for saying lines?
Shabbir Halai
Yes, you do actually. That’s why a lot of extras want to hold a prop. A sword gets you more money. Saying a line gets you more money. But I’m like, “No, no. Just leave me alone. Let me just be in the background, smile, pretend to talk to someone. That’ll do me.”
Darren Jamieson
So does that mean quite a few times then you’ve been sat at home or sat in the cinema watching something and you’ve been able to point yourself out?
Shabbir Halai
Oh yeah, it’s quite funny. I was re-watching The Jury I think it was, and that was quite an easy one because you’re just sitting up in the jury. You’ve just got to look pensive. You know, looking down, looking pensive. So you’ve got this pensive looking people looking down all day long.
Darren Jamieson
And you got to meet some really nice actors?
Shabbir Halai
Some not quite as nice as you would hope. Obviously you’re not genuinely allowed to talk to them. I think one of the funniest ones or one of the nicest ones for me was on EastEnders. I was on the phone chatting away at lunchtime and Barbara Windsor came up to me. She said, “Oh hello, how are you?” “Oh I’m fine, thank you.” “Lovely, thank you very much for coming on. Really appreciate all your extras. You do great work. You’re marvellous.” She said, “You’re marvellous. Thank you very much.” And she toddled off. I’m like, “God, I just spoke to Barbara Windsor.”
Darren Jamieson
Wow. So she was genuinely nice?
Shabbir Halai
Absolutely. Definitely.
Darren Jamieson
One of the things you’ve also put down on your BNI profile I believe is that you wanted to get into health and safety after seeing some of the things that went on on film sets.
Shabbir Halai
Yeah. I was pretty shocked at the range of accidents and dangerous places I saw. I thought, okay, this is a great sort of industry to get involved in. But on a Harry Potter set, I won’t say which particular film, this massive chandelier just came and fell down. It wasn’t part of the film at all. It just missed one of the little people by literally a few inches. Everyone was all in shock. I was probably about 10 or 15 feet away. We were all in shock. I heard the director swearing, “Get rid of that mess. Come on, we need to carry on filming.” Everyone’s rushing around to get the chandelier broken pieces away. And then, “Action.”
I’m like, okay, what about that poor person who’s nearly been decimated?
And then on another set there was a sort of fire that occurred. I could see this fire on a fake wall. It looked like a marble wall but it was wood, and it had caught fire. I said to one of the assistant directors, “Oh, that’s quite dangerous. It’s going to catch fire, it’s on wood.” “Yeah, don’t worry.” And sure enough about half an hour later it did. Another different director: “Cut. What the… what’s going on? Get rid of that. Come on, we need to carry on filming.”
It was interesting. Then the range of accidents I saw on set. But unfortunately the pressure was on filming.
I loved being on Murder on the Orient Express. I’m a big Poirot fan so I was so chuffed to be on that, but it was a night shoot and to me it seemed obvious — this platform with all the cameras and the cables everywhere — it seemed obvious that someone could fall over the edge of the platform. It was so dark. Sure enough, someone did. She broke her leg. There wasn’t much sympathy. It was like, “Get her off to hospital. Come on, let’s get on with it.”
So after a little while I decided with the hours you need to do, and I found out from some of the safety people how much they get paid, it’s not really worth going on the film set at 5am and being there until 7pm in the evening, much as I love health and safety.
But I had a great five or six years in TV and film extra work. I loved it. Met some really nice people and some shocker of actors you think, “Oh, I can’t believe he’s like that.”
Darren Jamieson
Who was it you couldn’t believe was like that?
Shabbir Halai
I’m not sure I can name names really.
Darren Jamieson
Of course you can.
Shabbir Halai
I shan’t actually… but let’s see, I might loosen my tongue a bit later on.
Darren Jamieson
It was Alan Rickman, wasn’t it?
Shabbir Halai
It was Alan Rickman. But Ricky Gervais actually, I was in a couple of his ones — Life’s Too Short. He was really good actually. Really, really fun. Off set as well you realise how funny they really are.
Darren Jamieson
Warwick Davis is hilarious, isn’t he?
Shabbir Halai
Oh my god, yeah.
