The Story of Global OHS
Learn more about Global Occupational Health Solutions
Pippa’s Story – The Beginning
Global OHS began in 2015, at a time in my life when I was doing far too many things at once. I was working part-time for a provider, taking on self-employed work, and generally spinning far too many plates. I had already spent many years in occupational health and HR by then and had seen both how good it can be and how poor it can become when cost takes precedence over quality.
The decision to set up on my own was never about building a big company. It came from a much simpler place: I wanted the control to do occupational health properly. I enjoyed the time to think, the time to listen, and the time to give practical, defensible advice, not rushed, tick-box, numbers-based medicine. The original aim was to build something ethical, sustainable, and clinically sound that I could be proud to put my name to. Simply put, the ethos was to keep it small but do it well.
The Early Challenges
The first year was, if I’m honest, pretty terrifying. Starting on your own without the safety net of a big organisation is a strange mix of freedom and constant low-level panic. Everything suddenly matters: credibility, money, systems, governance, whether clients will trust you, and whether you have actually remembered to invoice anyone.
What surprised me most was how quickly you stop being ‘just’ a clinician. Overnight, you are also running a business: policies, contracts, emails, accounts, compliance, logistics, all of it. The workload was heavy, and there were definitely moments of self-doubt, but the belief in what I was trying to build kept me going.
Going It Alone
Global OHS started as a one-person operation. I genuinely thought it would stay that way and support me professionally and financially; I never intended for it to be anything bigger.
But our clients stayed, then recommended us, and more work came in, and we began to grow organically.
It became apparent fairly quickly that if we were going to keep delivering the kind of service I believed in, I could not do it alone, and more importantly, I did not want to. Our model caught on; people wanted to work for us, help, and be part of what I was growing.
Growth and Change
By about years three to five, things had really shifted. We went from ‘me, the Pippa Show’ to ‘us’.
As the contracts grew, Steve joined the team and became invaluable in so many ways; not only with regards to clinical capacity, business growth and commercial viability.
At times, my belief in the vision may have wavered, but his never did, and he kept moving us forward.
We brought in administrators (who are, without question, the backbone of the business), nurses, doctors, technicians and even started supporting students through their occupational health training, thus creating the next generation of OH practitioners.
That was a huge moment; it stopped being my business and became a team. The culture that grew was, and still is, family-oriented: supportive, occasionally chaotic, very hard-working, and fiercely protective of quality and of each other. The work also expanded from core health surveillance and vaccinations to more complex case management, larger projects, and higher-risk environments.
Industry Shifts and How We’ve Responded
The occupational health landscape has changed significantly over the last 10–15 years. There’s more commercial pressure, more procurement-led decision-making, more legislation, and, in some parts of the market, a real race to the bottom on price.
Global OHS has deliberately chosen to go the other way. We’ve invested in governance, quality systems, proper clinical time, and evidence-based practice. We’ve decided to build something robust and defensible, even when it would be easier (and cheaper) not to. Resisting the factory OH model in favour of a value-led offer has always been a conscious choice.
For us, we have never needed to market ourselves or invest in a sales team, as simply, good OH sells itself. Our clinicians will speak to new businesses as we know and understand what we can deliver.
Why Occupational Health?
I came into occupational health because it sits in a really unique space: part medicine, part work, part ethics, part prevention and entirely about real people, with the ability to make a real difference to people’s lives.
I’ve found that no two days are ever the same. One day you could be on a construction site doing health surveillance, the next you’re delivering flu clinics in a school, then you’re advising a board or supporting someone through something that might change their life. Very occasionally, you even save a life just by noticing the right thing at the right time.
So this isn’t abstract medicine. It’s practical, applied, human medicine, and that’s why I still love it.
The Business Today
Today, Global OHS is a multi-disciplinary, experienced team working across a wide range of sectors. The scale is entirely different from 2015, but our values and ethos haven’t changed.
We still believe in time with people as one of the most critical factors. Clinically defensible decisions and sensible, proportionate advice. Treating both clients and staff like human beings, not numbers.
What has grown up is the organisation’s infrastructure, governance, and resilience. We have moved from a family model to a commercial one that maintains sight of where we started.
Looking Ahead
The future of Global OHS is exciting. We know our model works, so we need to review some processes, but it is about doing things better, not more cheaply.
If there’s a legacy I care about, it’s this: that Global OHS shows you can build a commercially successful business without compromising your professional values, by creating an environment where staff never become numbers, where time and integrity still matter, and where we produce defensible, evidence-based reports that genuinely add value and change lives for both employers and employees.
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