Stop Hurt at Work
ADVISORs & Ambassadors
Jessica Rowson
Legal Advisor
Jessica is Head of psychiatric injury & Director at Oakwood Solicitors; a specialist lawyer in the niche legal field of stress at work cases with a particular interest in cases involving matters of workplace bullying. She hopes that by supporting her clients in taking legal action against their employers that companies will become better educated and informed on the importance of good mental health in the workplace and avoid the likelihood of future workplace disputes from arising.
She holds a TQUK Level 2 Certificate in awareness of Mental Health Problems and is also a qualified Mental Health First Aider. Jessica also recently contributed her expertise to a BBC documentary. This one-off special highlighted daily workplace interactions and asked a group of 18-30 year-olds whether the behaviours displayed could be deemed as bullying and sexual harassment at work.
Jonathan Wilson
Jonathan has over 28 years’ experience working in the Metropolitan Police with much of that time in leadership roles. He was fortunate to attend leadership courses at the Police Staff College and with the military. During his service Jonathan worked with communities, businesses, local authorities, across a number of government departments and internationally. He has considerable experience in prevention strategies, legislative changes, working with vulnerable groups and partnership work.
Jonathan recently retired and moved with his family to Cornwall to establish a family business running holiday cottages and to pursue the many outdoor activities he enjoys both on and off the water.
Over the past 28 years, he has witnessed a variety of leadership styles and has seen the organisational culture of the police change dramatically. He has a good understanding of how important a healthy positive culture is to the morale of employees. He has challenged inconsistencies between leadership behaviour and policy when necessary.
Jonathan experienced being the target of bullying some years ago; a period of his life that impacted on him considerably. He now dedicates much of his time to challenging workplace bullying and creating positive workplace culture.
Jenny McCullough
Jenny is a former House of Commons Clerk who continued to be active in a campaign to improve working conditions at the House of Commons by speaking and writing about bullying and harassment.
Before moving into publishing as an Editor at Blackstaff Press, she worked as a medical librarian and in university administration.
Paddy Trimmer
As an ILM qualified Leadership and Development coach, Paddy draws upon coaching skills and over 30 years of leadership and management experience to guide his clients through the complexities and challenges of the working environment. His approach enables them to identify, appreciate and reinforce their strengths and confront and manage their weaknesses.
He facilitates each client’s development through active listening, supported by questioning to aid understanding of themselves, challenge to test that understanding and feedback to let them understand what he observes. This confidential process will facilitate the clients in planning the next steps of their journey.
-
ILM 7 Certificate in Leadership and Executive Coaching (2016)
-
Senior Leadership and Management roles in the Royal Navy and Public Sector
-
Coaching support to Charities and Public Sector Organisations
-
Board development coaching
DAVID HOWELL
In July 1989 I joined the police service and began a career that would expose me to all manner of human behaviour, not only from within our communities and those people we policed, but also from within the police service itself. That behaviour ranged from truly inspirational to downright evil and it was that negative and dark side of people’s characters that left a defining and lasting impression on me, prior to retirement in 2019.
During those 30 years I was fortunate enough to have spent 18 years of those years serving on police air support working in the Midlands and latterly in London. This area of policing allowed me the opportunity to work with friends and colleagues whose sole intention was to make a positive difference.
It was however during those last three years of my career that I experienced working within a toxic culture and within an organisation that did not know how to deal with a style of leadership that was based on manipulation, coercion and bullying. I learnt so much from this negative and destructive culture and appreciated, more than ever, what great leadership was and also how important culture is in providing a psychologically safe environment for good people to flourish and develop, ultimately benefiting the communities that they desperately sought to protect and serve.
Although this period was undoubtedly a dark time for me personally, I was however fortunate to be supported by some inspiring people who had gone through, and experienced, similar situations. It was evident that the issue of workplace bullying, and the resultant cultures it produces, was more prevalent than I had initially envisaged.
Workplace bullying is, put quite simply, destructive. Organisations suffer from high rates of sickness, struggle to retain and attract good people and are creatively paralysed as people simply attempt to survive, managing their lives on a day-to-day basis. In the worst cases suicides can be directly attributed to this behaviour. The cost of this behaviour, be it consciously or unconsciously driven, is astronomical with failure being the resultant organisational consequence.
By supporting Conduct Change, in this truly worthwhile cause, I can now turn those negative experiences into a positive, helping others and heightening people’s awareness.
Lisa Seagroatt
Lisa is the Founder and Managing Director of HR Fit for Purpose. She experienced a mental health breakdown in 2015 caused by bullying in the workplace. As a direct consequence of this enforced change in her career, she then set up her own business and helps business leaders to create a healthy workplace culture by looking after their employees.
Lisa is passionate about developing and helping business and employees reach their full potential in the workplace as well as challenging unhealthy HR workplace practices, exposing how poor leadership and management creates a culture of fear, sickness absence and a high turnover of people leading to poor profitability and productivity.
HR Fit for Purpose launched on World Mental Health Day in May 2017 and having previously received support from Enterprise Enfield’s Inspiring Women Programme, Lisa was ultimately selected to receive further support from their Female Founders Accelerator Programme funded by the JP Morgan Foundation. She now acts as an Ambassador and HR Business Advisor for Enterprise Enfield, encouraging other women to reach their full potential in business whilst assisting them with creating a culture of high performance by recruiting the ‘right people into the right places’.
A Lecturer in the CIPD Level 5 Intermediate Diploma qualification in HR Management, Lisa is part of the LEAN East network of HR practitioners currently volunteering as Enterprise Advisers in local secondary schools with Year 10 students. She has a qualification in Genealogical Studies as well as Business Management Studies and is qualified to ‘Train the Trainer’. She has just completed her book, which is a workplace comedy based on poor workplace culture and her mental health experience.