Darren Jamieson
So you thought right, you don’t want to do health and safety for film and television because quite frankly it’s an absolute bloody nightmare. I presume as well if you’re doing health and safety for, say, a construction site, they are motivated to get it right. They want to get it right because the consequences are huge. Whereas from what you’ve said on film and TV they’re not that bothered about getting it right. They just want to scrape somebody out the way and carry on.
Shabbir Halai
I think maybe on film and TV there’s so much going on, maybe there’s a sort of pressure to film and costs. I’m not saying they completely ignored health and safety, but they certainly didn’t do as much as I would have done or could have done.
Construction — it’s interesting what you said, Darren, that they’re more motivated. Sadly most of the workplace fatalities happen in the construction industry. Work from heights, falls, etc.
So I don’t know if they’re more motivated. Certainly the inspectors inspect construction sites more than most other types of premises. The other fixed premises you can think of — factories, workshops, warehouses, care homes — construction is a big focus because that’s where most of the risks lie.
Darren Jamieson
And of course the consequences of breaking the rules on construction… prison sentences if it goes wrong.
Shabbir Halai
Absolutely. There aren’t that many prosecutions if I’m honest, something like 200 odd in the last statistics I’ve seen. But they’re criminal prosecutions.
What a lot of people don’t realise is that if the inspector decides to take your business to court or the director, it’s a criminal prosecution. So all those people that are found guilty in the courts — and quite honestly the inspector wins on 94% of the cases — they’re not going to prosecute unless they’re going to win.
That person, the supervisor, the director, it becomes a criminal liability. Some are punished with huge fines, some with jail sentences. Typically although the maximum in law is 18 years, it’s unusual as you can imagine. Typically six, nine, twelve months. But of course only last week the director got jailed for ten and a half years because four people died during that particular incident.
So there is the ability to be sent to jail for a long period. And once you’re found guilty — criminal record — you’ll find it hard to get a mortgage or a loan. You’re often struck off as a director for five years. Lots of consequences beyond the actual court fine.
And our job in health and safety, all the health and safety professionals, our job is to try and prevent that accident or incident from happening so the director can’t be prosecuted and the company can’t go to the courts.
Darren Jamieson
Well what possessed you to want to do that in the first place? Because I’ve got a mate who works in health and safety. He works for JD Sport and he reviews all of the stores before they open and then does spot inspections of them as well to make sure that when the health and safety inspector turns up they’re doing everything they should do. So it’s better he finds problems than they find problems. But he refers to himself as the “fun sponge”.
Shabbir Halai
Yeah.
Darren Jamieson
You get that? “Oh no, it’s the health and safety people. They’ve turned up, they’ve ruined all the fun out of it. We’ve got to pour all this clothing on, we’ve got to put these hats on, ridiculous.” What makes you want to be a fun sponge?
Shabbir Halai
That’s interesting because I’ll be very honest here. Hands up. When I left school all those years ago, I don’t know if it’s the same now but in those days you were sent to the careers lady. So I went to her and she said, “What do you like to do?” And I said, “Oh, I love technical drawing. I’m always drawing cars, I’m always drawing car dashboards. I love drawing. I like technical drawing. I’m really good at metal work and woodwork.”
“All right,” she said. “Come back next week.”
So I went back next week. “Shabbir, you’re starting next week as an engineer in a chemical factory. You’ll be an engineer, and there’s a five-year apprenticeship.”
“Uh, thank you,” I said. “Is there a technical drawing department there?”
She said, “I don’t know, but when you get there ask them.”
Sure enough they did have a technical drawing department. So I became an engineer.
Darren Jamieson
It was that simple? Your careers advisor got you the job?
Shabbir Halai
Yes. In those days they got you a job. It was a four-year apprenticeship. And I did love it because you were making things, fabricating things, welding, cutting.
And I didn’t know it then — I really had no clue — but the engineers that taught me actually worked really, really safely. I had no concept of safety. I don’t remember safety. But they taught us in a safe way and we just learned our profession.
It was only later on I realised how good these guys were. Because the factory was bought up by Unilever and immediately closed down. Of course we all made redundant.
And I got a job in a sausage factory in Peckham, fixing the sausage machines.
Darren Jamieson
This is becoming Only Fools and Horses.
Shabbir Halai
But sausage machines break down a lot, trust me, and slicer machines. All the time. “Oh no, not another problem with the sausage machine.”
