Hi Mick
I would be very surprised if even 50 people have made it to Chartership via the experiential route in the few years since it was launched and I don't think IOSH has published any numbers as to how many have done this successfully.
Which means that there are not going to be many people who can guide you on that path and base their guidance on actual experience of the process.
Essentially it's for the "Leaders" who have never got the relevant OSH qualifications but who still have made an impact, OR presenting themselves as having done this - even if they might be taking the credit for what others have done.
So, as example a seniot manager in a business could be given some title of e.g. Director, HSEQ. They might have come from a e.g. a line management role but suddenly find themselves heading up a team of OSH and other professionals and may be the public face of OSH for the business.
Meanwhile, below them somebody might come up with e.g. some wellbeing programme. If the Director is the person who launches that, chairs all the training sessions and is named in company documents as the owner of the programme then they could be the "Leader" yet actually know very little about the practicalities of the wellbeing programme.
If that person then enrols on the IOSH experiential route, will they actually withstand scrutiny about what they really know about OSH?
Another problem from my perspective is how to define a "Leader".
As example, someone could have the title of Health and Safety "Manager", or "Director" or something similar but could, in effect be the Safety Bod who is left to sort out all the issues as even the title gives line managers the excuse to not treat H&S as an integral part of their job. Happens all too often and has done for decades.
If I go back a few decades to when I was working for the HSE, there was the day that I walked into a huge factory and decided to serve a Prohibition Notice in relation to a machine which didn't have all its safeguards in place. At the time it was rare for such a place to have an inhouse OSH professional but this one did and hs title was Health, Safety and Environmental Manager.
The Works Manager was horrified that I thought that he was the appropriate person to hand the Notice to and to sign off my copy to acknowledge receipt. He thought that he had an HSE Manager to worry about matters OSH and E and that person should deal with the issues.
I asked the said Works Manager who was responsible for output - he confirmed that this was him.
I asked him who was responsible for the quality of the output - ditto.
So, I asked him who was responsible for making sure that output was done with appropriate health, safety and environmental protections in place - silence.
Duly gave the Prohibition Notice to the Works Manager. HSE Manager was pleased as punch.I had basically delivered the same message about ownership that he had not been managing to get across to line managers.
Fast forward a few decades and I have mentees who face such challenges on a daily basis. Line managers want to sidestep the H&S issues as they have one or more Safety Bods to sort these for them!
If you want to take this route, be careful as to what you are signing up to, not least as it's quite expensive.
Good luck, Peter
Edited by user 06 June 2025 15:02:58(UTC)
| Reason: Clarification