More than half of health and safety managers are now responsible for managing environmental issues at work, new research suggests.
During April and May of this year, NEBOSH analysed 100 job adverts for health and safety management roles. More than half (55 per cent) of the advertised positions referred to responsibility for environmental management, while a significant proportion (42 per cent) included “environmental” within the job titles.
Said NEBOSH chief executive, Teresa Budworth: “We’ve seen a dramatic change in the role of health and safety manager in the past ten years. Environmental management has become a key part of the job, and a demand for knowledge of quality and compliance management is beginning to emerge, too.”
Largely, salaries for the positions advertised ranged from £30,000 to £65,000, although several offered packages beyond £65,000, with one job attracting an annual salary of £100,000.
Ms Budworth said that these levels of salary indicate that “a significant proportion of employers are now recognising the level of professionalism and know-how that’s needed to be an effective health, safety and environmental manager”.
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In many cases the ‘new’ job role reflects managements position with regards to environmental areas [as they offer kudos as well as everything else] as against reflecting H&S areas so lets not kid ourselves that H&S is being raied a peg or 2 as in many mnay situations it is not; mainly because the same person is now dividing their time between 2 areas as against concentrating in 1 area and 1 of the 2 areas will begin to suffer and there are no medals for guessing which one will suffer I am not against the roles combining -I have… Read more »
It is good to see some companies are now paying a reasonable rate, there is still a need for Directors to understand that for HSE professionals to fully deliver, the Safety position should be a stand alone function, only answering to Cheif Exec or MD but having access to other board members.
The days of HR and Production controlling the HSE roles need to be reminder of reactive safety days. Companies requiring high CMIOSH requirements but only offering sub £40k packages need to reevaluate the nature of their business/risk and commitment to safety in general.
It makes sense to integrate the management of environmental and health & safety risks. There’s obviously a lot of overlap, witness the current BP oil well disaster. Many H&S Managers, myself included, take on the environmental responsibilities with only the minimal environmental training that is in the NEBOSH Diploma. Perhaps it is time to rebalance H&S training to take account of the environmental responsibilities that trainees are likely to face.