# Founder LinkedIn kit For `Jake Hughes`, founder of TeamTalk (team-comms.com). One sentence, used throughout: **TeamTalk gets a notice to every worker on site in their own language, and proves who read it.** Everything below is written to be copied and pasted. Character counts are exact and include line breaks. There are no invented customers, results or testimonials anywhere in this file, because there are none yet. Where a post would normally carry a customer proof point it carries published research or an honest first-person observation instead. --- ## 1. Profile headline LinkedIn caps the headline at **220 characters**. All three options are inside that. **Option A** ``` Founder, TeamTalk | Site notices in every worker's language, with a record of who confirmed | Phone number login, no app store | Built for UK HSEQ, construction, catering and FM ``` [177 characters] **Option B** ``` I build software that gets a safety notice to every worker on site in their own language, and proves who read it | Founder, TeamTalk ``` [132 characters] **Option C** ``` Founder, TeamTalk | Toolbox talk evidence without the clipboard | Translated notices, confirmed reads and a printable record per person | UK hosted ``` [147 characters] **Recommended: Option A.** It states the promise, kills the biggest objection (another app) in the same breath, and carries the words an HSEQ lead actually types into LinkedIn search. --- ## 2. About section Placeholders to fill: `Jake Hughes`, `thirty`, `[what you did before]`, `[PHONE]`, `[EMAIL]`. Fill `[what you did before]` with the role and the company only, not a finished sentence: the sentence is already written round it. ``` On a UK construction site, non-English-speaking operatives average 34% of the workforce, and UK contractors have reported up to 75% (University of Reading / RICS, 2026). The toolbox talk still goes out in English. The record of it is a signature on a damp sheet in a site cabin. For thirty years I was Founding Partner and Chairman of Hunter Design, helping developers and brands say things clearly. The same gap kept coming back. Managers are not careless. They brief people constantly. They just cannot prove it afterwards, and often the briefing never landed in a language the worker reads. That matters more than it sounds. Section 40 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 reverses the burden of proof: where a duty is qualified by "so far as is reasonably practicable", it is for the employer to prove that it was not reasonably practicable to do more than was done. Regulation 10 of the 1999 Management Regulations asks for information that is "comprehensible". HSE itself says health and safety law does not require workers to be able to speak English, and lists translation software among the acceptable ways to get the message across. So I am building TeamTalk. A notice goes out and every worker gets it in their own language, on their own phone. No app store, no work email, just a phone number and a code. Must-read posts need a tap to confirm, and you get the list of who has and who has not, a chase list, and a printable record per person. The honest limits, because they always come up: it is machine translation, good for notices, not for legal wording. No single sign-on. It is not a rota, a RAMS tool or a document control system. I would rather hear how you handle this than pitch at you. Give me 25 minutes, or message me and I will show you a notice landing on a phone in three languages. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. Jake Hughes [PHONE] / [EMAIL] ``` [2,005 characters] --- ## 3. Ten posts Each is under 1,300 characters including line breaks. Two of the ten (posts 3 and 8) close with a product line; the other eight are useful whether or not the reader ever buys anything. ### Post 1. Section 40, the reversed burden ``` In an HSE prosecution you do not have to be proved to have failed. You have to prove you did enough. That is section 40 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Where a duty is qualified by "so far as is reasonably practicable", the burden sits with the accused: it is for you to prove that it was not reasonably practicable to do more than was in fact done. Read that twice if you have never seen it written down. Most of criminal law runs the other way. So the question was never "did we brief them". It is "what can we put in front of a court eighteen months from now". A paper sheet with a scrawled signature says a name was in a room. It does not say what was said. It does not say in what language. It does not say whether the man who signed it reads English. One thing to try this week. Pick your busiest site. Ask for the evidence of the last safety-critical briefing, per person, not per gang. Time how long it takes to arrive, and read what it actually proves. If the honest answer is a lever arch file and a phone call to a foreman who left in March, you have found your gap. Better to find it now than in a witness box. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,296 characters] **Source to cite:** Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, s.40 (reverse burden of proof). