IOSH president-elect John Holden says that for health and safety to progress to a regulated profession, practitioners must ‘be the best’.
Competence features in the HSE’s recently issued strategy consultation document — ‘The Health and Safety of Britain — be part of the solution’. Although it is not defined in the document it is recognised that organisations need to appoint at least one person to help them control risks.
In many cases this will be a dedicated person to deal with all health and safety matters, and will often be a member of IOSH. The strategy also makes reference to the involvement of professional bodies. There is a role therefore for both individual members and IOSH to help provide solutions.
Having this level of recognition puts us firmly in the spotlight and it requires us to make sure that if we are to be considered a competent person that we can clearly demonstrate this.
IOSH already campaigns to employers to ‘Get the best’ and that’s still a very true and worthy initiative. It’s a message we’ve still got to keep getting out there. We must still educate recruiters who advertise for jobs to make sure they list the right qualifications for the particular position. But I want to shift the focus slightly.
As I see it, we have a duty to ‘Be the best’. Having got the balance of qualifications and experience to progress to Chartered Member or Fellow grades, we have to then ensure we keep our knowledge up to date through Continuing Professional Development. The same is true of Technician and Graduate Members, too.
By ‘being the best’ we can help ensure health and safety continues its progression towards becoming a regulated profession, if that is, indeed, where we want to go. But how many of you can truly, hand on heart, say that you are being the best professional you can be? There’s always room for improvement.
For a regulated profession to become reality, we will need to explicitly establish what the requirements are for a ‘regulated safety and health practitioner’, although I hope the Chartered Membership standards wouldn’t be far short of it.
We most look critically at ourselves to identify any gaps in our knowledge or skills and decide how we might fill the gaps. As the CPD scheme is not prescriptive it leaves it open to us to decide how this can be achieved — courses, self learning, attendance at Branch meetings, conferences, or similar events.
Perhaps you might even get involved in committee work. That’s something I know both Nattasha and Ray are keen to champion, and it’s a route I’ve been on for many years, being chair of the Manchester Branch and Public Services Group, and sitting on the Council of Management. It’s hard work, but certainly deeply rewarding and helped me be a better professional.
I ask you to always remember the following saying: “When one of us gets it wrong, we all get it wrong, but when we get it right, it reflects well on all of us.” We must all endeavour to provide the most practical solutions for our employers, demonstrate our worth to them, and ‘Be the best’.
