Human-Centered Approach to Workplace Safety with Desai Link - 121

Human-Centered Approach to Workplace Safety with Desai Link - 121

From Leading Visionaries Podcast by Anjel B Hartwell & The Creative Age Consulting Group

February 17, 2026 · 29 min · Episode 121

About this episode

Desai Link discusses the importance of a human-centered approach to workplace safety and learning from incidents.

What if the biggest opportunity for learning in your organization is hiding inside your worst day? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Desai Link, safety leader, former lawyer, and author of Beyond the Incident. As the General Manager of Health and Safety for a commercial construction company in New Zealand and co-host of the Circus of Safety Podcast, Desai is reshaping how organizations approach workplace investigations. Whether you lead a team or manage operations, this episode will challenge you to rethink how your organization learns from failure. What You Will Learn: Why settling on “human error” is one of the most unsatisfying and incomplete conclusions in an investigation. How legal principles of evidence can dramatically improve workplace incident investigations. What it means to truly understand and test evidence rather than just collect documents. Why every incident is a learning opportunity rather than simply a compliance exercise. How interrogation, in its healthiest form, simply means asking better questions. The difference between finding fault and uncovering causation. How empathy and rigor can coexist in leadership…

People in this episode

Host: Anjel B. Hartwell

Guest: Desai Link

Topics covered

  • workplace safety
  • human-centered approach
  • learning from failure
  • incident investigations
  • leadership
  • empathy in management

Keywords

  • workplace safety
  • human error
  • incident investigations
  • leadership
  • empathy
  • learning opportunities
  • cross-pollination of skills

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Circus of Safety Podcast, Beyond the Incident

Places: New Zealand

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