But again, I loved fixing things. You had to do a three-shift rotor. Loved fixing for about five or six years.
And at some point — unfortunately every year an engineer would cut a finger off or slice a finger off or squeeze a finger off depending on what machine it was on — I remember at some point the chief engineer, Mike Newman, came up to me and said, “Shabbir, you’re just about the only engineer left with ten fingers. Would you do our health and safety?”
And I thought about it. I said, “Well, if you send me on a proper course, yeah, I would.”
So he said, “We’ll find a course. Let me know.”
So I didn’t Google it — there was no such thing as Google — but I researched it and did a two-week safety officer course. Got on it. Got my first certificate.
That was literally it. That first certificate was 1989. I got my health and safety certificate that long ago. But I loved it. It was just so easy.
I came back from the course and thought, gosh, health and safety is so easy. And I made so many small changes in this sausage factory. You wouldn’t believe it. Small changes. But no one else cut their finger off after that.
And the average, I think there were about 42 accidents per month on average, went down to two just with some minor changes. You wouldn’t believe how simple they were. The cost was almost insignificant.
And I thought, this is easy.
I stayed there for a few more years doing health and safety. In the end they probably didn’t want to go as far as I would have liked them to go, so I was poached by Hammersmith and Fulham Council and became a safety officer there with lots of other people. That was a great experience as well. I loved that.
Darren Jamieson
“Shabbir, you’ve got all your fingers — clearly the man for the job.” I love that. So the qualification you did — we’re going back a bit now, aren’t we — but there are different types of health and safety qualifications. There’s one specifically to do with food. Was yours a food health and safety qualification or was it a different one, because you weren’t physically doing the food?
Shabbir Halai
It wasn’t food safety. It was a health and safety qualification. The main ones now are NEBOSH General Certificate, still a two-week course. You can then move on to a NEBOSH Diploma, as I did. IOSH — I’m a member of IOSH. IOSH is the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the largest organisation that covers health and safety in the world. I’m a chartered member of IOSH, and they’ve got their own sort of two to three-week courses.
There’s a range of courses. Qualifications I now know are one thing. The certificate is important, but the actual practical health and safety is as important as well. Getting a certificate is one thing, and what I noticed during COVID is that a lot of people went online. A lot of people got health and safety qualifications. The certificate you can get with good learning, but of course the practical implementation — that’s where you need to shadow someone really on health and safety to learn the trade properly, as in any industry.
Darren Jamieson
Yeah. There was a lot of retraining going on during COVID, wasn’t there? And obviously health and safety being a big thing because people needed to make sure that when everybody went back to work, procedures were going to be followed to make sure COVID wasn’t further spread or didn’t come back. So I presume it was a boom time for you.
Shabbir Halai
It was a bit of a difficult period in the sense that all around me business colleagues were quiet or stopping work, losing money, laying off people, furloughing people, and I was getting busier and busier. We had to write a lot of COVID risk assessments, do assessments, do training.
I actually asked a mentor of mine, “I’m finding it difficult that we’re making more money whilst all around us are making less money.”
And it was an interesting chat. He said, “Shabbir, look, you’re helping these people out. If you don’t write these assessments, that construction company is not allowed on site to do the work. Yet you’ve written the assessment, you’ve trained them, they’re carrying on doing the work. So you’ve allowed other companies to carry on working in times of hardship. Those people will help you out.”
That helped me a lot. But yeah, we did a lot of COVID risk assessments and helped a lot of people out, and I’m pleased we did actually.
Darren Jamieson
And what is it about it that you actually enjoy? What gets you out of bed in the morning to do it?
Shabbir Halai
Gosh. You know how damn many directors seem to hate health and safety? Whether they don’t understand it, think it’s complicated, or think it’s expensive. It’s fascinating how many people just hate it.
How many directors have said to my face, “Oh, I hate health and safety. I haven’t got time.”
But I say to them, “You’re an expert in your business. I can’t do what you’re doing. You’ve got the range of people doing this work. I can’t do it.”
We love health and safety, my team and I, because we simplify it. That’s the one thing — our slogan is “Simple, Sensible Safety”.
What that really means is if we keep safety really simple, then people will do it and they’ll do it more often. That’s a big win for us.
If we keep it sensible, which means appropriate to you and your business, that means it’s appropriate. And safety really is the absence of danger and hazards — and who wouldn’t want the absence of danger and hazards?