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/40 **Post this when:** the week an HSE prosecution or a large fine is in the trade press, or the first full week of January when annual H&S plans are being written. ### Post 2. Section 2, the duty to tell people ``` There is a line in the 1974 Act that most site teams have never read. Section 2(3) says the employer must prepare a written health and safety policy statement, and must bring "the statement and any revision of it to the notice of all of his employees". All of his employees. And any revision of it. Section 2(2)(c) sits just above it: the employer must provide "such information, instruction, training and supervision as is necessary" for health and safety at work. Neither section tells you how to evidence it. That is the awkward part. Parliament wrote a duty to communicate and left the proof entirely to you. So a fair test of your system, whatever it is: When the policy was last revised, how did the night shift find out? What shows that the agency labourers who started that Monday were told? If the answer is "it went on the noticeboard" or "it went in the group", that is a distribution method, not a record. The revision is the bit people miss. Version one gets briefed properly at induction. Version four goes in an email to people who do not have email. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,224 characters] **Source to cite:** Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, s.2(2)(c) and s.2(3). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/2 **Post this when:** just after you or a client has revised a health and safety policy, or in the run-up to an annual policy review cycle in the spring. ### Post 3. The word "comprehensible" ``` One word in the 1999 regulations does more work than any other. Comprehensible. Regulation 10(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires an employer to provide employees with "comprehensible and relevant information" on the risks identified by the risk assessment, the preventive and protective measures, emergency procedures, and risks arising from other employers' activities. Not available. Not issued. Not displayed. Comprehensible. Information handed to a worker in a language they do not read is arguably not comprehensible information, and therefore arguably does not discharge the duty. Nobody has to prove they failed to understand it. You have to show you made it understandable. Hold that next to the numbers. UK contractors surveyed by the University of Reading and RICS in 2026 reported non-English-speaking operatives averaging 34% of their workforce, and up to 75%. This is the reason every notice in the thing I am building is translated the moment it is published, and why the record shows which language the worker actually read it in. Happy to show you that on a phone if it is useful. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,293 characters] **Source to cite:** MHSWR 1999, reg. 10(1). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3242/regulation/10/made · University of Reading / RICS, Built Environment Journal, 2026 (RICS MODUS, 30 March 2026; research.reading.ac.uk, 21 April 2026). **Post this when:** any week. This is the strongest evergreen post in the set. Good as your third or fourth post, once people know who you are. ### Post 4. "The subcontractors aren't our employees" ``` "The subcontractors aren't our employees." It is the most common answer I get when I ask how briefings reach everyone on site. Regulation 12 answers it. Regulation 12 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 extends the information duty to the employees of outside undertakings working in your undertaking. The people on your site who are on someone else's payroll are still people you owe comprehensible information to. Which is awkward, because they are exactly the population your system does not have. The directly employed have inductions, records and a place on the org chart. The agency groundworker who arrives for a fortnight has a signature on a sheet, if that. UK construction runs on subcontracted and self-employed labour. That is not a fringe case. On most sites it is the majority of the people standing in front of the excavator. A question worth putting to your team this week: of everyone who was on site last Tuesday, what proportion could you name, and of those, how many could you evidence a briefing for? The gap between those two numbers is the risk. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,252 characters] **Source to cite:** MHSWR 1999, reg. 12 (information for employees of outside undertakings). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3242/regulation/12/made **Post this when:** after a conversation with a contractor who used this objection. It reads best as a reply to something real you were told that week. ### Post 5. CDM 15(8) is not just the principal contractor ``` CDM does not only bind the principal contractor. Regulation 15(8) says "a contractor". "A contractor must provide each worker under their control with appropriate supervision, instructions and information so that construction work can be carried out, so far as is reasonably practicable, without risks to health and safety." Each worker under their control. Every contractor on the site, not just the one with the logo on the hoarding. Regulation 15(9) then tells you what that information has to include: 1. A suitable site induction, where not already provided by the principal contractor. 2. The procedures to be followed in the event of serious and imminent danger. 3. The risks from the risk assessments and from other contractors' activities. 4. Any other information necessary to enable the worker to comply with the relevant statutory provisions. That is not a regulation. It is a checklist, and it is already written for you. Print it. Put it on the wall. For each of the four, answer two questions: how does it reach every worker under our control, and what would we produce if someone asked for evidence that it did? I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,286 characters] **Source to cite:** CDM 2015, reg. 15(8) and 15(9). