Posted By Dave Lewis
Northern Counties Housing Association is looking to appoint a qualified H&S Officer, to be based at our Head Office in Manchester, although some travel around the North West/East will be required. The proposed advertisement is shown below and if there is any interest please contact Dave Lewis by e-mail on dlewis@ncha.co.uk with brief details including address. An application form will be forwarded to any suitable parties.

Health & Safety Officer

Starting Salary £16,646 pa + Benefits

We require a self-motivated person to provide practical advice and to monitor all aspects of Health & Safety across the Association.

Responsibilities will include the maintenance of the Health & Safety Procedures Manual, drafting procedures, investigating accidents and co-ordinating the Associations' Risk Assessment programme. In addition to this you will sit on various working groups, as necessary, and will be responsible for seeing through H&S projects as and when they occur.

You should be a member of Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, or hold an equivalent qualification.

Experience of running in-house training courses would be an advantage.

Candidates must be mobile as travelling will be required and have experience of working with Microsoft Office.

Posted By Robert Woods
Dave,
are you looking for a Certificate holder, TechSP or MIOSH.
Don't want to be rude but a MIOSH would be looking at earning at least half as much again on top of the salary you are offering.

You would have difficulty in attracting most TechSP's who may want to gain experiance with the money offered.
Does the salary reflect your companies commitment to health and safety?

Maybe you have done what most people do who are writing ads for safety personnel, see one and copy it. If you look in the trade mags there are loads of ads asking for corporate members, MIOSH's who must have at least a NEBOSH Certificate. Anyone in the business knows this is a nonsense.

I am sure people could find advice on the type of person and the level of experiance and knowledge they should have before placing the adverts. Maybe IOSH could help? Mind you writing your own origional material that is relevant to the position you are offering may be like re-inventing the wheel.

Where have I seen that phrase before?

Robert Woods

Posted By Dave Lewis
Thank you all for the constructive parts of the feedback.
I appreciate that H&S is not my "field" but, at the same time, we are a Housing Association and dependant on public money. I therefore have to justify every salary within my remit. We are also one of a very few Housing Associations to employ a "dedicated" H&S Officer so there isnt a lot to benchmark against. This does, however, demonstrate our committment to H&S (to answer one specific point of criticism).
I will certainly take your comments into consideration when discussing the place of the H&S Officer in our structure but, certainly for the immediate future,I have to go with what I've got at the moment.

Posted By R.Woods
I have to agree with Phil, paper qualifications are one thing, they cost money a lot of us cannot afford. Experiance however cannot be bought. I know which one i'd rather have in any one overseeing my health and safety.

Similarly Job satisfaction can help counter balance a slightly lower salary. I work for a charity that give occupational health and safety advice and training, the variety of work and job satisfaction certainly makes up for the pay.

Dave working in the voluntary sector gives me an understanding of the fiscal restraints placed upon your type of organisation and I apologise for any offence I may of caused by my remarks in my previous response.

Hope you find a suitable candidate.

Robert Woods.