So what gets me out of bed for health and safety? I love the simplicity of what we do. Minor changes, minor small bits of training. It’s always little and often with health and safety.
Sometimes we take on a new customer and they want all this thing done next week. I say, “No, no, no. Let’s do it over a programme. Little and often. You’re busy doing your work. We’ll make some small changes.”
And there are some simple things that can give directors a big tick straight away.
Because I know, and my team know, that after an accident or an incident and the inspector comes on board, they’re going to want to see your health and safety policy.
It doesn’t matter what you think — if you’ve got more than five employees you have to have a written health and safety policy by law. That’s it. So have a policy, but make sure you sign it. If the director doesn’t sign it, it’s invalid. Make sure the date on it isn’t that old. If you don’t review it every year, it can be out of date.
So: have a health and safety policy and procedures that are not too old, but signed.
The other thing they want to see is your risk assessments. The law is very clear — you’re doing some work in your business: your car garage, your care home, your hotel. You must have risks in those. And all you’ve got to do is assess them. Most people have risks, then they put in controls to prevent dangers. Well, write those down and then just check the controls are enough for your business.
So you have to have written risk assessments. But again, if they’re not signed, they’re not really worth much. If they’re more than a year old, the inspector could think, “Well hang on, perhaps you haven’t taken into account the new legislation that came in last year.” So annual reviews are really important.
You’ve got policies — big tick for a director. Risk assessments — big tick.
And the third one really is training. You have to have training in your industry. You’ve got to train your workers in whatever you do.
Sometimes it’s very easy. I listened to one of your podcasts and the lady talked about musculoskeletal disorders — MSDs. If you use a computer it can lead to musculoskeletal disorders.
The computer regulations are very simple and give you a guidance sheet on how to avoid those. How to use the computer safely so you don’t get neck ache, backache, pain, or visual problems.
And that’s a simple assessment. It’s a self-assessment. Ninety minutes.
There are other trainings you can do for people that will help them just be aware of the dangers all around them. What you can’t do is assume that worker knows the dangers even though they’ve been in the industry for 15 years, 12 years, 20 years. You can’t assume that.
And you can probably agree — if you do some training with someone on marketing, does it last forever? No. You’ve got to refresh it at some point because people forget things and things change.
One of the big ones for construction companies that’s written in the law is that they must have asbestos awareness training every single year.
Darren Jamieson
Really? Every year?
Shabbir Halai
Every year. That’s the only regulation I can think of that says you must do something every year. Directors say, “Why the hell? It’s really inconvenient, it’s costly, why does it need to be every year?”
Go back to the regulations — we finally banned asbestos here in 1999. Why? Because it was killing so many workers every year. It still kills 5,000 people a year in the UK from past asbestos exposure.
The annual refresher just makes sure that new people coming into the industry are reminded. And we remind them asbestos is dangerous. It’s not dangerous if it’s not damaged and you don’t disturb it, but if you damage and disturb it, it’s dangerous.
So annual refresher training on that.
Other things maybe every three years: manual handling every three years, working at height every three years, Legionella every two years. There are a range of things.
What’s suitable? I love the simple things. If you can just simplify it and have a programme in place, little and often, you’d be amazed what can happen between now and six months’ time. The difference in your company and the outlook if you get on board.
Darren Jamieson
Speaking then about the asbestos stuff — I mean I had asbestos in a house I bought recently and had to have it redeveloped. Some of it was channelled out and disposed of, and much of it was left as is because there was some under the floor and some they just tiled over. There was no point moving it. I remember speaking to my mate John, who does the health and safety for JD, and he was talking to me at great length about asbestos and the different types of asbestos and how it’s actually marvellous stuff. Wonderful stuff. An incredible invention. It’s just got this one minor flaw. This one minor flaw which is a bit of a problem. Which is a real shame, because we never knew, did we, when we started using it?
Shabbir Halai
Well, I’m going to maybe differ on that one. The first report came out in 1904 from a doctor who was very clear. He worked around a quarter from an asbestos factory and he thought, hang on, why are so many people getting this disease and dying? And he found some form of link. It didn’t really go very far. Then World War I meant that we had to put lots of asbestos in ships and tanks. We didn’t have to, but they decided to. And therefore it was used a lot.
