Part 1 | No Falls Week 2026 | Changing the culture around work at height

Part one of our No Falls Week miniseries 'Changing the culture around work at height'.

Falls from height remain the leading cause of workplace fatalities in the UK. Latest figures from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) show that 35 people lost their lives at work due to a fall from height in 2024/25. 

In this special No Falls Week episode, host Nick Marshall is joined by No Falls Foundation Trustee, Kelly Nicoll to explore why falls from height still happen in the workplace, how safety culture must evolve and the role of No Falls Week in driving industry change. 

Expect to hear more about: 

• The origin of the No Falls Foundation 
• How reduced investigation affects prevention and learning 
• Why falls still happen despite regulation, training and equipment 
• Which sectors face the highest risk 
• The power of personal stories in humanising the issue and changing behaviour 
• How organisations can support No Falls Week 

Thank you for watching or listening, we’ll see you in next month’s podcast!  

Thank you for listening to Omega Red's podcast. All information was accurate at the time of recording.

Omega Red is a UK market leader in lightning protection, height safety, earthing and surge protection.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Real Risk

Nick Marshall 0:12

Hi everyone, I'm Nick Marshall, the Managing Director of Omega Red Group. I'd like to welcome you to our fourth episode of Grounded in Safety: Anchored, Connected, Protected. A platform built to inform, educate and inspire those working in power earthing, lightning protection and height safety services from design, installation, asset management through to repairs and everything else in between. At Omega Red Group, we firmly believe knowledge shared is safety multiplied. This podcast opens real conversation with industry experts, sharing insights, experiences and practical guidance to help raise standards across our sector. Whether you're on site, in the office, or simply curious, there's something here for you. Our mission is simple, it's about raising the bar by connecting people, elevating expertise, and championing safety in everything that we do. Falls from height remains the leading cause of workplace fatalities in the UK. Today we're discussing what that is and what the industry can do differently. Today's conversation isn't about regulations or equipment, it's about people, culture, and prevention. At that point in time, I'd like to introduce our guest, Kelly Nicoll. Hi. Hi Kelly, how are you?

Kelly Nicoll 1:18

I'm good, thanks.

Nick Marshall 1:19

G ood. Thank you very much for taking the time to come on to Grounded in Safety.

Kelly Nicoll 1:22

Thanks for having me.

Nick Marshall 1:23

Um one of the things that we like to do as part of the podcast is just to give a little bit of an introduction of our guests, just so you can give a little bit of background about your career in safety and how you kind of got working for the foundation.

Kelly Nicoll 1:33

Sure. So uh my name's Kelly Nicoll. Um, some of you may recognise the voice, um, at least as uh IOSH president from uh 2025, which feels like a million miles away already. And one of my focus areas was uh preventing falls from height, uh, which then led me to uh being a very recently appointed trustee for the No Falls Foundation. I've been in health and safety for about 17 years now, literally tripped and fell. Yeah. Pun fully intended, um, and found a career that uh is incredibly rewarding, is all about people. And uh and well, yeah, I think we talked about it the other day, didn't we, when we were prepping for this. Yeah. Talking about actually one of the greatest honours I've found is that it's our job to make sure that people get to go home to their families every day. Yeah. And that has been absolutely the driver behind everything that I do in my profession. I've worked across lots of different industries. So uh broadcasting, media, um I'm in leisure and culture now. I've been in energy from waste, I worked for the NHS for a little while, facilities, lots and lots of different areas, um, and as wide and varied as I possibly could be uh to keep it interesting for myself.

Nick Marshall 2:59

And across those sectors, I'm guessing you'll see in multitude of areas from a work and height perspective and the problems that people are faced with.

Kelly Nicoll 3:07

Um massively, yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, rail rail network, um, we do an awful lot of working at height there. The NHS, weirdly, one of the worst, kind of one of the kind of top three worst um falls from height incidents that I've ever seen. Um, and an awful lot of kind of media and broadcast um uh involves an awful lot of working at height, working on gantries, working on roofs, and uh and also working in um working in different countries where perhaps the attitude and approach to health and safety isn't the same as ours, um, which which creates its own challenges as well.

