Do you have preconceived and stereotypical ideas of what it means to work in construction, and who actually does? Fred Mills found, when he came into the industry, that his family and friends did, thinking of construction employees only as “people that work on sites or at a trades level”.
He wanted to show the world-shaping work done in construction on large influential projects. So he started The B1M, which is now the world’s largest and most subscribed-to video platform about the construction industry.
We spoke to him to find out more, ahead of his appearance at MAD World’s Inaugral Construction Summit on 17th October in London (if you haven’t got your ticket yet, you can see the jam-packed agenda and register here…).
Tell us more about why you set up construction media company B1M?
I really wanted to challenge misconceptions about construction but I found that most of existing media was aimed at architects. There was also media for engineers, but no one was really shouting about the construction industry’s best stories in a compelling, engaging way on Youtube.
I started off doing the content in my spare time in 2012, but when it built some traction, I went fulltime and we now employ 16 people with 30 million people watching our channel each month. We’ve done some very cool things like interview entrepreneur Richard Branson and filmed inside nuclear fusion reactors.
Where do you think the construction industry is now regarding progress in Health and Wellbeing?
The industry has a very good culture around physical health and safety, throughout the sector.
We’re now at the stage where if you got to the gates of a construction site, it would be instinctive to put on a hard hat and high vis boots and gloves.
We’ve got to that level of deep awareness about our physical health and safety, now we need to get to the same place with mental wellbeing. But, at the moment, it tends to get treated as a ‘nice to have’ add on rather than being treated as of equal importance.
It’s been really encouraging to see the progress so far, but the industry’s slow to change. I think we’re still a few years off parity between physical and mental health.
You’ve also got a personal interest in this topic, haven’t you, which you’ve also talked about on your channel?
Yes, definitely. If you look at my CV on LinkedIn you’ll see that I’m quite a successful person, but behind the scenes I’m also someone who has really struggled with their mental health. When that happened it was a scary and lonely experience.
It affected me deeply and I couldn’t understand the reason for it, but I learned it can affect anybody, it’s not a conscious choice. It’s not like you wake up one day and decide to feel miserable. It’s an illness. And it’s something that nearly ended my life at points, so having gone through it, I wanted to make a difference, especially as it’s such a serious issue in construction.
You’ve speared headed a global mental health campaign to help this change, haven’t you, in a bid to get the industry talking?
Yes, I love using my platform to raise awareness of this issue in the industry that I love.
We’ve created this initiative – Get Construction Talking – to really raise awareness of this issue in construction. People can download a free toolkit from www.getconstructiontalking.org, which is for individuals or organisations.
But we’re not the best placed people to diagnose or deal with mental health issues. What we are good at is reaching people and signposting them to help, through the five construction mental health charities that we’ve linked up with for this (this includes Mates in Mind which are partnering with us for the MAD World Construction Summit, see here for a profile of the charity’s Chief Executive Sam Downie).
We’re also raising money for them and we’ve raised over a hundred thousand dollars globally so far, which is something I’m really proud of.
What do you think needs to happen in construction to improve employee mental health and wellbeing?
Frankly, I think there’s needs to be legislation, and this is actually something I’m lobbying for.
Why do you think change has been slow so far?
We have some amazing people doing amazing things in construction.
But we’ve put those people in a set of circumstances where it’s little wonder that they then struggle with their mental health.
What is it about the job circumstances in construction that make it so stressful?
We have a system where everything is designed to be built as cheap as possible and as quickly as possible. We also have a hierarchical supply chain and all of this means that everyone’s under a lot of pressure to get things done all the time.
What needs to change?
We need to build in breathing space and sensible lead times into the system.
But there are alot of issues that need to change. Another fundamental issue is that the industry is male dominated and men aren’t as comfortable sharing our feelings and talking about these topics. That’s partly why I share my own mental health journey on our channel, to help normalise the conversation.
We’ve got to make people believe that it’s OK not to be OK because, where we are at at the moment, is where I was at, which is people are bottling it up and pretending everything is fine when it’s really not.
Also, there’s still a culture around getting to work as early as you can in the morning, which reinforces that idea of ‘I need to keep going, I need to be strong, I can’t have a day off’.
So do you think it would help the issue of talking if more women worked in construction?
Absolutely. And if you look at the statistics, if men do reach out for mental health support, they often go to women in their teams, or in the company which indicates they feel more able to talk to them.
If we had better gender diversity in construction, we would have that higher level of emotional intelligence I think.
How do you think you can encourage more women into construction, then?
It’s a huge question and one I think about alot. Women need to be able to see themselves in successful roles and that’s why I keen not to do the sort of ‘tick box’ content which just says ‘hey! Look! Here’s a woman in construction!’ but instead shows women leading projects and killing it on massive infrastructure.
What’s the most important message you would like to get out to our readership, and particularly those attending the Construction Summit?
We shouldn’t wait for things to happen – like legislation, or culture change – because these are going to take time. We can all, now, talk to our colleagues and check in with those who we work with. We can ask them if they’re OK and look out for signs that someone might be struggling (which we might have to read up on a bit) and we can start doing this today, for free.
But if we all did this it would make a big difference overnight. The worst thing you can do is nothing, doing something will help turn the tide.
The Construction Summit at MAD World is an event committed to building better mental health and wellbeing cultures across the construction industry’s workfroces. The summit is being run in partnership with Mates in Mind, and hosts speakers such as Fred Mills and innovators in other progressive construction companies.
MAD World is on 17th October 2024, and will bring together speakers and attendees from across sectors and with a range of job titles for five tracks of leading-edge content that showcase best practice and provide insights and inspiration for all those looking to achieve maximum engagement with initiatives, optimise investment, stay one step ahead and really make a difference.
The stellar lineup of speakers includes: Professor Dame Carol Black GBE FRCP FMed Sci; Peter Cheese, CEO, CIPD, Vanessa Harwood-Whitcher, Chief Executive, The Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH), Dhavani Bishop, Head of Group Colleague Health & Wellbeing, Tesco, Kirstin Furber, People Director, Channel 4, Dr Clare Fernandes, Chief Medical Officer, BBC, Christian van Stolk, Executive Vice President, RAND Europe, Andrew Gibbons, Group Head of Wellbeing, Recognition and Hybrid Working, HSBC, Karen Brookes, Chief People Officer, Sir Robert McAlpine, Jaimy Fairclough, Wellbeing Specialist – People Division, Sainsbury’s, Dr Femi Oduneye, Vice President Health, Shell International B.V. and many more. You can find out more and register to attend here.
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