Posted By Bill Bircham Hi All ‘Free’ H&S People A few of you are now offering your services for free and I have sympathy with your positions, so given this a few (just a few) minutes thought. How about some of these approaches for starters:- Local Charities – always looking for Volunteers, plus looks good on a CV for prospective employers as you are exercising your social conscience. National Charities are likely to already have people in paid positions. A word of caution here, make sure you are volunteering, not hiring, your services and check out any liability situation that may exist. Small local H&S Consultancies – with correctly worded contracts to protect them from you undermining their business once you’ve accessed their customer base, they may be willing to take you on as an apprentice, they get a Government subsidy, you get a low paid (but paid) job plus the experience. The well known large safety consultancy firms, many have Graduate entrance schemes if you have the qualifications to support the application. Finally, if you are interested in a particular industry, rail, construction, mining, oil/gas, manufacturing etc, seek ANY employment in those fields. This will give you two possibilities to follow up on. Firstly you could move into the Organisations own H&S Function (If big enough). Secondly, having any experience in the sector will give you an edge over those without, plus you get paid and could plough some of that back into further vocational courses. Ok, five mins worth of brain dump, hope it helps, would love to know how any of you get on with any of these approaches. Regards & good luck, Bill

Posted By mel russell seems like good advice and thanks. Mel

Posted By Bill Bircham Alan, Like any niche role, if you look at it hard enough there are problems as you described. However H&S will NEVER go away unless we have a severely radical shake up of the legal framework in this country and the EU, both in terms of legislation and common law. If anything, the demand is likely to grow. The problem with lots of people jumping in is that then the supply overwhelms the demand, thus you end up with lots of people without work, a natural cycle. My question to you would be what is so attractive about H&S that you are thinking of getting back into it? R Bill