Why The No Falls Foundation Exists

Nick Marshall 3:47

I think we'll get into the kind of the cultural aspect a little bit later on into the problem. So if we start about the the origins of the No Fall Foundation then, um kind of what led to the creation then of the foundation?

Kelly Nicoll 3:59

I think you summarized it earlier, actually. Um, fundamentally, the the foundation um was created because falls from height remains and has consistently remained the number one reason why people don't go home at the end of a day of work. And it's not just those people that don't come home, it's the people who have completely life-changing, life-altering, and life-limiting um injuries. And the ripple effect that that has not just on the individual and their family and friends and colleagues and the businesses that they work in, um, but the ripple effect that has out into our wider communities. Uh, and the foundation was created to fundamentally prevent falls from height and dropped objects happening, starting to research so that we've got some really good data as health and safety professionals so that we can actually nudge the dial to understand why we are still experiencing falls from height and still having dropped objects and falling objects. And then also, and and the the bit that I didn't know before I got talking to the No Falls Foundation was to provide support to people who have been affected by the aftermath of a fall. So that's whether somebody has survived and needs direct support from other peers who have also got the same lived experience, their families, um, and they can provide financial advice and financial support as well as that mental health and well-being support as well, which is phenomenally important and something I'm incredibly proud to be able to represent.

Nick Marshall 5:39

Yeah, yeah. I think when you listen to the personal stories, I think we'll talk about those a little bit again into the podcast, is that that's the that's the humdinger for me when people kind of take a reflection back of why they've taken a certain action and and applied something where they've navigated a process and unfortunately then an incident or absence occurred. It's yeah, it's it leaves some damning effects, and that's that's what we're trying to educate people across everything that we do as a business, but obviously the foundation has some some real driving factors that sit behind it, don't it?

Kelly Nicoll 6:10

Yeah, it does. Uh I mean, we'll we'll talk about it in a bit more detail later, but um and one of the big things for me is the power of storytelling and actually that the importance of we can sit and talk about legislation all day, every day. The legislation hasn't changed in 20 oh over 25 years now. Fundamentally, what what is changing is the fact is the way that we're approaching it and and that kind of hearing from somebody who has survived a fall, who has had life-changing injuries, and hearing that, as you said, that thought process behind it of oh, it'll just take a second, oh, it's a bit windy, but I'll just get on with that job, or it's it's Friday and I want to finish early, so come on, let's crack on, or I know I should probably shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyway. I felt the pressure from the boss, or or pressure from, you know, outside of that, or I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing because my head was somewhere else. All of those things that we can all absolutely relate to. And the difference being is that, you know, somebody gets to walk away from uh something like that, or or sadly doesn't. Um, and no those those personal and those lived experience stories are incredibly important um and incredibly effective to convey the importance of what we are trying to to achieve, absolutely.

Nick Marshall 7:41

And if you think about what does success look like for the foundation, then is that all this work that's going on, I know obviously probably the reduction in the number of deaths that we see, but the obviously you've talked about the prevention, we've talked about some of the education piece. What does it what does good look like and successful story for the for the charity?

Kelly Nicoll 7:59

I mean, in an ideal world, you would want everybody that works at height to be able to go home to their families in the same way that they started their day. Um, we wouldn't want to see any dropped objects, we wouldn't want to see anybody, you know, feeling the aftermath of of any of those kind of injuries. Um, a steady reduction um would be really important. Um, and the research that we're currently doing and partnering with uh universities to look at is actually much more around the behavioural side of it, so that that then leads into really good pieces of information and guidance for health and safety professionals so that we can absolutely be focusing on the bits that need to be focused on.

Nick Marshall 8:43

I think we're going to look at the some of that behavioural stuff again a little bit later on, but I think more and more people nowadays are using data and insight to drive better decision-making processes and about the change in culture, and that's making people more informed, and like I say, it's trying to then raise the bar, very much like the podcast is doing, is is getting people to to think about actions, behaviours, consequences of of taking certain actions.

Kelly Nicoll 9:08

No, absolutely.

Nick Marshall 9:09

What what does kind of the um the uptake look like in the industry then around kind of the no falls week and how we start to generate further engagement from from individuals and and and businesses?

