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The palette of skills and qualifications that can make up a career as a Health & Safety officer do, of course, have a base e.g. BSc or MSc in Environment Health etc. But what directions are on offer to further the career prospects of H&S officers across both the public and private sectors?

The current view of H&S in many working environments is as something still not taken as seriously as it should be. Many establishments simply view the job of the H&S officer to be something of a nuisance; someone complaining about where they put their morning coffee cup down and so on. But the reality is that H&S is something that needs to be managed in all environments by a dexterous, skilled professional.

Those in advanced Health and Safety officer jobs often sing the praises of working under Local Authority rule for a period, usually near the beginning of your career. Local Authority Health & Safety jobs tend to offer much in the way of dynamic experience, great on-the-job learning and a high level of day to day job variation. For example, enforcing H&S in a Local Authority-run elementary school offers different challenges to that of a car garage, hair dressers, farm etc.

Environmental “eco” guidance is a growing sector within H&S. More businesses than ever are jumping onto the green bandwagon, meaning an H&S officer with enhanced environmental compliance training is often highly sought-after. In this light, Health and Safety officer jobs with skills focussing heavily on environmental enhancement in the workplace look set to be the golden ticket to a bright future career.

Although we primarily operate as an organisation to put professionals in touch with their ideal Health & Safety jobs nationwide, we can also offer an insight into the varied career of the H&S professional. So, if you’re thinking about a career in Health & Safety, here’s our expert checklist of skills and qualifications.

Skills

• A calm demeanour is essential. H&S officers are frequently ignored and disliked in the workplace; whilst this is unacceptable, it’s likely to feature – at least in part – in the career of a Health and Safety officer. The ability to stay calm under pressure is a given; it may be that the Health and Safety officer has to compile accident reports and advisory notices following the death of an employee etc. H&S is often not for the squeamish!
• As in medical careers etc, Health and Safety jobs require continuous self-motivated study and technical development. The drive for constant skill and knowledge growth is indispensable.
• H&S officers frequently need to communicate unwelcome or serious information. Like police officers, H&S officers need excellent communication skills.
• A basic level of health and physical capability is a prerequisite. Few Health and Safety jobs operate from the comfy seat of a chair!

Qualifications

• Along with an accredited BSc or MSc in Environmental Health, the best H&S professionals seek out career development qualifications. These tend to focus around industry specific areas such as NVQs, NEBOSH diplomas or University Masters in areas such as agriculture, working at height, chemical transport etc.

Health and safety jobs perhaps don’t have the most glamorous reputation. However, in reality the health and safety industry is a hugely dynamic sector, and is a great industry for individuals that relish professional challenge, and have the passion, skill and qualifications to improve people’s working lives.

As a health and safety professional has direct bearing over the quality of employees working lives, they have an intrinsic value. The importance of health and safety professionals doesn’t decrease due to recession, and health and safety in the workplace transcends tough economic circumstances. Health and safety jobs and health and safety officer jobs will always be available; however, jobs in the industry should only be taken by those who are equipped and passionate enough to fulfil the often challenging role of the health and safety professional.

As you are dealing with something so important, i.e. the health and wellbeing of employees certain qualifications are critical. Health and safety degrees etc are all great ways into the industry, and without one your prospects of getting health & safety jobs are small to negligible.

Besides the necessary qualifications, certain personal characteristics are also valuable. A health and safety professional needs to be a good communicator, particular in health and safety officer jobs, where you will be required not only to think up and quantify rigorous health and safety strategies, but also implement them, with the help of managers and employees.

A career in health and safety can be highly fulfilling and there is scope for much career development. At OS Recruitment our business is helping professionals seek employment in the health and safety industry, enhancing their career prospects and filling important health and safety roles.

Many occupational health and safety jobs include the word “consultant.” It’s a nebulous term, but basically covers all those health and safety vacancies in the private sector, where the worker visits a variety of companies from a central consultancy office, rather than being employed in-house as the HSO of a single firm.

People think occupational health and safety jobs of this type only involve small company premises. While it’s true many clients are small businesses, a growing number of larger firms are outsourcing their HSO work.

However, generally these big companies already have a fairly rigid H & S infrastructure. It is the small firms who are harder to deal with. The majority still do not comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974, even though it is the UK’s principal Health and Safety directive. Generally they want to comply, but feel that to do so would eat away at their profits, cause dissatisfaction among staff and create massive quantities of paperwork. It is your job to gently steer them towards a different way of thinking.

Another problem is resentment from bosses who feel they know all there is to know about health and safety, and have called in a consultant under duress. They need to be shown that while it’s essential they follow the act, they won’t be packed off to jail for a minor oversight.

The Health and safety jobs we have at OS Recruitment require excellent people skills. You may be training staff in HSAW74 basics one day, and dealing with insurance underwriters the next.

Mention health and safety officer jobs in a dangerous environment, and most people think of iron foundries or offshore oil platforms. But there’s one area that outdoes them both – the farming sector.

Almost 95% of farms are small businesses employing 50 employees or less, and rarely advertise health and safety vacancies directly. However, health and safety inspectors are widely employed by specialist agencies, who expect them to oversee farms and agricultural areas. Health & safety jobs in farming are available through government bodies such as the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Health and Safety Executive, as well as private consultancy firms and overseas charities.

Agricultural health & safety jobs are not for the faint-hearted. It’s not just that it can be a mucky job, with a lot of working outdoors, in all weathers. The industry has one of the highest death and serious injury rates in the UK, with twice as many fatalities in the self-employed sector as those employed by farming organisations. Industrialisation of agriculture has led to large farming conglomerates in places like Wiltshire, but on the whole farming is a small-scale industry in Britain.

