In the spotlight with Neal Muggleton

How did you get into the health and safety industry?

My career in health and safety was built from an interest in the application of technology to solve human problems. Early on, I was involved with active noise and vibration cancellation technologies to improve passenger comfort (reduce fatigue) within commercial turboprop aircraft and military fixed and rotary wing aircraft. Next, I moved into the military communication space where I worked to deliver solutions for mounted and dismounted soldiers to ensure clear two-way communications in high noise environments. This role was mainly focussed on individual and mission safety but wasn’t directly health-related. It was applying safety-critical communication solutions for Oil and Gas applications that cemented my move to industrial safety. In that role, I worked to deploy advanced noise-reducing and communication technology that supported hearing health and prevented occupational noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Since then I’ve remained passionate about the space, and about working with innovative teams to tackle health and safety issues in the workplace. 

What do you enjoy most about your job?

Figuring out how to get technologically advanced solutions into the hands (or ears!) of the people who need them most drives me forward. I’m more committed than ever to deploying technology that can actually be used to benefit the safety and long-term health of workers operating in real-life industrial scenarios. Ultimately, I believe that helping people to remain safe and maintain their health is a truly noble cause.

There is also something rather special about working closely with safety professionals who have a deep sense of purpose and commitment to help others. It’s a sense of purpose that isn’t always apparent in other industries.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the health and safety industry in the UK?

The rate of technological change that’s influencing the ways we are working is a major challenge, along with the safety and health risks that can result from these changes. There’s also challenges that are inherent to working in a regulatory environment, especially when regulations tend to adapt more slowly to our ever-changing environment. Many of the current standards and regulations that we currently operate under were suitable when first released, but their relevance has diminished over time. 

The reality is that the current regulatory landscape doesn’t always reflect current working environments, and it doesn’t take into account available technologies that are proven to help to bring major safety improvements, while also reducing costs for organisations and improving environmental sustainability.

How do you think these challenges can be overcome?

There is a growing consensus that regulatory bodies should create recurring accelerator programmes to assess the benefits and limitations of new or evolving technologies. These should be in place to continuously review the advancements and offerings coming from academia and industry.

Ultimately, the key would be for regulators to encourage and reward companies that are willing to invest in, develop, and deploy safety technologies that ‘go beyond’ simple compliance with current or outdated regulations.

What sets Minuendo apart from its competitors?

Minuendo is laser-focused on making our tech as usable and accessible as possible. We strip out anything that overcomplicates our kit or our technology and what we’re left with is something that teams can easily understand, easily adopt, and easily deploy. 

What are your most memorable successes at Minuendo?

There have been some standout moments at Minunedo, but the kudos must go to the brilliant team in Oslo.

One moment that’s etched in my memory is from our first ever trade show for Smart Alert at the Safety in Construction Show in Loughborough, UK. There, an experienced occupational hygienist exclaimed that Smart Alert “is so brilliantly simple, why hasn’t somebody done that before?!” 

And once, during a customer meeting following an on-site evaluation when a supervisor ‘complained’ that their team didn’t even take off their hearing protection when they went to the local shops because they forgot that they were wearing it!

We have also gained some pretty incredible customers. I will let you discover them on our website…

What’s next in the product pipeline for Minuendo?

Once we take stock of some great user feedback and solution improvement suggestions we’ve gathered recently, we are looking to further develop Smart Alert. We’ll be offering even more insights within the Smart Alert cloud to further help users understand their noise environment and develop great safety habits while reforming their current ways of working.

We’re also looking to bring a couple of significant new features to the Smart Alert earplug in 2024. You will be the first to know!

What’s your vision for the future of Minuendo?

To organically grow the business and bring our solution to a wider geographical customer base. 

To be recognised as being at the forefront of providing practical solutions that people enjoy using, and which actually drive down the rate of recreational and occupational noise-induced hearing loss.

What do you think the medium-term future holds for the safety industry globally?

Further change and disruption. More safety wearables (‘swearables’, apologies, I couldn’t resist that!), tighter integration of embedded sensors and further deployments of real-time monitoring. 

And we can’t avoid the hottest topic - AI! In my opinion, the term is a bit overplayed and misunderstood, but I believe that data science and machine learning technologies will enable new predictive solutions that will impact safety, health, and wellbeing technologies.

What health and safety issues are you most passionate about?

Apart from hearing safety and noise exposure. I feel that we need to look out for the incredible EHSQ/HSE leaders who work tirelessly to help others. There is rightly a huge emphasis on the mental health and wellbeing of employees, which is driven and managed to a large extent by the safety team. We need to ensure that the safety team itself is being looked after, listened to, and supported.

We can do this by deploying safety digitisation technologies that actually support the safety team and reduce their administrative and reporting (data gathering) burdens, to free them up to deliver safety where they know it has the greatest impact - with the actual team and people in harm's way. Safety digitisation needs to go beyond simply replacing paper with electronic equivalents, it must automate data collection and data entry in such a way that data sets are always up to date, so that all users have high levels of confidence in that data, which they can then use to make better decisions that support better outcomes for workers and organisations.

How can we entice more young talent to work in the health and safety sector?

Create more pathways for young people to build a health and safety career, including more quality apprenticeships programmes that offer support for achieving vocational or even degree-level qualifications. Apprenticeships can provide real alternatives to University degrees. Safety best practices and developing skills on how to work, interact, and persuade people to achieve great safety outcomes are best learned through experience and on-the-job training. 

Neal Muggleton is chief operating officer at Minuendo. For more information, visit www.minuendo.com