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/51/regulation/15/made **Post this when:** at a site mobilisation, or in the first week of a new project when CDM duties are front of mind for your audience. ### Post 6. HSE has already blessed the fix ``` HSE says health and safety law does not require workers to be able to speak English. It also tells you to use translation software. Both of those are from HSE's own guidance for employers of migrant workers, on language issues, updated 4 June 2024: "Employers have a duty to provide comprehensible information to workers. This does not have to be in writing or even necessarily in English, as long as work instructions, risks, safety measures and emergency procedures are clearly communicated to all workers." "Health and safety law does not require workers to be able to speak English." And in HSE's list of ways to communicate effectively, alongside a bilingual employee, an accredited interpreter, a buddy system and clear simple English, sits this: "use professional translation software or free online tools." I keep meeting managers who assume translating a briefing is somehow risky, or a shortcut, or not really compliant. The regulator wrote the opposite down and published it. The permission has been there since at least 2024. What is missing is a way of doing it that also leaves a record. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,258 characters] **Source to cite:** HSE, "Employing migrant workers: help with language issues", updated 4 June 2024. https://www.hse.gov.uk/migrantworkers/employer/help-with-language-issues.htm **Post this when:** shortly after posting the "comprehensible" post (post 3), as the natural follow-up. Leave a week between them. ### Post 7. The numbers on a UK site ``` UK contractors surveyed by the University of Reading and RICS reported non-English-speaking operatives at up to 75% of their workforce, with an average of 34%. That is 2026 research, not a decade-old figure. The older official picture points the same way. ONS, in its analysis of migrant labour in the construction industry published 23 August 2018, put non-UK nationals at 40% of London's construction of buildings workforce, around 70,000 people, and at 13% UK-wide in the same sub-sector. Now hold those numbers next to the last toolbox talk on your busiest site. Written in English. Delivered in English. Signed for in English. I am not making a point about immigration or about English language skills. I am making a point about evidence. If a third of the room did not follow it, you did not deliver a briefing. You delivered a signature. Two questions worth asking your site managers this week, because most head offices genuinely do not know the answer: How many languages are spoken on our biggest site? And who decided that number was small enough to ignore? ``` [1,077 characters] **Source to cite:** University of Reading / RICS, Built Environment Journal, 2026 (RICS MODUS, 30 March 2026; research.reading.ac.uk, 21 April 2026) · ONS, "Migrant labour force within the construction industry", 23 August 2018. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/migrantlabourforcewithintheconstructionindustry/august2018 **Post this when:** early in your posting run. It is the most shareable of the ten and it sets up posts 3 and 6. ### Post 8. Two blue ticks are not a record ``` Two blue ticks prove a phone received a message. They do not prove that a named person read a specific briefing, in a language they understand, before they walked onto site. Three things about the ticks, none of them controversial: They can be switched off. Read receipts are the recipient's setting, not yours. They are per message, not per person. On a group of forty you are reading a summary of devices, not a register of people. There is no export. Nothing comes out of a WhatsApp group that an inspector, an insurer or a solicitor would accept as a briefing record. A screenshot of a chat is not a document management system. None of that makes WhatsApp bad. It is fast, everyone has it, and it is genuinely the reason a lot of urgent messages land at all. Keep WhatsApp for the banter. Move anything you would have to defend onto a system that produces a record. That is the whole distinction, and it is worth being clear about it with your site teams before someone asks you for the record and you find out what you have. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,187 characters] **Source to cite:** none needed (opinion / product description). If challenged on read receipts, point to WhatsApp's own help page on turning read receipts off. **Post this when:** any time. Expect comments defending WhatsApp; answer every one politely, because that thread is where the leads come from. ### Post 9. Whose phone is the record on ``` If a subject access request lands, your foreman's personal phone is in scope. This is the part of the WhatsApp question that nobody enjoys. The ICO's right of access guidance, updated 8 December 2025, is direct about it: if staff hold personal data on private messaging apps, "you should ask them to search their private emails, devices or instant messaging applications". So one request, from one disgruntled operative, reaches into your supervisors' own handsets. And you are the person who has to go and ask them. And it is not theoretical. The ICO's report Behind the screens, published 11 July 2022 by Commissioner John Edwards, looked at private messaging in the Department of Health and Social Care. DHSC received a reprimand. Not a fine, but a published one, and a set of findings nobody would want read out in a tender interview. Where safety communication lives is a governance decision, not an IT preference. Worth making it on purpose. