No matter what industry or environment you work in, unfortunately, accidents do happen. A health and safety professional’s job is to prevent accidents, making people’s time at work as safe and happy as possible.
A career in health and safety can be hugely rewarding and even has the potential to save lives.
In the Health and Safety Executive’s annual statistics for 2016/17, it was reported that 139 people were killed at work in the United Kingdom and there were 609,000 injuries.
With this many accidents and organisations having increasing legal responsibility for their workers’ safety, it’s unlikely that someone with health and safety qualifications will ever not be in high demand.
As well as being a hugely rewarding career choice, there are a number of other benefits you could expect to enjoy as a qualified health and safety professional.
And they are..?
A 2012 IOSH report stated that the average salary of someone with a NEBOSH Diploma qualification is over £43,000, with more experienced health and safety managers and directors earning even higher salaries.
You will also be giving yourself the opportunity to work all over the world.
Plus, every organisation has health and safety legal responsibilities, which means you’ll have the chance to work in a range of industries for businesses of all different types and sizes.
A career in health and safety truly can offer flexibility, a multitude of career options, excellent pay, and the opportunity to improve people’s working lives.
Quick facts
- What does a health and safety practitioner do? A huge range of tasks from creating documents to carrying out inspections.
- Is it for me? A health and safety professional will need to be confident, patient, and have excellent communication skills.
- How do I become qualified? The NEBOSH National General Certificate and the NEBOSH National Diploma are great qualifications that will catch the attention of employers.
- Where can I study? Both NEBOSH qualifications can be completed across the UK with a number of training providers. Online courses are also available.
What exactly does a health & safety practitioner do?
Of course, put simply, a health and safety practitioner is responsible for preventing and minimising accidents in the workplace.
But ultimately, it’s about improving an organisation’s safety culture by inspiring your colleagues to commit to working safely.
No two health and safety roles are the same but these are some of the tasks you would be expected to complete:
- Carrying out safety inductions for new staff members
- Creating and maintaining health and safety documents
- Completing safety inspections and audits
- Keeping up-to-date with any new or amended pieces of legislation
What other skills do I need?
With such a varying role, a health and safety practitioner needs a wide range of skills to be successful:
- Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
- Great analytical skills and the ability to present complex information
- Negotiation and persuasion skills as it will be your job to convince people at every level of an organisation to commit to health and safety
- Patience as not everyone you work with will be seriously committed to health and safety
- Confident IT user
Where to start
Exploring a potential job change into a new industry is daunting but exciting.
Without previous experience, starting a new career in health and safety will be difficult but it’s definitely not impossible. Hundreds of people do it every year.
Right now, a search on popular job board websites for “health and safety” jobs in the United Kingdom gives tens of thousands of results.
With this sort of demand, someone who has no experience in health and safety but holds a top qualification and a passion for the subject should find it easier to kick start their career in this exciting and rewarding area more so than in many other industries.
Your first step should be gaining a qualification such as the NEBOSH National General Certificate which provides a broad understanding of many health and safety topics. This is a great start and will provide opportunities in entry level roles.
This will allow you to start your career and gain experience and develop your knowledge on the job.
If you’re more confident academically, it might be worth considering the higher level NEBOSH National Diploma which is a degree level qualification.
This will put you in a great position to start your career in a role with more responsibility and a higher salary.
Summary
Thanks for the fab information Emma!
This is definitely knowledge that's good to have under your belt - who knows, a career change could be just around the corner!
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