Posted By Frank Neville Johnson Kevin You might try Croners. There CD H&S manager etc. is quite usefull in this respect and defines various levels of competency. Frank

Posted By Hazel Harvey Kevin, Confirming the previous response Employment NTO publish the national standards for Health and Safety Practice. These are at levels3/4 and are used by IOSH as our yardsticks for membership. The exact terms you use do not feature but you could generally consider that level 3 relates to Technician Practitioners (Officers) and level 4 to Advisers and Managers. The current standards relate to the level of risk in the organisation with level 3 being for those either in low risk situations or subordinate in higher risk and level 4 being for those practising in high or complex risk situations, hence my rough division above. The standards are currently under review and it is likely that the new standards (which are available to view on the EmpNTO web-site)will not have this splitting into risk categories and may reflect Technician/Manager jobs more accurately. The free-standing Health and Safety units,also from EmpNTO may also be useful when you are putting your job descriptions together.

Posted By Ian Waldram Just a couple of points to add to previous respondents: 1) empNTO are towards the end of a project to update the OSH competencies - IOSH is closely involved. The new ones don't look very much like the current versions, but cover the same ground, so expect some national-level changes in the next year or so. 2) In my experience, competence models work best when there is recognition that increased competence dosn't just mean 'more of' something, but often some new things, and different ways of relating to others. In a previous position, I used a matrix of 'core management competences', each of which has four associated levels, i.e. Developing/ Assisting, Contributing Independently, Leading/Coaching, Directing/Integrating. We defined the management competencies needed by the whole organisation, including Health/Safety/ Environment and could then 'synthesise' every position using these. The HSE management competencies were in a 4x4 matrix, and I presented a paper at the 1998 Annual Conference giving details - they can be used both for OSH professionals (many of whom should be in the 'Leading' or Directing' groups) as well as all other line and staff positions. Of course HSE professionals ALSO need technical competencies, which are more like the ones in NVQ's - but again a various different levels, rather than the maximum of 2 in empNTO.