Deborah Edmonds and Rupert Lown will explore how we can all contribute to improving our alertness when we are working on shifts. Shift working can be a bind, but a bit of thinking and with some small adjustments we can make ourselves more alert – and you won’t need cans of energy drink or treble expressos! Our lives are hectic, we often have young families, caring for parents, grappling to sleep in very hot weather. All of these are things we have to live with, but there are tips and tricks to help us and we will explore these with you.
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Occupational hygiene within the rail industry: What can it do for you?
Too often we measure our exposure to harm only after that harm has happened. The RWA Occupational Hygiene Management Group talks about how it’s time for a new, proactive strategy, that helps us to avoid risks, ultimately to improve quality of life for our colleagues.

Achieving health on a par with safety
We often use the term ‘health and safety’ but really, we only mean ‘safety’. We keep dropping our ‘H’s. And health is so integral to safety, sustainability and satisfaction! We want to get health on a par with safety – where it should be, and this session looks at how we plan to achieve this and provide examples of some specific work being undertaken at East Midlands Railway.

How to deal with work-related violence
Everyone should be able to do their job without someone threatening, assaulting or harming them. But on the railway’s front line, sadly, that isn’t always the case. In fact, RSSB statistics show that a staggering 94.1% of frontline staff have experienced workplace abuse. In this session, British Transport Police’s Inspector Keith Barnes describes how incidents of violence against railway staff can occur and how to de-escalate them. He also talks about how body-worn cameras can be both a deterrent and an aid to evidence-gathering once an assault has occurred.