Spotlight Interview: Head of Health, Safety & Environment at ABP

Welcome to the first instalment of our interview series featuring esteemed senior professionals. In this edition, we had the privilege of speaking with Marie Chandler, an accomplished individual serving as the Head of Health, Safety & Environment at Associated British Ports. We asked…

When you left school, did you have a clear idea about the kind of work you wanted to do?

During Senior school, I actually wanted to be a Lawyer and did my 2-week work experience at a local solicitors office. However, after spending the whole time creating land registry maps and filing, I decided to rethink my career path.

Tell us a little about school leaver Marie?

In 1994 school leaver Marie was a studious and quiet person. I was unsure of what I wanted to do and went to sixth form college where I took 3 A-Levels (English Language, Business Studies and Statistics). Realising I liked Business Management, I spent a year at a Tech College afterwards to get my Higher Level Diploma in Business Management. I didn’t go to university until much later, in 2002 when I completed my degree in Business Management.

What are your earliest memories of working within the QHSE industry?

My earliest memories are from 2002 when I became a safety representative at the pharmaceutical company I worked for. My area was in the warehouse and I really enjoyed the monthly walkarounds and talking to the warehouse team about safety issues. My quality experience started much earlier than that around 1998 when I became aware of Six Sigma and signed up to be a green belt. I followed that training through to a Black Belt Six Sigma practitioner.

How have you found working for such varied industries during your career, such as Marine/Port, Aviation and Construction?

Construction was very hands-on site work and often where significant incidents happen. It’s a high-risk environment and workplace safety can be a matter of life or death. It gave me exposure to risks and hazards such as working from heights, mobile plant handling heavy loads, operating dangerous machinery, and working around potentially hazardous substances & materials like asbestos. It also gave me the opportunity to travel the world and oversee safety on sites across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

I would say that the marine/port and aviation industries are similar in a way, with the marine/port industry being a few years behind aviation in terms of safety. Even though, according to a study in 2013, maritime was found to be 25 times risker than aviation. Both the maritime and aviation sectors are highly regulated industries but it is clear that oversight, the interpretation and implementation of regulations are an area where the maritime sector could learn from the aviation sector.  However, both industries have a high level of human involvement (known as human factors) and a majority (around 80%) of past accidents in both industries were attributed to human errors.

You are currently working as the Head of Health, Safety & Environment at ABP and have over 15 years QHSE experience in Senior leadership positions. Take us back to when you first started down this career path, what challenges did you face, and what achievements have you made along the way?

My first senior-level position was as Head of Operational Excellence and Strategy, where I was responsible for making improvements across the business relating to quality, safety and operations. There were some concerns about the safety performance, and I was asked to head up the Health and Safety team with a view to improve performance. That was back in 2008 and I have never looked back on being a safety professional.

Challenges I faced along the way were;

• Behaviours of workers, attitudes and lack of knowledge towards safety.
• Team leaders, supervisors and managers not understanding their legal duties and responsibility for health and safety.
• The way in which risk is managed.
• Keeping pace with change in the world of work, especially after COVID.
• The perception of health and safety being the “fun police with clipboards”.

Achievements and Success over the years;

• Leading safety cultures, behaviours, and leadership programmes.
• Incorporating well-being and mental health into safety strategies.
• Being nominated as an IOSH Council Member and part of the Membership Representation Steering Group in 2022.
• Leading my previous company through the turmoil of COVID which really emphasised the importance of health and safety and the role of the safety professional within a business.

What do you believe are the key factors in gaining and maintaining awareness around the importance of Health and Safety in the workplace?

• Make safety personal by telling stories and bringing safety to life for people, it will resonate with them and make it relevant for them.
• Visible leadership having senior leaders walk around, speaking to staff, engaging with back-to-the-floor days, taking part in workplace inspections and ensure that safety is always a vital part of any decision-making.
• Having a positive, proactive safety culture in the workplace is vital to maintaining safety in our workplaces. Staff who feel comfortable discussing safety issues in their workplace are more likely to perform better, learn from their mistakes and fix problems before they cause harm. Create Psychological safety in the workplace and ensure that staff feel they won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.

What key projects or areas are you currently working on?  

The key projects for me this year are:

• Workplace transport across the port – how to ensure that all the users of the port have a safe transit through the port as drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.
• Safety Engagement with our staff and port users – spending time with teams across the port to find out what their views are on safety, embedding safety conversations across the teams and feeding back on incident reports raised.
• Keeping our port tidy – focusing on waste management, housekeeping, spill plans and how to use our environmental monitoring targets to effectively report our performance.
• Accident/Incident Reporting and Investigation – looking to improve our processes and ensure that our emergency preparedness plans are in place.

Where do you see the immediate challenges, and what are the longer-term opportunities in the future of Health and Safety?  

Immediate challenges and long-term opportunities are:

• Mental health and well-being of staff is one of the most significant factors to come out of the pandemic was the ongoing effect of COVID-19 on mental health and well-being. While COVID-19 was one of the worst disrupters most of us have seen in our lifetime, it has shone a light on an overlooked area of mental well-being and psychological safety.
• Increasing awareness and the need to tackle environmental impact is becoming increasingly important for all of us to show our efforts and highlight changes we have made to minimise environmental impact and that Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is incorporated into our future strategy.
• Talent shortages is impacting a majority of companies and their ability to attract and retain the best talent.
• Data from everywhere, every year we hear more and more about advancements in technology, integrated systems and how data is king. As technology continues to improve rapidly, it becomes more affordable. The ability to collect and utilise data from various smart technologies is driving continuous improvement.

What are your predictions for the world of Health and Safety over the next 5 years, and how do you think Training professionals can respond?

The positive look to the future is that health and safety will be necessary as long as businesses exist.

• Technology advances will make a major impact on the health and safety field in the next 5 years, through wearable tech and document technology to improve collaboration in real-time. From a training perspective, we need to move more VR-type training for things like hazard spotting and embrace technology more in the training offered.
• Expect to see modern policies innovated dramatically; this can lead to better identification of risks, a lower chance for workplace accidents, and faster more effective responses to accidents. With revised policies, the training of these and the associated activities will be crucial.
• Workplace Standards. As we look to hire a more diverse workforce, it is just as important to treat staff in a diverse setting and more importantly retain them. Health and safety will need to adapt to new workplace standards fairly quickly. Training will play a key part in embedding these new standards.

The Institute of Safety and Health (IOSH) states that…

“No one organisation can transform the world of work in five years on its own, but WORK 2022 sets out how we, as the leading professional body in occupational health and safety will support our members, collaborate with our partners and influence organisations globally to shape a safer, healthier future for working people.”

The full WORK 2022 Strategy from IOSH can be found here.

 

We’d like to thank Marie for her invaluable contribution to our leadership interview series. Connect with Marie on LinkedIn by clicking here.