After 12 years leading IOSH through unprecedented growth in membership, reputation and influence Rob Strange OBE is retiring at the end of this month. Here, he tells SHP about the many highs and few lows of his time at The Grange, explains why he’s not at all gloomy about the future of health and safety in the UK, and predicts who will be the next big thing in the music charts.
“There was one objective I had as chief executive, which, had I not achieved it, I would definitely not be sitting here now.” Rob Strange is reflecting on his 12 years at the helm of the world’s biggest professional health and safety membership organisation but he’s not talking about the phenomenal growth that IOSH has gone through over the last decade to gain that prestigious title.
“The Royal Charter,” says Rob, who retires from his post at the end of this month, “was both the biggest challenge and the biggest achievement of my tenure. When I arrived at The Grange, in August 1997, a lot of good groundwork had been done towards it but it did need a lot more specific development work to finally get it.”
And get it he did – in 2003 – and it was “a watershed” in terms of the Institution’s influence and membership levels. He explains: “Having the Charter lifted us out of the second division into the Premiership. We’re not quite Man United yet, but we are up there with the big boys!”
IOSH’s lobbying, public-affairs work and external-relations development increased significantly over the last decade – something of which Rob is very proud. He says: “We have worked very hard with politicians, putting IOSH in front of them to influence them and, alongside that, putting IOSH in the media eye. This has been a clear strategic aim for the Institution for seven or eight years now.
“We started from a fairly low base, compared to similar organisations, like RoSPA. Campaigning was not previously seen as IOSH’s role, but in 2004/05, our strategy aimed to change that by including an objective to raise our profile. The Royal Charter served to improve our brand, and it’s a fantastic brand to work with.”
Rob is very keen to stress that the Institution’s achievements during his tenure were those of the whole IOSH team, and not just his. He says: “I have had the privilege of being at the helm at The Grange for 12 years, presiding over a successful system of volunteer members working with the professional staff.”
In terms of its influencing activities, he says these benefited from the formation of a dedicated communications team and extension of the publishing, design and Web functions.
“And through the policy team,” he adds, “we develop position statements and campaigns, like ‘Get the Best’, all backed by our communications plan to get our position, or campaign in front of the right audience.”
He reckons the challenge of his successor – former chief executive of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, Jan Chmiel – will be to ensure IOSH builds on this good work. “In Mount Everest terms,” Rob explains, “we’re around Base Camp 2, so we will need the right people over the next 10 years to get IOSH to the summit.”
All aboard
Since Rob took over from John Barrell OBE as chief executive in 2001, membership of IOSH has increased by almost 70 per cent – a huge factor in the growth of the Institution’s influence. The Royal Charter has made chartered membership and fellowship an aspiration but there is also “a clamour of new members joining and moving through the system”.
In terms of attrition, he says “it is greater at non-chartered level, because people have put in a lot of hard work to achieve that. So, the level of retention at chartered level is almost 100 per cent. At affiliate and associate levels, the attrition rate is a bit higher – 5 to 7 per cent – but it averages out to a relatively low figure.
“In the last few years, there has been a lot of emphasis not only on getting new members but also doing our very best to keep them. We have whole teams of people ringing people to get them to renew. When they realise they didn’t get SHP, that’s usually when the penny drops! SHP has always been the number-one benefit of membership, and the fact that the magazine is absolutely free to members is fantastic.”
IOSH’s current strategy is clear about the Institution’s aim to consolidate its position as the biggest health and safety professional body in the world, but does biggest necessarily equal best? Are the new ‘entry levels’ of membership just a ‘quantity versus quality’ ploy?
Not at all, says Rob. “Associate membership is for people with some involvement in health and safety but not enough to warrant going through qualifications. Big isn’t necessarily best – small is beautiful in many situations in life.
“There has been lots of discussion in IOSH around whether we want to pull up the drawbridge and be an exclusive club for professionally qualified, chartered members. Would that fulfil our vision and mission and, if it doesn’t – and I believe it doesn’t – then we need people at lower levels to spread the reach and brand of IOSH more widely, and that can be done by members at all levels, not just chartered.
“So, the decision was taken to grow membership at all levels so that we have a bigger reach.”
Rob is obviously well aware of the increasing importance of competence in the profession, an issue he says is hugely significant, and around which IOSH has done a lot of work. He explains: “Health and safety professionals used to be seen as either from an engineering/‘hard hat’ background, or were considered to be at a fairly low level in organisations.