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,102 characters] **Source to cite:** ICO, "Right of access" guidance, updated 8 December 2025 · ICO, "Behind the screens: maintaining government transparency and data security in the age of messaging apps", 11 July 2022, John Edwards, Information Commissioner. https://ico.org.uk/media2/migrated/4020886/behind-the-screens.pdf **Post this when:** any week, but it lands hardest alongside a news story about disclosure, messaging apps or a data protection reprimand. ### Post 10. The two-column exercise ``` Most employers I speak to have done more than they can show. There is a policy. There was a briefing. Someone talked to the gang about it. None of it exists in a form you could hand to anybody who asked, and on a multilingual site a good deal of it was delivered in a language part of the workforce does not read. An exercise worth an afternoon, whatever tools you use: Write down the things you already do. The briefings, the inductions, the policies you communicate. Next to each one, write what evidence exists that it reached each person, by name. Where the second column is blank, you have found the work. That is true today, under duties that are already in force, and it needs no new law to make it worth doing. One line on the law, and check it before you repeat it. The harassment standard for employers is due to be strengthened under the Employment Rights Act 2025, and communicating a policy to a workforce that does not all read English is one of the places the second column tends to be empty. Commencement dates move. Verify it against the current Government roadmap on the day you post, and do not plan a purchase around it. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. ``` [1,296 characters] **Source to cite:** Employment Rights Act 2025 (strengthened harassment duties) · HM Government, "Implementing the Plan to Make Work Pay" roadmap. Cite the roadmap generally and check the current version for the commencement date on the day you post. > **Check before posting:** verify the commencement date against the current version of the Government roadmap on the day you post. Commencement dates move, and being corrected on a date in public undoes the credibility of the other nine posts. Do not use the Act as a reason to buy anything: third-party harassment duties have little to do with translated toolbox talks, and an HR director will see the stretch immediately. **Post this when:** any week. It is the least legal of the ten and the most practical, so it works as a follow-up to a post that got argued with. --- ## 4. Thirty-second video script Phone shot, face to camera, landscape or square. Natural pace, no script read aloud from a screen. | What is said | What is on screen | |---|---| | "On a UK site, non-English-speaking operatives average a third of the workforce. Some contractors report three quarters. That's Reading and RICS." | You, face to camera, in a plain shirt, standing on the perimeter of a site with the hoarding behind you. No hi-vis: you do not work on the site, and a founder in borrowed PPE reads as costume to the people you are selling to. Let the product wear the hi-vis. Lower third: `Jake Hughes`, Founder, TeamTalk. | | "The toolbox talk still goes out in English. The record is a signature on a sheet." | Cut to a still of a paper toolbox talk sign-off sheet on a clipboard. Two seconds, no longer. | | "I'm building TeamTalk. You post the notice once. Every worker reads it in their own language." | Screen recording: type a short notice, hit publish, cut to a phone showing the same notice in Polish. | | "They tap to confirm, and you get the list of who hasn't." | Screen recording: the reach report, then the chase list with names remaining. | | "No app store. Just a phone number. Message me and I'll show you one landing." | Back to face to camera. End card: team-comms.com and `[PHONE]`. | **Spoken word count: 80 words.** That is about 30 seconds at a natural speaking pace. If you run long, cut the second line first. **Shot list** 1. Film: 20 seconds of you talking, in one take, outdoors on a site perimeter, in a plain shirt, phone at eye level on something solid. Shoot it three times and keep the third. 2. Film or photograph: one paper toolbox talk sign-off sheet on a clipboard. Borrow a real one if you can. Do not show real names. 3. Screen record: publishing a notice in the admin, on a laptop. 4. Screen record: the same notice arriving on a phone in Polish. Film the actual phone if the screen recording looks flat. 5. Screen record: the reach report, then the chase list. 6. Make: one end card with team-comms.com and `[PHONE]`. **Captions.