Why Falls Keep Happening

Kelly Nicoll 9:21

Yeah, so um No Falls um No Falls Week started in 2024. Yeah. They had since then we've had 5,100 organisations sign up. Um so and just over a thousand of those have joined us from the beginning and continue to sign up, which is phenomenal. Um and it's that it's a dedicated week to focus on let's try and have a week in across the UK where nobody falls, um, nobody's seriously injured, nobody, you know, we don't have any dropped object either. Um and if we can do that for one week, we can repeat that. Yeah. And if we can repeat that for two weeks, we can repeat that for a month. And it, you know, and it's that idea of, you know, last year's stats, it was 35 people who didn't go home. The year before it was 51. You know, that's that's one family every single week or every other week getting a knock on the door saying that somebody is not coming home. That's a rugby team being told that somebody is not ever going to be playing for them again. That's you know, that's in that's entire communities, um, entire, you know, businesses, complete the ripple effect from it is incredibly profound and incredibly difficult to convey. And as somebody who has been a health and safety manager who has investigated a number of these um incidents um from a selfish perspective, I don't want to do that. I really don't want to do that again. Um, the responsibility and the accountability that you feel is um incredibly heavy. Yeah. And that's what that's the whole point of the No Falls week is the idea of we've we focus on the biggest reason why people don't come home just for a week and see whether we can nudge that dial. Yeah. And then see whether we can repeat that over and over again, I think is a is a really good area of focus.

Nick Marshall 11:32

So I suppose it's it's come out in the conversation already about why these falls keep happening and about kind of the root cause of it. So if we look at some of those in a little bit more detail, you think about the HSE inspections taking place, investigations, how do you see that playing through it? Is that kind of community now stretched? And is it the industry versus the self-employed that that the balance of how do you regulate all the amount of work ing at height that's going on? There's a change in behaviours, I get that, but also then there's there's kind of some of the process that sits behind it as well, isn't there? The culture that sits within someone's organization.

Challenging Work Safely With Care

Kelly Nicoll 12:09

So I think a lot of the kind of the bigger hitters, um, so the the bigger organizations are doing it and they're doing it, you know, doing it well. Yeah. Um, I think you alluded to, you know, the HSE. The HSE are incredibly stretched. Yeah. Um, the number of investigators and inspectors they've got seem to be, feels like it's reducing every year. Um they are focusing in on kind of on the fatalities, not necessarily the RIDDOR reportable incidents. Um and then you've got the self-employed, and you've got those kind of very small SMEs. Um, and they're the people that we're desperately, we desperately need to reach because they're often working in domestic properties, they're often working with clients who don't know what they should be expecting and they should want from their scaffolders or their roofers or even their solar panel installers. Um and and that attitude, the attitude of it'll never happen to me, it's absolutely fine. Um, I always I used to make this joke that roofers are an entirely different breed of people because they are exposed to that level of risk day in, day out. And they just you get risk blind, you don't see it anymore, do you? And it becomes really, really difficult to be able to target them. I mean, I uh I had solar panels installed on my house and got the assurance that they would be it would be scaffolding, and uh and I mentioned, you know, what I do as a job and mentioned, you know, this is the kind of thing that I would expect. And uh they turned up with uh lean two ladders. And I went, no guys. And I very much got a you don't know what you're talking about. And there's a whole we could probably spend a whole other podcast episode on being a woman in uh in health and safety still, and being a woman in kind of construction and and all of that kind of stuff, um, even now. Um, and yeah, that at the attitude of I don't know what I'm talking about, um, is really, really difficult to get over. Um and actually all I was doing was going, I don't want any of you guys to get hurt on my property. I don't want, I want you guys to go home.

Nick Marshall 14:37

Yeah.

Kelly Nicoll 14:38

Um and they didn't, yeah, they they they had their attitude, their behaviour was around we want to get this job finished as soon as possible and get it done quickly and as cheaply as possible, because scaffolding obviously adds cost and time and all of that kind of stuff. Um, so yeah.

Nick Marshall 14:59

And and do you think obviously that you I agree with kind of the women in industry and people will look and go, what do you what do you know that's but I think there's also that some of the people accepting constructive feedback or being being challenged, and some of that is about breaking that mindset of individuals into it that says when someone's challenging you, it's not in to be pedantic, it's not to try and put you down to to belittle you that you don't understand that you're doing the job incorrectly. It's actually going back to what you're saying there, is is making sure that it's coming from a really good place, and it's we need to probably educate people that and a lot if if someone was tapping on the shoulder and saying, Is that safe? Maybe that's your little bit of an angel sat on your shoulder going, today could be that day where that blinkers are on and something happens, and I think we've got some work to do in those areas. Would you would you would you agree?

