Aim and ambition

Clearly a man who rises to a challenge, his current pursuit is P90X, an intensive 90-day home fitness workout that mixes body-weight training, cardio, martial arts and yoga, and a nutritional plan to enhance mental and physical health.

 

It may have been this aspirational spirit, sense of adventure and desire to take on tough challenges that led IOSH to headhunt him from the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IMEA); if so, it was an inspired choice. 

 

His ability to articulate a vision on how to take a professional body forward clearly added to his credentials, but he also cites his extensive business experience and management capabilities in Costain, Shell and BG Group as a deciding factor.

 

“All of these positions were in health and safety sensitive sectors,” he reflects. “Running an oil and gas business, you are ultimately responsible for health and safety. My understanding, interest and passion for it, is no less than the professionals that deliver it.”His international experience — managing businesses in such far flung countries as Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and Poland, often in

hazardous environments — was the icing on the cake for an organisation with global reach. 

 

Jan officially took up the CEO position last April, taking over the reins from Rob Strange. Over the past eight months, he’s been instrumental in developing IOSH’s five-year road map, an approach to delivering the institution’s strategy that includes enhancing the profession’s influence, exploring commercial opportunities for expansion, membership development and supporting its international impact.

 

“The question is how do you deliver all of that? Running a professional body is extremely complex, in some ways more so than managing a commercial entity where drivers and outcomes are clearer,” he explains. 

 

“You have so many committees and groups, so many disparate and, at times, conflicting inputs, and with all of them you are trying to galvanise a profession out of it to move it forward. That is a real challenge.”

 

As an experienced manager, Jan is wary of promising too much without first setting out clearly how IOSH’s ambitions can be delivered, especially in an ever-changing world. 

 

One of the main reasons he wants IOSH to develop a road map is to create greater transparency, so that members and external stakeholders alike can see how the institution is delivering its long-term vision. It’s also important, he adds, for the “fantastic staff at IOSH” to get a clearer sense of the journey.  

 

“My personal belief is that with 43,000 members embedded in organisations across the world we need to be, and should be, much more aspirational in what we do,” he says. “I think with that collective knowledge and experience, we’re in a strong position to shape the agenda.”

 

But what does that mean in practice? When it comes to influential leaders, it means IOSH talking to the profession’s strategic leaders: those who are armed with the experience and expertise to help create an evidence base that will ultimately extend the profession’s reach.

 

“There are already members out there pushing the boundaries and they understand this area very well,” he says. “How we engage them and how we use that knowledge to drive what the profession is and how we support the other members, that’s the process.”

 

However, time, or lack of it, is a major barrier to engagement. Strategic leaders he’s spoken to are keen to share a wealth of expertise and knowledge but usually work in demanding environments that offer little respite.

 

“The challenge is to find light touch ways to get their input into what we are already doing with our sector groups and existing membership structures,” he offers as a solution.

 

Membership development is one of the landmark destinations on IOSH’s road map. As part of the journey, the institution plans to reinstate a professional standards committee for health and safety practice. It’s about clarifying what a professional is and the standards that they will need to meet. Continuing professional development (CPD) will be linked to this. 

 

In the pipeline and underpinning it all is a competency framework that will enable members to plot their careers more effectively in the context of clear organisational needs.

 

“Conceptually, it’s mapping out ‘what is the profession?’ and articulating it,” he says.  “By having a competency framework, we can show much more clearly what the profession looks like and what it does, as well as what competencies you need to progress and be effective. That’s not there at the moment and IOSH will need to own a competency framework in the medium-term.”

 

IOSH has already engaged a selection of senior members that have competency frameworks through their organisations to canvass views. Jan hopes the institution will have a strawman outline ready in the next few months for discussion among the wider membership.

 

“We’ve built a lot of experience into the framework but now we’re going to shape it, take it out to members and test it.”

 

Arming members with the skills they need to be competent in the future also means identifying the key trends impacting on the profession. It is something that Jan touched on in his speech at the SHP-IOSH awards and looms large in his thinking. 

 

“I am surprised, for example, by how many of our members I meet who report in a corporate social responsibility line. In some organisations that is the route through which we can influence. Organisations are recognising that this is part of a social-responsibility agenda as much as anything else. It’s about noticing trends and seeing how they are managed,” he says. 

 

“It’s interesting because people would traditionally consider health and safety practitioners to sit in an operational, facilities role, which of course many of them do. It’s the tip of the iceberg but it does define a trend that we have to be aware of and use to our advantage.”

 

Another emerging area is the health and wellbeing agenda, which neatly dovetails with health and safety. He recognises its importance and says it’s a challenge for the profession. 