** Burn them in. Most LinkedIn video is watched with the sound off, so a video without visible captions is a video nobody watched. LinkedIn's auto-captions are not enough on their own: check every one of the 80 words, especially "TeamTalk", "toolbox" and "RICS", which auto-captioning routinely mangles. Large text, high contrast, positioned above the bottom edge so the platform's own interface does not sit on top of it. --- ## 5. Connection request notes for HSEQ leads LinkedIn caps a connection note at **300 characters**. All three are inside that. **Variant 1: housebuilder or main contractor** ``` [NAME], I noticed [COMPANY] has sites live across [REGION]. I build software that gets a site notice out in every worker's language and records who confirmed it. Not pitching: I'm trying to learn how HSEQ leads actually evidence briefings today. Would you connect? ``` [264 characters] **Variant 2: contract caterer** ``` [NAME], a question I keep asking caterers: when an allergen change or a recall goes out, how do you know every kitchen has read it? I build a tool that shows exactly that, in each person's language. I'd like to connect and hear how [COMPANY] handles it today. ``` [259 characters] **Variant 3: FM or logistics** ``` [NAME], most FM and logistics teams I speak to run safety comms through WhatsApp groups on personal phones. I'm building the version that produces a record and locks leavers out on their last day. Would like to connect and hear how [COMPANY] does it. ``` [250 characters] **Guidance on the notes** 1. Always write the note. Personalised requests are accepted far more often than generic ones, and that needs no citation. The figures usually quoted, about 45% against about 15%, come from SalesRobot, a LinkedIn automation vendor, published as marketing for its own product rather than as research. Treat them as a direction of travel, not a number, and do not call them "the outbound research" in front of anybody. Do not use the tool they advertise either: automated connection and messaging breaches LinkedIn's user agreement. 2. Plan for one reply per ten connections. The same vendor puts the reply rate after connecting at roughly one in ten. Whatever the real figure, a week of 80 accepted connections is a handful of conversations, not a pipeline. Pair it with email and a phone call. 3. Stay at 80 to 100 requests a week and watch the acceptance rate. Below 20% acceptance you are in throttling territory, so stop, rewrite the note and the targeting, and start again rather than pushing through. **The marketing rules for connection notes and direct messages** A connection note or a message that promotes a product is direct marketing, whatever the platform calls it, and the ICO has treated messages sent inside a platform as electronic mail for direct-marketing purposes in some circumstances. Work to the same discipline you use for cold email: - **Corporate targets only.** Under PECR the corporate-subscriber position is what makes unsolicited business-to-business contact workable: limited companies, PLCs, LLPs and, in Scotland, partnerships. It does not cover sole traders, ordinary partnerships elsewhere in the UK, or a personal account being used personally. On LinkedIn that means people you are approaching in a named role at a named company. - **A human volume.** If you could not comfortably account for the number you sent in a week to the person who received them, it is too many. The numbers above are a ceiling, not a target. - **Honour an opt-out the first time, on every channel.** "No thanks", or no answer after two messages, ends it. Keep the list of people who have asked you to stop and check it before you send, including before you email them. - **Say who you are and why.** Under UK GDPR you have to be able to say who you contacted, why, on what basis, and where you got the contact from. A connection note that hides the commercial purpose fails that test and also reads badly. I'm a software founder quoting the regulations, not a lawyer or a safety practitioner; check anything here against the source before you rely on it. --- ## 6. Posting rhythm Two posts a week is plenty. Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Post the ten above in this order: 7, 1, 3, 6, 5, 2, 8, 4, 9, 10. That opens with the numbers, follows with the strongest legal post while people are still deciding whether to follow you, and closes with the two that ask the reader to go and do something. Reply to every comment within the first hour. The comments are the product. Nothing in this kit is worth as much as one HSEQ manager telling you in public how they currently evidence a toolbox talk. Do not post all ten in a fortnight. Ten posts is five weeks of material. --- ## What you must fill in before using this | Placeholder | Where it appears | Note | |---|---|---| | `Jake Hughes` | Headline options, About sign-off, video lower third | Your name as it appears on your profile. | | `thirty` | About, second paragraph | Career length, e.g. "fifteen". | | `[what you did before]` | About, second paragraph | The role and the company only, e.g. "Founding Partner and Chairman of Hunter Design". The sentence around it is already written, so do not paste a finished clause in or it will duplicate itself. | | `[PHONE]` | About sign-off, video end card | Mobile. Put it in plain digits so it is tappable. | | `[EMAIL]` | About sign-off | The address you will actually watch. | | `[NAME]` | All three connection notes | The recipient's first name, correctly spelled. | | `[COMPANY]` | Connection note variants 1, 2 and 3 | Their organisation, named the way they name it. | | `[REGION]` | Connection note variant 1 | The region or division you have actually looked up. | **Two more things to do before you post anything.** Check the Employment Rights Act commencement date in post 10 against the current Government roadmap on the day you post it. Read every legal citation in this kit against the primary source before it goes out under your name. They are all linked. It takes twenty minutes once, and it is the difference between being the person who knows this and the person who was corrected in the comments.