Kelly Nicoll 15:46

I completely agree. Um, I recently did a um coaching for coaching for safety professionals course, and I absolutely loved it. It's that idea of actually I and I've always said this all the way through my career: I am not the expert in what anybody else does. I don't even like the word expert in what we do either, because um I think what we're here to do is we're here to build a framework within which people can be successful at their jobs. And being successful in their job means first and foremost that they get to go home at the end of every day. Um anything outside of that. So we've I you know I come and I think it's one of the things that as an industry we probably as a profession rather than an industry, but as a profession, we need to get much better at is being curious rather than judgmental. So long gone are the high viz, um, high viz clipboard finger wagging stereotypes, absolutely. Um, but I think some of us still carry that little bit of an attitude with it. Um I don't like heights, so I'm not gonna get up on a roof um unless I'm very confident that it's safe for me to do that. And I'm gonna lean on the people who are around me who are experts in being able to get me up there safely. So if I'm asking a question, it's coming from a place of curiosity rather than judgment. A guy who rocks up at my door to install my solar panels doesn't know that that's how I work. So when I ask a curious question, sometimes I've got to I've got to be really careful about how I approach that in order to be able to achieve the result that I actually that we actually want. Um with those guys, it very much ended up being, do you know what? I've told you what my expectations were. This is not what we had agreed, that's not what was in the contract, you actually need to go away. They did not like me. But I wasn't prepared, I wasn't prepared for that to happen. Um I got a phone call from the sales rep, hugely apologetic. Scaffolding came up, everything got sorted. Um but an awful lot of people won't do that. An awful lot of people go, Oh, I thought you were using scaffolding. Oh no, it's all right, love. We're just cracking on, we've got another one to do this afternoon. Okay, not a problem. Um and I think it is, it's that idea of you know, it's not health and safety gone mad. It's it's that idea that actually we're all responsible for looking out and looking after each other. And I think if we instilled that culture within our larger organizations, within our SMEs, within our solo one-man band, I mean, if you're a one-man band, like everything is entirely on you. It is entirely your responsibility to make sure you do everything in your power to get home. And that's really important. Um, you know, and we're not just talking about, you know, solar panels or window installers. We're talking about people who work in agriculture and construction. And we know that there are an awful lot of wider issues, you know, peripatetic working, huge amounts of financial pressures, you know, long, very long hours, long driving hours, all of that kind of stuff that all contribute to the uh the fact that somebody may make a mistake um when they're working at height and be the reason that that they don't come home.

Nick Marshall 19:25

Yeah. I think you mentioned there about the the course that you're being on from a coaching perspective. I'm guessing that you went through the GROW model about what's the grow, the reality opportunity, what do you want to do next? But I think it does come down to communication in the going back to referencing about how health and safety has probably been seen in the past with a a clipboard of no, you you can't do that, you have to come down. And it's about how do you change that perception? But first of all, it's about how do you communicate with somebody and it's it's a human connection, is need to make sure that we do that in a less challenging way, but constructively, that actually it's coming from a place of of good, and it's about the are you thinking about the ramifications of that critical risk that we're trying to manage and and make sure that you go you go home safely. And I think we we struggle sometimes to probably communicate that message, and people put the the shackles up don't they go into defence mode because it feels like now you're having to go at my my core values that you're saying that I'm working unsafe and how it's how we break that that down.

Autopilot And A Near Miss Story

Kelly Nicoll 20:24

Yeah, and I think coming not just from a place of good but from a place of care becomes really important. And asking those kind of curious questions of like, well, you know, actually have you know, have you got the right equipment? Are you taking that little bit of time to sit and think about the potential of you know, and it it it's not saying that all those health and safety people turn round and go, oh, it's all doom and gloom all of the time, because it's not. It's actually when it comes to working at height, it's it's basically playing Russian roulette. Gravity is a hazard that we cannot get rid of, we cannot manage out. Um if you are working at height, we're playing Russian roulette. And all we're doing is we're trying to give you as many chambers as possible rather than more bullets. Because ultimately the outcome is if there is a fall, there it that is always, if you're going back to your good old five by five risk matrix, the severity is always gonna be a five. Your likelihood may change, but that severity is always gonna stay a five because it has to. Because you can have everything in place. And if somebody forgets to clip on or somebody thinks that just by physically having a harness on means that they're magically safe, you know, it just takes one one misstep, one half a second of not paying attention, and everything can change.