This has led to the two leading bodies for health and safety in the UK, the IOSH and HSE, announcing the Innovation In Safety – Small Business Award. The competition has been launched to find new ways of keeping small business operators and their staff safe and healthy at work.

We at OS Recruitment have a wide range of interesting health & safety jobs to choose from, many involving field work.

Health and safety vacancies exist for both graduates and NVQ applicants. You can begin studying for the latter at any time. Even if you leave school with no qualifications at all, you can still work your way up to diploma level (which, at level NVQ 6, equates to a degree in any case.) However, then comes the Catch 22. Many health & safety jobs come with the disclaimer: previous experience preferred (or similar). But how do you get the experience without a job? And how do you get the job without experience?

It isn’t actually as difficult as it sounds. People who take health and safety jobs often do so after several years in a different profession. Work of any kind gives you a basic grounding in OHS, and this can be built on by taking a voluntary role within the organisation – as a fire officer say, or even a first aider. Companies these days have to balance the risk of incurring draconian HSE penalties with handling a tight budget, and are only too glad to pay for staff training, including Health and Safety certificates and qualifications.

And the good news is, we at OS Recruitment have health & safety jobs at all levels of qualification and expertise. Managers are generally expected to have a NEBOSH National Diploma (or equivalent) at level 4, and ideally some previous experience. However, this can be as simple as keeping accurate safety records, which many people do as routine at work anyway. Meanwhile, assistant health and safety jobs ask for no more than a couple of GCSEs, and no prior experience whatsoever.

There are few careers that are redundancy-proof these days. With the current recession, you would think that health and safety vacancies would be on the decline. But in fact the opposite is true. The growing list of government Health and Safety regulations, and the fear of expensive compensation claims if they are breached, means companies who would previously never have thought of advertising health and safety officer jobs are now driven to do so.

Although health and safety vacancies are sometimes advertised in the general press, the majority are found via specialist sites. Jobs are generally entered at graduate or diploma level, but there are ample opportunities for retraining for those employed in a related field. Health and safety covers a huge range of disciplines, including construction site management; the emergency services; nursing, chemistry and environmental science.

Simply put, anyone with a basic knowledge of the workplace can train to be a health and safety officer – with the knowledge that they are entering into one of the most buoyant and secure employment fields in the UK. Of course, as companies shut down redundancies invariably do occur – but health and safety officers are rarely out of work for long. It must be remembered that companies cannot afford to cut back in health and safety issues – they have to comply with the law. And that means a dedicated officer with specialist training in this complex area.

This is why companies often advertise their health and safety jobs with us at OS Recruitment. With us, they know they will get the perfect candidate for the job.

If you’re tired of trawling Monster and other such generic job  sites in an attempt to find occupation health and safety jobs to apply for, here are some suggestions to help you find more of those highly specific, highly sought after jobs — and how to stand out from the crowd while interviewing.

A good place to start looking for health and safety jobs is a trade specific recruitment agency. Why try to find a highly specific job from a generic source? Health and safety job agencies are trained to help you find the exact job that you want. They know the ins and outs of your field of expertise, and they will be able to help you to both find a job to apply for, and how to make a good impression when you do apply.

You can also find occupational health and safety jobs by calling local hospitals, doctors surgeries, and other health related businesses to ask about any vacancies. Many will not be advertised on Web sites like Monster because they are too specific, or because the employer does not wish to sift through thousands of irrelevant CV’s.

When you do find a job to apply for, make sure that your CV is up to date and professional. If you are unsure of how to write a good CV, ask at the job centre or a job agency. You can also research online about how to write a good CV, or hire someone to do it for you. There is no excuse for a poorly written CV.

Considering the important role that health and safety and health and safety officer jobs play within the workplace, it is only natural that there can often be fairly stringent entry requirements for health and safety professions. However, should you meet them, a career in health and safety can be one of the most rewarding that there is.

Whilst a degree is not always essential for health and safety jobs, there is a definite move within the sector to only admit graduates – with the following degrees:

Occupational safety degrees: of course a degree in occupational safety is a great lead in to the health and safety jobs market, and bearing in mind that it is a discipline that will often require you to explain and advise companies and their employees on health and safety issues, an academic knowledge in the subject is desirable.

Engineering degree: depending on the kind of health & safety jobs you are attempting to enter, an engineering degree will often be a requirement; this is especially the case in regards to the more technical strands of health and safety, such as offshore health and safety.

Along with occupational safety degrees and engineering degrees, degrees in life sciences and health studies may also be accepted – again this will depend on your area of interest. Whatever area you choose, a career in health and safety jobs can be one of the most rewarding there is, both in financial terms and in regards to job satisfaction.

You may be looking for a career in the health and safety industry, but don’t know where to start. We’re proud of our approachable nature here at Occupational Safety Recruitment, and will go further than any other recruitment agency to match you with the right position.

We have years of experience in the health and safety industry, and know exactly what employers are looking for when they advertise health & safety jobs. We’re adamant that preparation is key, and believe in the ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ philosophy.

We will help prepare you when you sign up with us when looking for health & safety jobs to give you a better chance of obtaining your dream position. We will go through a telephone interview with yourselves to get a better idea of your personality, skills and what you’re looking for. We can also review your CV to assess where it can be improved and how it can be streamlined to catch an employer’s eye.

We will show you how to be professional when approaching health & safety jobs, and how to best sell your skills that will impress an employer and make you stand out from the crowd. We can also help perfect your basic interview technique, personal development and how to best manage possible offers that come your way.

We will strive to match the right candidate with the right client at Occupational Safety Recruitment and will work in tandem with you to give you the best possible chance of success.