We interviewed Jules Reed, Tended’s Behavioural Scientist, who has joined to lead our user engagement and behavioural science department. Previously Safety Behavioural Specialist at HS2, Jules’ role involves helping people understand our technology and how it can keep them safe to drive positive behavioural change within high-risk industries.

Behavioural science offers incredible insights and helps to ensure positive user experience with our wearable solutions. With the diverse, dynamic and alluring nature of behavioural science and human behaviour, we were interested to catch up with Jules and hear about her experiences and career journey so far.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into your space.

I’m fascinated with being human and how our brains work. The first time I had the chance to apply my knowledge was when Balfour Beatty took me on as the Behavioural Safety Trainer. I’ve worked with lots of well known companies since, working on safety culture, leadership development and behavioural change programmes.

2. What is your biggest achievement to date?

The first time I came up against an old school, hard-nosed Construction Manager, who told me in no uncertain terms that what I did was laughable and would do whatever he could to discredit me. I had to slowly and gently alleviate his fears enough that he allowed me some space with him. The day he accepted he needed and wanted coaching from me was a great achievement for me, him and his region. He was the first, but he wasn’t the last.

3. If you could give one piece of advice to someone entering the health and safety industry for the first time, what would it be?

Don’t work against human nature, you’ll never win. Learn about it and then work with it,. It will make yours and everyone else’s life a lot easier and a lot safer.  

4. What do you think the key trends are for the Health & Safety industry in the next five years and where do you see it heading?

I think that AI will revolutionise Health & Safety in the future. Running diagnostics of a safety critical job to pinpoint exactly where human error is likely to happen - a new form of SSoW. It will also be used to accurately assess health, e.g. stress levels or fatigue.

5. Engagement is absolutely vital in the adoption of any health and safety policy, especially when it comes to tech. From a behavioural science perspective, where would you begin to ensure safety is prioritised?

Safety is always prioritised from a corporate perspective, but leadership styles need to dramatically change. Health & Safety does exactly what it is supposed to but workers are disengaged because of the way it is managed, e.g. enforcement, punitive measures, blame.

6. Has your day-to-day work been affected by COVID? Do you think there will be any long-term effects on the Health and Safety industry from COVID-19?

My day-to-day work hasn’t been affected badly, in fact I am benefiting from not having to commute for more than 3 hours a day. In the same way, I think organisations have had to approach Health & Safety differently because of Covid-19 and that’s not a bad thing. Hopefully, some of the new ways of working will be adopted permanently as a result.

7. What do you think the biggest challenge currently facing the health and safety industry is?

Technology, safer methods of working, fit for purpose tools and machinery… all these things have driven accident frequency rates. Yet accidents still happen because human beings are unpredictable and fallible. We need to apply natural human schematics to the way we manage Health & Safety, because so far we have been fighting against it. Add this to the other innovations and we will see a paradigm shift in Health & Safety.

8. What projects are you working on at the moment? Could you tell us a little bit about one of them?  

My mission at the moment is two fold; firstly to get a standardised method of delivering engagement and to build a library of resources for Clients to access - secondly to build knowledge and understanding within the team about human nature and how to integrate it into their particular areas of expertise.