How an MSc in Behaviour Change transformed Paul's career video transcript

So my name is Paul Verrico. I'm the Global Head  of the Eversheds Sutherland Legal Practice,  

EHS function. What that means is that I help  very large organisations around the world  

following major disaster, following workplace  fatality, environment spill, and I also help  

those organisations try and stop things from  going wrong. And in that context, the MSc in  

Behaviour Change has really helped me to be able  to develop intervention programs in a way that  

has greater weight with both boards of directors,  but most crucially, with the people who implement  

safety strategies and compliance controls to make  sure that both them and their colleagues are safer  

and they're in a better regulated environment  where they've got greater prospects of having  

a full and meaningful career. About 10 years ago  in the business that I operate here at Eversheds  

Sutherland, we used to be effectively a death  and destruction, we'll come and sort things  

out when they've gone wrong organisation, and it  became apparent that that's a very poor business  

plan and what clients are actually looking  for was how to avoid a dread moment and so  

probably since pre-pandemic, I was working with  organisations to change their compliance models.  

And it became obvious that very well thought out  academic approaches didn't always have the true  

application in respect of the individuals who had  to implement what was being devised. So for me it  

was really important to understand the appropriate  levers to pull in order for programs to be more  

effective. And so I wanted to engage in the MSc  in Behaviour Change so I could understand that  

personally so I could lead from the front in being  able to devise and implement, but also with the  

people that we engage - the psychologists, and  the experts that I know whether what they were  

telling me was truthful or not or whether in fact  it was an attempt to pull the wool over my eyes.  

So there was an an idea of becoming a practitioner  myself but also being able to effectively be able  

to police the people that we used. The business  that I operate is doing very well at the moment  

and I put that down in no small part to the fact  that the concepts, theories, and application that  

I learned on the MSc in Behaviour Change have been  fundamental in improving the quality of what we  

sell onto clients and clients comment regularly  in respect of the outputs and outcomes that they  

derive from using these kind of programs that  have been created for them. On a personal level,  

my ranking in the independent legal directories  has gone up and now rated as band one for health  

and safety with clients saying things like,  'he really understands the science of safety',  

and I put that down to completing this MSc. The  programme is over three years and the first two  

years really create the underpinning knowledge to  be able to complete the final research project,  

and for me it was a real opportunity to actually  engage with organisations to understand from  

their leadership how they viewed in my case on my  research project the situation in finding blame in  

accident investigation. So I spoke to 12 leaders  of top 250 organisations to understand why things  

were as they were in their organisations. And  that process of understanding people who were  

clients and nonclients was really helpful both  in terms of my engagement, but subsequently that  

research has given me opportunities to speak to  their boards of directors about the findings of  

the research, and I was very pleased to get  a distinction in that final research project.