Thick Data, Complexity And Navigating Change, With Gary Wong
Release Date: 07/25/2025
Which comes first: safety culture or physical safety?
Safety And Risk Success
Everyone talks about culture, but very few talk about what actually creates it. After years of working inside real workplaces, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat itself. Leaders invest heavily in slogans, programmes and engagement campaigns, while the real problems on the ground stay exactly the same. And when that happens, trust quietly disappears. This episode cuts through the noise and gets brutally honest about what really builds a strong safety culture and why most organisations are starting in completely the wrong place. Highlights Culture follows competence: fix real problems first...
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Stop Buying Insurance and Start Building Risk Partnerships
Safety And Risk Success
For too long, insurance has been treated as a grudge purchase rather than a strategic advantage. Recording live at Risk Europe in London, this panel conversation challenged that mindset head on. What unfolded was a refreshingly honest discussion with leaders from risk, insurance, broking and law, all aligned on one thing the future belongs to those who collaborate, share insight and use evidence to actively reduce risk rather than simply transfer it. If you care about safety performance, resilience and making better commercial decisions, this conversation will change how you think about...
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Why Most Road Collisions Are Avoidable: Older Drivers, Eyesight, and Smarter Safety Systems, With Rob Heard
Safety And Risk Success
Most serious road collisions don’t happen because of bad luck. They happen because of decisions, assumptions, and systems that quietly fail us over time. After decades at the sharp end of road safety, Rob Heard has seen exactly how those failures play out and why so many of them never needed to happen in the first place. This conversation goes far beyond driving. It’s about risk perception, dignity, behaviour change, and what safety leaders in any industry can learn from the roads we all share every day. Rob brings rare insight from hundreds of fatal collisions, national policy...
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The Workplace Well-Being Time Bomb: How Culture, Silence, and Stress Create Hidden Risk
Safety And Risk Success
There is a risk hiding in plain sight inside many organisations. It is not cyber, financial, or regulatory. It is the quiet damage caused when people do not feel safe to speak, when stress becomes normalised, and when well-being is treated as optional rather than essential. The evidence is now overwhelming. Silence has a cost, burnout is systemic, and culture is either protecting performance or quietly eroding it. This conversation from Risk Europe goes right to the heart of that challenge, exploring why psychological safety is no longer a nice to have, but a core business and safety risk...
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The 11 Themes That Defined Safety In 2025
Safety And Risk Success
As we step into the new year, it’s a great moment to reflect on what 2025 really revealed about safety and risk.” After conversations with more than 50 leaders, practitioners, academics and innovators, clear patterns began to emerge. Different sectors, different challenges, yet the same messages kept surfacing. This episode pulls those signals together and turns a year of dialogue into a clear picture of where safety is heading, what’s changing faster than most people realise, and where the biggest opportunities now sit for organisations and professionals who want to stay ahead....
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Is Ergonomics The Future Of Work? With Guy Osmond
Safety And Risk Success
Ergonomics has quietly moved from being about chairs and screens to something far bigger and far more important. In this conversation, I’m joined by Guy Osmond, who has spent over three decades at the sharp end of workplace ergonomics and human factors. What starts with back pain quickly opens into culture, mental health, neurodiversity, hybrid work, presenteeism, and why so many people are struggling in silence. This is one of those discussions that challenges how we think about work, wellbeing, and performance, and why getting the basics right is no longer optional. Highlights ...
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Health & Safety Legal Landscape Update 2026
Safety And Risk Success
As we close out the year, the conversation around health and safety is becoming sharper, tougher and far less forgiving. Enforcement hasn’t quietly evolved, it has decisively shifted. Prosecution is now the default, scrutiny on directors is intensifying, and the margin for weak systems is shrinking fast. In this timely roundtable, I’m joined by Keith Mathews, from HCR Law’s Insurance, to cut through the noise and look at what really matters as we head into 2026. This is about defensibility, governance and avoiding the blind spots that still catch organisations out, often with...
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The Health And Safety Index, With Mark Wright
Safety And Risk Success
A huge amount gets said about culture, wellbeing, leadership and performance, but how often do we actually measure these things in a way that stands up to scrutiny? This conversation with Mark Wright lifts the lid on what thousands of workers across multiple continents are really telling us. The insights are sometimes uncomfortable, frequently surprising, and always actionable. If you want clarity on what’s working, what isn’t, and which levers truly shift performance, you’ll get a lot from this one. Highlights Origins of the Index: Created to fill the gap for reliable,...
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Introducing The Safety Net Foundation
Safety And Risk Success
Breaking into health and safety shouldn’t feel like hitting a brick wall. Yet so many talented people, from career-changers to those looking for a fresh start, are being shut out by the age-old “no experience, no job” cycle. In this conversation, I sit down with Kev Robins and Ben Pollard to uncover the mission, the momentum and the movement behind The Safety Net Foundation: a new not-for-profit social enterprise designed to open doors, level the playing field and support the next generation of safety professionals. We get into the story behind the foundation, the gaps it...
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Suicide Prevention in the Workplace: Guidance, Impact, and Action, With Marcus Long
Safety And Risk Success
The conversation with Marcus Long left a deep impression on me. His blend of professional expertise and personal experience cuts straight through the hesitation that often surrounds suicide in the workplace. This isn’t a theoretical issue or a niche wellbeing topic; it’s something every organisation can influence for the better. With the launch of BS 30480, Marcus and the wider standards community have created genuinely practical guidance that can prevent harm, support people, and give leaders the confidence to act with humanity and clarity. Highlights Why BS 30480 was created:...
info_outlineWhat if resistance to change wasn’t a hurdle, but valuable feedback? Gary Wong brings a refreshing take on how to navigate complexity and shift safety culture using insights from sensemaking, storytelling and system thinking. We covered how narrative data, landscape maps and frameworks like Cynefin can help make change more attractive and easier, not just for frontline teams, but for senior leaders too. It’s all about thinking differently, acting intentionally, and using real stories to shape safer outcomes.
🔍 Highlights
- Sensemaking in practice: Anthropology, neuroscience and complexity in action
- Thick data over big data: Using real stories to understand the “why” behind behaviour
- The brain and change: How pattern recognition drives decisions
- Affordance mapping: A smarter, simpler way to prioritise
- Resistance = feedback: What pushback really tells us
- Landscape maps: Visualising culture in real time for leadership conversations
- Faster, better, cheaper: How to capture meaningful insight with minimal effort
- Want to try it? SenseMaker Pulse pilot available for just £2,500
Actions:
- Sign up for a future Safety Roundtable: https://safetyroundtable.co.uk/
- Connect with Gary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-wong-25a43a/
- Browse Gary’s knowledge base: https://www.gswong.com/
- Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-harris-slip-safety/