World War II — used a lot. And then of course the boom in construction. It was actually known as the miracle material, because although some people had found out about it, some of the scientific evidence paid for by the asbestos industry maybe didn’t do it justice — rather similar to the smoking industry. Some of the smoking scientific evidence wasn’t maybe as thorough as it could have been.
The unions bashed away in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was a voluntary ban. They bashed away and finally in 1999 the UK decided to ban all the use and importation of chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite — the blue, brown and white asbestos.
But because of the latency period — now we’re talking 1999, which is 26 years ago — asbestos can take 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 years to rear its head. And that’s why the deaths carried on going. There are about 5,000 a year. We expect them to level off.
Health and safety is about preventing accidents and incidents. On asbestos training: once a year. Surveys: every premise that was built before 1999 should have a survey. It’s £400, £500, £600. It’s a one-off thing that tells you where the asbestos is.
So there are simple ways in all aspects of health and safety to prevent accidents, incidents and occupational ill health.
Darren Jamieson
Yeah, I had to have that. I had an asbestos survey on the house, finding all the areas where it was. It’s very good — the knowledge, the information, the tools to do something. If you don’t have that, then you don’t have the tools to do the correct thing.
Shabbir Halai
Exactly. Health and safety training is just a bit of information. Some of our courses online are 25 minutes, some an hour, some two hours. You can do a toolbox talk on a construction site in 15 minutes. It doesn’t have to be lengthy. But you remind people. If you do little and often, that’s where safety improves over a period of time.
Darren Jamieson
So is that sufficient then for construction companies — if they have somebody do an online course, say with yourself or with somebody else, that can take half an hour or an hour once a year — that’s okay?
Shabbir Halai
It’s all risk-assessment based. What are you doing? Construction is vast. I know people in construction that just lay carpets. The law says that is construction work, so they’ve got to have asbestos awareness training. I know people who build six-storey, 25-storey buildings. That’s a different set.
Your risks on your construction project have to be managed. You do the induction that suits that particular site. Your induction might say, okay, on this site we need to do a toolbox talk every week. On this site we’ve got to do it every day before you start work. On this site we do it once a month. It’s all risk-based.
What we found from all the problems we’ve been told of — we had about six new clients last year from construction where the inspector’s come along and issued a prohibition notice and stopped work completely. You can appreciate that’s quite expensive.
We found that all the inspector wanted was good management of the site. If the management had some inkling of health and safety, they would have known: risk assessment, method statement, policy and training. Those are the normal common things.
If you did those things, you would have solved all these issues and not had the improvement notice or the prohibition notice.
And welfare is another one that tends to be issued a notice on as well.
In construction, we’ve got two sets of clients — half of them are construction-based, half are not. But the construction ones get a template on how to run a site safely. It’s really super easy. I’m happy to send you that template. You’ve just got to tick off some things to make sure you’ve covered them.
It’s basic. You’ve got to have welfare. If you don’t have toilets and welfare facilities, the inspector will close you down. It’s as simple as that.
If you don’t have a first aid kit — you should. If you don’t have fire extinguishers — you should. If you don’t have an emergency plan — what do you do if there’s a fire? “We’ll go there.” No. Don’t go there, this is safe. Or we go here. It’s quite simple and basic health and safety in most cases.
Darren Jamieson
Which is exactly what it says on your banner: simple.
Shabbir Halai
Exactly.
Darren Jamieson
So I presume then your role in BNI is very much to try and get that message across in a way people understand.
Shabbir Halai
Absolutely. I do short presentations. Sometimes I mention problems in court.
I did a presentation recently where I took a brick in and said to the room, “Right, I’m going to show you how to swallow this brick.” I got it ready — a proper house brick — got it ready… but I couldn’t. I couldn’t swallow it.
But three days earlier in the paper there was a story about a guy who’d swallowed a full brick’s worth of dust in ten years of his working life because he didn’t wear a dust mask.
That’s how you swallow a brick — not wearing a dust mask over a period of ten years. Do you really want that inside you? Or would you wear a £1.25 dust mask?
So the ways of conveying health and safety — I probably do it in a bit of a quirky way because I like to get people’s attention. People aren’t interested in the fine or the jail sentence. I find simple ways to engage them and enlighten them.
Darren Jamieson
And that works.
