Posted By Jonathan Sandler
Dear all,
Question asked at a safety meeting yesterday by the HSE to a group of safety officer.

Your job title is health and safety, how many of you here (60 approx) look after the health of the staff?

The HSE are refering to Occ Health, good point.

Should we be called 'safety officer's'? or health and safety officer/advisor's/....

Should we be looking for a qualification in Occ Health on top of the Safety qual's we or may not have.

MSc in management of health and safety looks at how to manage H&S, NVQ looks at practicle applications to do the job of a safety officer not a health and safety officer.

Should membership of IOSH be based on safety or health and safety dependant on quals?

Just a thought.

Posted By Geoff Burt
Agree with Diane there is a clear distinction between the two.

But H&S advisors/consultants (why the name H&S officer is still in existence beats me - it should, at the latest, have gone out of the window with the introduction of the H&SWA) do have a health, albeit lower profile role.

One simple example of the role is DSE assessments. You provide advice during the assessment to try to avoid future health problems. If problems are currently being experienced you refer the case for medical attention.

Posted By Paul Craythorne
Many moons ago I studied for the old NEBOSH Diploma and one of the modules was 'Occupational Health and Hygiene'.

In addition, having dealt with issues involving hazardous substances, ergonomics and WRULD's etc. over the years then I fail to see why the word 'Health' should be dropped from the job title. Any practitioner who focuses solely on employee safety with a disregard to health issues is not doing their job correctly.

Paul Craythorne

Posted By Brian Jenkins
One of the best bits of advice that I read (I think on these pages), is to stop explaining to people that we work in such a way because of safety, but to explain that it will benefit their health. If you use the word safety to someone, it has connotations of legal bureaucracy and they sometimes ‘switch off’. You express that you do things to prolong their health, then they 'sometimes' listen. I tend to agree that the name is not important; we are all striving for the same outcome – aren’t we?
Brian.

Posted By Donna Fisken
In Scotland, there is a scheme run by the Scottish Executive called Scotland's Health at Work - the aim is to encourage and reward employers in their efforts to improve the health of their workforce and to build a healthy workplace and a healthy organisation.

This is done by providing workplaces with an infrastructure to address health issues. Although based in Scotland we have included our London office in the activities and information provided. This is the second time I have taken an organisation through this scheme and it can be done with very little expenditure.

Currently there are 972 participating workplaces, 657 of which are Small/Medium Enterprises of less than 100 staff (employing over 638,000 people) 26% of the Scottish workforce. The majority of offshore platforms in the North Sea are involved in this scheme.

I don't know if there is a similar scheme south of the border but if anyone would like anymore information feel free to give me a shout.

Regards - Donna

Posted By Raymond Rapp
Jonathan,

It is an interesting observation and no doubt many in the industry have at some time or other wondered what a job title actually entails. To some extent the term advisor, officer, consultant etc is entwinned in semantics. Perhaps IOSH should create a generic profile that could be defined and adopted within the industry.

A slightly different slant on your theme to which some have alluded to, the specialist nature of health, safety and environmental issues. Not so long ago when H&S was a 'cottage industry' the term used was irrevalant. Nowdays there are far more specialist fields such as stress advisor (remember, we played golf with one). My point is, that in the future there may be a need for a health advisor (not a hygeinist), just as there are environmental advisors, risk assessors, auditors etc.