Professor Charlotte Rayner
research advisor
Professor Emeritus of Human Resource Management at University of Portsmouth, and international expert in workplace bullying prevention research, with a speciality in interventions at the organisational level.
Charlotte is also one of the founders of the International Association on Workplace Bullying & Harassment.
Dave Gregson
Dave previously worked in front line health and social care from April 1996 to December 2018. Dave also has and still does work in a range of community and voluntary roles and is a registered carer for family, and a writer.
Between 2011 and 2018 Dave worked for a large national care charity and following changes in the management and staffing plus governance Dave experienced a long period of workplace bullying, which culminated in his dismissal in December 2018. At the time workplace bullying was not widely acknowledged or recognised to the degree that it is today.
Dave won a significant legal case against his former employer and following winning his case set about to raise awareness and increase support and campaign for a change in the law on workplace bullying.
Dave also ran a non for profit community interest company between 2020 and 2022 called Important To Important For focussing on workplace bullying, neurodiversity, mental health and supporting the vulnerable. This mission now continues with the writing. Dave has written books for both children and adults, and had stories published in magazines and online. Dave is also autistic and champions this cause; a lack of acceptance and understanding was something Dave experienced with the bullying whilst an employee of the said care company, also a registered charity.
Dave has taken part and spoken at many events about issues such as workplace bullying and took part in the United Against Workplace Bullying conference in 2021. Dave works closely with Matt Paknis, the global leadership consultant and bestselling writer, Conduct Change Foundation and others. Dave celebrates February 19th a "Victory Against Workplace bullying Day", because it is on this day that he finally won his case in 2020 at the tribunal following a three year period since February 18th 2017, when the bullying started in his then workplace.
Emily Commander,
Head of Strategic Governance at University of Bath
Emily worked as a Clerk in the House of Commons for 10 years, and then spent some time in France before taking up her post as Head of Strategic Governance at the University of Bath.
Emily's experience of bullying in the workplace left her deeply concerned by the failure of any of the parties involved in her case to engage constructively with any of the available resolutions. Their defensiveness led instead to an ever-increasing cycle of escalation, which put those resolutions further and further out of reach.
As a result, Emily is keen both to enhance public understanding of workplace bullying, and to facilitate straightforward routes to solutions that go beyond blame and reparation and enable everyone to move forward constructively.
"I am attracted by the positive approach being taken by the Conduct Change project and would like to use my experience, influence and skills to help move it forward."
SALLY BENDTsON
Sally has over 15 years’ HR experience working for high-profile companies, such as the BBC, Red Bee Media, The Guardian, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. She also has experience of working across the Finance, Hospitality and Property Investment sectors. Having moved from London to her hometown of Harrogate in 2016, Sally set up her own company, Limelight HR to help creative businesses who could benefit from her expertise; people who saw the potential in their staff, but who didn’t have access to HR support as a small, growing company.
Sally has dealt with numerous cases of bullying and harassment over the years and has found a flexible, considered and people-focused approach has been key to reaching a positive outcome for all involved. Sally believes that everyone has a right to be happy at work; happy people means happy bosses which leads to a productive, fun, supportive workplace. This is why Sally is a passionate supporter of Conduct Change and would like to see a fundamental change in the way bullying and harassment are recognised and approached.
chloe gough
Chloe is a work psychologist and doctoral researcher at Loughborough University, based in the field of workplace health and well-being. Specifically, her research focusses on workplace bullying and aims to improve workplace bullying interventions through the notion of readiness. Chloe also teaches undergraduates at the university and undertakes external consultancy work.
ANDY TAYLOR BOOCOCK
It could be very easy for some people to judge Andy, also known as Very Inky Dude purely based on his many tattoos, but you would be missing out on so much if you don't get to know the warm, caring and positive man behind the ink.
Andy loves to live life to the full. The tattoos led him to diversify his career by becoming a model and style influencer. Nothing fulfills him quite as much as working as an A&E nurse though. He started nursing in 1988 as a nursing auxiliary (now called a health care support worker) at Middleton hospital, Ilkley until 1990, when he commenced his nurse training. On qualifying, he continued working as a staff nurse/senior staff nurse in A&E/ITU/CCU. In 1997 he became a Paramedic, and worked his way up to become a field base assessor (working with newly qualified and re-qualifying paramedics). This continued until 2007 when he felt he needed a break and went to work for Virgin Atlantic for about 18 months - paid to fly the world and party all over the world, best job ever!!
Strange as it may seem, Andy missed his emergency work and returned to the post as staff nurse in A &E at Bury, Airedale and Manchester. He then returned to Airedale as a charge nurse, which is where he is to this day, combining this with modelling and promotional work by working long days or nights (13 hour shifts) which gives him time off to stand in front of cameras and go to as many parties as possible!!
Andy has been on the front line throughout the coronavirus pandemic, but even in these difficult times, Andy has remained positive, and has found time to offer support to members of staff who were feeling bullied, as well as speaking up on their behalf.
Andy also champions the deaf community, having lost a significant part of his hearing himself (another common bond with our Founder, Nicki Eyre!), and has heard of young children having their hearing aids pulled from their ears and stamped on by bullies. He now uses his influence to support the new Deaf Identity fashion label.
Within minutes of our first conversation, when Nicki spoke about the work that Conduct Change was doing to prevent workplace bullying, Andy asked how he could help, and was one of the first Ambassadors to come on board.
We're delighted to have his support.
In Andy's words "Stay positive and enjoy life always .. "