Shabbir Halai
It does. I’ll tell you one quick story I really enjoyed. I come from engineering as you know. I make things. I love workshops — factories, warehouses, garages. I like those sorts of businesses.
I went to this woodworking shop. The director signed up. Wasn’t totally convinced I don’t think, but had an accident, signed up. He said, “Would you come in once a month and do training with all the guys out there in the workshop?”
“Yeah, of course I would. I love doing that.”
So I went in the first month in the workshop. I had all the tools. There were seven guys like this. One got a cigarette out, started sparking it up. I’m like, “Okay. You know it’s illegal to smoke inside the workshop?”
I could tell from the glazed-over eyes they weren’t really engaging. But I went through my spiel. Did some questions and answers. Forced them to talk to me with simple answers. Not much engagement.
Next month: bit better. They didn’t smoke inside this time.
Third month I got there: one of the guys had chopped the tip of his finger off.
And he says, “Shabbir, you know what? It’s completely my fault. I can’t believe it. I heard you saying about gloves and I knew I should have used a push stick on the saw.”
It was the final cut — all the things you hear about in accidents — it’s just the final thing you’re going to do.
But the others were more engaged. By month five the director emailed me. He said, “Shabbir, I don’t know what you’ve done to my workers. They’re coming to me asking for PPE. They’ve asked for safety signs to go up. They’re now doing this, they’re putting the guards up, they’ve repaired the guards.”
It’s just little and often. If you can engage with them — it took a little while — it works.
By month nine it was amazing. The incremental safety just went up.
Darren Jamieson
And if you’ve got people engaged, they buy into it, don’t they? They see it’s for them — for their safety, for their families.
Shabbir Halai
Exactly. For us, health and safety is workers going to work, doing their work, and going home in the same condition as they arrived. No aches and pains, no broken bones. The spin-off of that is that the company can’t get prosecuted, the director can’t go to jail or be fined. But for the workers, it’s about avoiding pain and inconvenience.
If I think of all the accidents I’ve been told about, without doubt it’s not just the accident — it’s the pain for that person and the huge inconvenience. You’ve broken a leg? Now you can’t take the dog for a walk. You’ve got to take a cab instead of walking. It costs you more money.
People think they’re going to get a massive payout. They don’t. In the thousands I’ve trained, I can probably remember three instances where an employee got a real payout.
And one of those — the lady had slipped, broken her leg at work because the floor was very slippery and not cleaned correctly. She took the company to court. It took about two and a half years to get to court. In those two and a half years she spent £5,000 on physio and medication. And in court she won. The judge awarded her £35,000 compensation.
And she hobbled out of court saying, “I wish I’d never had the accident.”
That’s what I find with most people. You’re not going to get this massive claim generally, and the accident will impact on your life. So yeah — put the gloves on. Put the safety glasses on. Put the ear defenders in. If there’s water or coffee spilled there, clean it up. Or if you haven’t got time, ask someone else to.
That’s what I love about health and safety — it is so simple in most cases. It really is.
Darren Jamieson
Shabbir, we’re out of time. But I love that. I didn’t think health and safety would be so interesting. I knew the adverse part of it would be interesting, but I didn’t think the health and safety itself would be so interesting.
So thank you for that. Thank you for teaching us that and for being so engaging on the subject as well. I can see why you do quite well within BNI for it.
And thank you for being on the podcast.
Shabbir Halai
More than welcome. Thank you, Darren. Cheers.
[Music] [Applause]
More about Shabbir:
Shabbir Halai is a seasoned health and safety consultant with over three decades of experience across diverse sectors, including manufacturing, construction, hospitality, and public services.
Beginning his career as an engineer, Shabbir transitioned into health and safety in 1989 after completing his first professional qualification, later becoming a Chartered Member of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH). His work spans everything from hands-on safety improvements in factories to advising councils and supporting businesses of all sizes in creating safer workplaces. Known for his practical, no‑nonsense approach, Shabbir focuses on simplifying health and safety compliance through clear policies, risk assessments, and engaging training. His personable style and ability to make complex regulations accessible have made him a sought‑after advisor, speaker, and trainer for organisations aiming to reduce risks, avoid costly incidents, and protect their people.
You can connect with Shabbir here:
Website: https://safetyisthekey.co.uk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shabbirhalai/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