“IOSH has done a huge amount – not only in terms of training – to help members see themselves differently, but also by working hard to promote IOSH and health and safety as closer to the boardroom table. The old stereotypical image of the health and safety officer has been replaced by the more senior health and safety professional. There’s a place for everyone at every level. A key aim has been to educate and develop our senior members to help them be influential at senior levels in their organisations.”
Commercial gains
On the subject of training and education, this is the area that has seen the most growth during Rob’s time at IOSH. When SHP interviewed him back in 2001, at the end of his first year in the hot seat as chief executive, there was a strong focus on the Institution’s commercial activities. Of course, the economic landscape is very different now, so how is IOSH faring commercially?
“Extremely well,’ says Rob with a smile, explaining that commercial activities are run through a separate, subsidiary limited company, which is making a profit. He goes on: “When I arrived as deputy chief executive in August 1997, the commercial department – mainly focusing on health and safety awareness training – was quite embryonic. I was specifically recruited to develop and build commercial revenue streams.
“At the time, there were fewer than 200 training providers and we now have 1700, which spreads and diversifies the risk. We have deliberately increased the span of our network – it works rather like franchising. We license people to sell, market and run courses on our behalf. It has been hugely successful – a great team effort.
“We offer in excess of 300 types of training courses, and have accredited services and innovations and brands that are little to do with training, such as our tie-in with Barbour. These sorts of commercial initiatives have spread the risk of not being all about training and have introduced new income streams.”
Rob has always been keen to emphasise that all profits made by IOSH Services Ltd are ploughed back in to benefit members. IOSH’s membership fees are quite a bit lower than those of similar organisations, so is the Institution getting something right that those others aren’t, or are they charging more because they offer more?
“We manage to keep fees low through the single expediency of commercial-training income – 50 per cent of IOSH income now comes from our commercial subsidiary. Many similar bodies don’t have that because their subject area doesn’t lend itself to it. Everyone needs to know about health and safety. Something like £80/£90 per member is subsidised by our commercial activity.
“If the market completely disappears for training we would have to double members’ subs – but even then, the cost still wouldn’t be out of place! Or, we would have to stop many of the good things we do and decrease member benefits and decrease the funding for branches and groups.”
Going global
Something that IOSH, like many other UK stakeholders in health and safety, is exploiting in terms of commercial development is the international market. Its 2012-2017 strategy identifies “commercial opportunities outside of the UK” as a key focus area, so what has taken it so long to ‘travel’?
Rob explains: “Compared with NEBOSH, which decided to follow a deliberate international expansion policy some years ago, we felt there was still low-hanging fruit here in the UK. Doing business here tends to be more profitable so we followed a deliberate policy to maximise the UK market before looking overseas. The UK is not yet saturated but it is heading that way.
“Our new strategy has globalisation at its heart – spreading the good word and IOSH brand around the world, not in a haphazard but in a focused way. From a commercial point of view, that means looking at markets like South Africa and India, and, if we handle it correctly, it could be good.”
Rob says he is rather “troubled” by the use of the word commercial but all the activities do, in fact, fit in with IOSH’s overall vision for “a world of work that is safe, healthy and sustainable”. He elaborates: “Training everyone in good sound risk assessment and health and safety means we are fulfilling our Charter and charitable objectives in terms of the health and safety of those in the workplace.”
He also points out that, as a charity and chartered body, the Institution does a lot of non-commercial work overseas – for example, via its ‘new accession countries’ initiative, where it worked with the incoming members of the EU to put on conferences and seminars to increase health and safety awareness in these regions.
“So,” he says, “our overseas objective is an extremely broad one and it encompasses everything IOSH does, but doing it elsewhere – not just membership, commercial or raising the bar. It’s all of those things together.”
Position statements
Closer to home, IOSH’s strategic aims have undoubtedly been affected in recent years by the parlous state of the economy, cuts to the HSE’s budget and the Government’s deregulatory agenda. But Rob is fairly sanguine about these obstacles: “Cuts to the HSE’s budget and the economic situation have caused a lot of concern among IOSH members and the public – concern that fewer inspectors would mean that health and safety would get worse.
“But I don’t subscribe to that view; it’s a matter of using resources you have to target the main problem areas. The cuts haven’t made IOSH’s job either harder or easier. We have tended to focus more on the cuts to local authorities and are keen to ensure they don’t cut corners on health and safety. I think the HSE has managed its cuts incredibly well.”