Nick Marshall 22:00

I think we were talking before we came on to the podcast about the health and safety manager I'd work with, and he kind of coined the phrase danger never sleeps. Yeah. And it it goes back to the sometime I've got the blinkers on, I've done that job 24-7. But today, that danger is not sleeping. It could be where you make that mistake, and that's some of that educational piece of people that say don't we we all become very comfortable with our surroundings, don't we? And then you're into autopilot, but autopilot drives sometimes the wrong outcome.

Kelly Nicoll 22:30

I um you've just reminded me. Um I was at a stadium in um in Germany, and we were installing uh a camera system. Um and the way that it was done was you clipped on and you had a very like a very small platform that you would kind of end up, you would climb over the railing, you'd sit on this platform, and you'd step sit and you would install the camera um to the side of you. And there are 10 cameras in the system. We started off on the number one, clip on, over, hand everything over, right, okay, fine, he's back over, that's fine, move, move around. On the ninth on the ninth one, the platform went over, all got locked in, he went over, camera got done, we came back out, and I went to unclip him and realised he hadn't been clipped on. Wow. Because we'd done it eight times. We'd done or until we'd got into that and it was just and it was that split second of going, oh no. Like that could have been the time that he fell. That could have been, you know, and we were very lucky that it wasn't, and that was purely by luck rather than judgment. And it was like, right, okay, do we act we've got one camera left. Okay, right. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna write into the SOP for this site that you literally you talk through every single step. So it's yeah.

Nick Marshall 24:04

And it's the lessons learned, isn't it? So straight away you've gone, I need to go back to it because that is an area which could potentially happen again. So let's make sure then that we put something in place where we're we're talking through the process. It's a bit like the pilot doing a check of the plane isn't it and then I'm capturing that information, but then somebody signs that off at the end of it and goes, right, I'm comfortable then.

How To Get Involved

Kelly Nicoll 24:25

Before we've actually gone and done it. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it and it does, it's that repetition, especially if you're doing the same thing over and over again, it becomes muscle memory, and you're not necessarily fully engaging your brain because as human beings, once we once we're very used to be doing something, it gets very easy for our brain to go off for a wander somewhere. Or if we are struggling from a mental health perspective, or we've got financial worries, or we're stressing about what is happening in the world. There's a lot happening in the world. A lot happening in the world, or you know, my filling my car up cost me double the amount of money that I've done. And that's the financial aspect. All of those bits, or my daughter's, you know, my daughter's fallen out with me, or I'm not speaking to my boyfriend, or and all of those things, your brain goes there because that's fresh and that's going on. And your body thinks that it's still doing the same thing, and it just takes it doesn't take a huge amount for something to go really, really wrong

Nick Marshall 25:31

What can organizations do then to help support No Falls Week in get getting behind it? Because this is this is now drumming up the the the drum beat for people to go, do you know something? I've I've I'm I'm listening to this podcast, I'm watching it, and it's now making me really think about where our priorities lie and are we doing everything possible? And that's that's all we ever want from these podcasts is people to reflect and go. I'm taking even if you take one element from from one of these podcasts, then it's done its job. Um, so yeah, it's just trying to think about how people can get involved.

Kelly Nicoll 26:04

Um it's it's very simple. You go to nofallsfoundation.org and uh look for the No Falls Week um information. There will be a huge amount of uh toolkits, resources um from No Falls and from the Access Industry Forum to help organizations plan activities for No Falls Week. Sign up um to join us. Um No Falls Week this year is the 18th to the 22nd of May.

Kelly Nicoll 26:36

Um and uh and yeah, um follow us on LinkedIn, um invite one of our advocates to come and come and speak. Um even if it's not that week, if it's you know a couple of weeks later. Um but yeah, if if you if you if you have people working at height, um yeah, let's talk essentially.