 

“I have met individual members who do it very successfully in their roles. The question is how do we build it into our profession’s proposition? How does it fit, how is it supported and how do we engage with new stakeholders?”

 

Under Jan’s leadership, IOSH has identified a number of prominent issues that will bear hugely on the profession, like nanotechnology, changing employment structures, an ageing workforce and sustainability. He readily admits that IOSH is not currently taking these forward in a sufficiently structured way. 

 

“We have a big responsibility. We are, through our members, the key interface in organisations between business and everything that is health and safety. How we support members and their organisations, and how we bring all this knowledge and expertise to bear is absolutely essential. That’s why we have to work more closely with all sorts of organisations.”

 

It’s an interesting point and one that leads to IOSH’s relationship with the Government. David Cameron’s party in the coalition has been critical of health and safety at times and there is a perception among some members that IOSH is more concerned about maintaining good relations with ministers than challenging them on policy. How does he respond?

 

“Our activity has always got to be based on our desired outcome, which is creating a world which is safe, healthy and sustainable. We have to be driven by that outcome and to do what is proven to be effective,” he argues. “Although there is a campaigning element to what we do, we are not at the core a campaigning organisation. We are not there to make friends or not make friends with politicians.”

 

IOSH, he explains, is merely developing a relationship that will enable the institution to be more effective in shaping how policy ideas are implemented. 

 

“Politicians are often in a hurry. They might have some good ideas but they don’t think a lot about implementation. That’s where I think the professional body has a really important role to play,” he continues. 

 

“We have the evidence base, people that are embedded in organisations that can say, ‘This works and this doesn’t work’. We are not just a campaigning body for health and safety. Our arguments are based on evidence, based on real people doing serious jobs.”

 

Having said this, Jan cites a number of issues where IOSH has held the Government to account on its policy. This includes opposing ministers’ proposals to exempt certain self-employed people from health and safety legislation, which IOSH presented to the Joint Scrutiny Committee and supporting the streamlining and simplification of health and safety law and guidance but only where it does not lower the standards of worker protection.

 

On the issue of the deregulatory agenda, he believes that IOSH can shape the outcome through persuasion so that health and safety is not perceived as a hindrance by government but rather as an enabler for a strong resilient business.  

 

“I’d like to think that I could sit down with any politician that has a de-regulatory agenda and help them make it effective in a way that enhances our health and safety at work, that improves our international reputation for excellence but doesn’t hinder economic growth and progress.”

 

But it’s not just government that IOSH needs to influence, he argues. It is businesses, non-governmental organisations and other professional bodies in different sectors. It’s about finding out what their needs are and whether IOSH is having the right dialogue with them. This will require IOSH adopting a fresh mindset.

 

“Organisations are increasingly looking for assurance, a risk-based approach to dealing with health and safety. They need to have the right governance and competencies in place,” he explains. 

 

“As the world is changing and we want to make a bigger impact, we need to have a clearer narrative to help us engage with external stakeholders.”

 

IOSH will also need to challenge a perception held by some that it continues to represent the “old boy network”. Jan acknowledged that he has heard this from some stakeholders. He recognises that IOSH has an aging membership and needs to be more proactive in encouraging fresh blood into the ranks of its committed volunteers.

 

“We need to attract more young people, find new ways of engaging and we need to have a much more diverse structure to our membership,” he says.

 

Broader membership

 

While IOSH needs to be much more effective in its marketing to reflect a broader membership, Jan believes that the competency framework will help to make IOSH a more representative profession. There are plenty of positives to draw on. 

 

“The irony is that I don’t think I’ve ever worked in an organisation that has all the ‘bullets to shoot at the stars’,” he says.

 

“We’ve got the collective membership experience, we’ve got the position and we’ve got a really strong volunteer ethic. I’ve never seen anything like that. We are in a strong financial position, we are the most international of any of the professional bodies and we’ve got 43,000 members embedded in organisations.” 

 

Jan argues that society and organisations need a strong professional body with global reach and IOSH is best placed to fill that role. Under his watch, future policy will no longer be UK-centric.

 

“I am going to insist that if we develop any new frameworks, new approaches and ways to communicate with members, that it works internationally,” he confides. “The things that we develop in the future have to be internationally-relevant.”

 

Looking to the future, Jan has lofty ambitions for IOSH and why not? He wants the institution to become the leading global voice for health and safety. 

 

“Given our strong starting point and our charitable objectives, it’s our responsibility to take on a leadership role,” he says. “But we want to work with everybody else that has something to add to the agenda.”