He chooses his words carefully when talking about the Coalition’s approach to health and safety. “It has presented the health and safety community with some specific challenges. IOSH tackled that by seeing and providing evidence and patiently working with the new government to help it understand our view.
“It often feels a bit like going back two steps to go forward one, but this government is a fact and, whatever its approach, there is no point working against it.”
That may be, but the Institution has been criticised in some quarters for not challenging the Government enough, and sitting on the fence for fear of upsetting politicians. But Rob stands by its approach: “My belief has always been that the way you influence people is by sophisticated and subtle means, rather than confrontation.
“On some issues, we do ‘get off the fence’ quite quickly – and the prime minister, or whoever, might not like that – but we’ve taken the view of working with politicians of all parties and haven’t taken a militant, or overly critical stance. Instead, we seek meetings with ministers to persuade them of what we believe, and I think you can achieve much more that way.”
And what about the negative public perception of health and safety? Has the Institution challenged that robustly enough? Rob agrees that the reputation of the profession has worsened over the last 12 years but is clear on the fact that “this doesn’t mean our members are not doing a good job”.
He also feels that IOSH, the HSE and other key players have put huge energy into turning the tide against bad press and now believes we are on our way up from the lowest point: “Through a dripping-tap approach I think people are getting the message that health and safety is an enabler. I hear it repeated back to me by friends and relatives who, a few years ago, jumped on the bandwagon of the Daily Mail, etc saying health and safety stops us doing things.”
He cites the HSE’s challenge panels as a sign that officialdom is also acting to change things and, overall, says he is not at all “gloomy” about the situation – “we’ve achieved everything we’ve achieved in spite of this tide of criticism, and we are slowly on the way up in this country”.
Coming up
So, what next for this native of Leicester and recipient of the OBE in 2008 for services to health and safety? True to form, Rob insists the honour is for “IOSH and health and safety generally, and not just me as the face of IOSH. It is for the Institution and all its members and staff.”
The day at Buckingham Palace to collect the OBE was, he says, “absolutely amazing” for him and his family, with whom he now intends to spend more time, particularly his grandchildren and his wife. Indeed, when asked who has been the greatest influence on his career at IOSH, Rob credits Maureen, who he married in 1972. “During times when I have doubted myself,” he recalls, “she has backed, encouraged and supported me.”
He also cites Nick Burraston OBE, chair of the IOSH board for six years, as a key influence, saying: “He and I are very different people but, together, we made a very good team and led IOSH through challenges and tough times.”
Something else that Rob is going to indulge is his passion for music. Not everyone knows it, but Mr Strange is a huge indie music fan and is regularly to be found enjoying new, and some old, bands at venues all around the Midlands.
He explains: “Music really has been a lifelong passion. It all started back in the 60s with the likes of the Who, the Stones and Cream. These days, my favourite bands are Arcade Fire, the Killers and Green Day. The Vaccines, too, are fantastic. My next tip for the top is a south-London garage band called the Palma Violets.”
Rob reckons he doesn’t stick out too much among the teenagers because “I’m one of those people who looked old when I was young, and now I look young when I’m old – that’s my story, anyway!” Unlike Tony Blair and Barack Obama he hasn’t visibly aged since he ‘took office’, so to what does he attribute this?
“I am a fairly calm and measured person. Like all such responsible jobs with so many stakeholders to satisfy, it has been, at times, stressful. It hasn’t been an easy ride, and nor should it have been. I had a heart scare four years ago. An experience in life like that is a warning. I haven’t changed much since – diet and exercise are not as good as they could be – but it has made me well aware of the risks of stress and lifestyle.
“I do try very hard not to lose my cool, or react by confronting things head on. It has been a stressful working life but an extremely rewarding one, and, as long as the rewards outweigh the stress, that’s fine.”
In terms of post-retirement ‘work’, Rob will be a trustee for three charities – none of them health and safety-related – and is hoping to take on a non-executive director role.
He has no ambitions to go into politics but has a firm idea of what he would do if he were to fill David Cameron’s shoes for a day: “I would ensure that all my ministers and senior government members understood the importance of pragmatic and sensible risk assessment, and that they understood that silly stories are just that – stories.
“I wouldn’t change any laws – the laws are fine; it’s what we believe the laws to be that needs work.”
And with that, he’s off – like the eponymous hero of The Killers’ hit song, with destiny calling him, opening his eager eyes, cos he’s Mr Brightside.
You can see a video interview with Rob below:
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