It depends... in the early part of your career yes, it helps to get job interviews. Later on not so important or if you do other safety roles, especially within technically roles than CMIOSH matters not as STEM qualifications are more important.

In my case no it wasnt.   Hopefully it will help me when I move on to a new role.

So if I'm reading that right, it makes it almost impossible for a consultant like myself to become chartered. All my clients don't let me near policy or any decision maing positions. I offer advice and then they choose to either accept and implement or ignore.

Originally Posted by: Wailes900134

If not will demotion to CMIOSH "Certified rather than Chartered" effect your employers view of you?

Now there is a question... recruiters typically refer to "Certificate" as a way of indicating the nebosh General Certificate not a step back forced upon an individual with many years H&S experience by a poorly considered grade review. 

Originally Posted by: Wailes900134

I'm wondering about leaving the deckchairs where they are and going to listen to the band in the hope that the iceberg will melt on its own before we hit it.

That is too funny, providing the laugh at the start of the day. Thanks 

I've personally gone for it as all the jobs I've been looking at for a move (sub £50K) are pretty much insisting on CMIOSH.  I'm now the highest qualified in our company and I'm trying to educate and assert my decisions within the company which isnt always easy or appreciated, but as i tell them, its my career, name and possible life on the line if they dont help to comply.

Neil 

I agree with your view that if you deal with some significant risks then attaining CMIOSH under the existing membership framework should not be TOO taxing, though when starting at the bottom of the IOSH ladder, heavily dependent on those you report to being prepared to let you stretch your experience with cautious oversight.

So, many years ago I asked my part time secretary to do the NEBOSH General Certificate. I sold it in the company on the basis that they would be a better gatekeeper and deal with many of the more trivial enquiries that a very small H&S Department was getting day to day. I wasn't particularly surprised when they then decided that they wanted a career change, so I had to sell that to the business as well. So, it was away from the office and on to construction sites and even a trip to the Falkland Islands to co-deliver IOSH Managing Safely. Didn't take them that long to put together an NVQ porfolio and the route to CMIOSH.

However, the discourse on this thread has moved somewhat away from the original question and perhaps should now be posed as "Would it be worth going for CMIOSH if the new membership proposals are rubber stamped?"

If, so then the basis of your answer to the original question would be likely to change fundamentally.

Do you have the necessary financial clout to oversee your organisation's compliance? along with all the other criteria that Wailes has posted?

If not, then you could not have attained and cannot now retain your CMIOSH.......

UNLESS you decide to apply the small print interpretation that I gave earlier.

AND for someone moving up the ladder, not only would some panel have to accept my small print analysis, but also have to be convinced that if given the tools, you could fulfil all the criteria that Wailes has mentioned.

Those many years ago, I had budgetary control to decide to pay for someone's NEBOSH Certificate fees. I did not have the authority to send someone away from their day job for 3 weeks. I had to seek approval for that.

Now various of us have made submissions on either the IOSH Competency framework document and/or the membership regrading proposals arguing, inter alia that:

1. IOSH should not be seen as supporting the concept that an H&S professional should be responsible for ensuring that a duty holder (usually their employer) complies - that goes against what HSE and IOSH having been saying for decades

2. Many CMIOSH members and those working towards that grade apply their minds to complex scenarios where their input into difficult risk assessment decision merits Chartered status. You should not need to be the one who submits all policy documents for approval (though you might be a key player in the drafting of those documents!)

Applying 1 and 2 in the current pandemic....

For many organisations (whether or not they recognise it) the single greatest risk is Work Related Stress. Many of these organisations are currently considering (or have considered) putting people on furlough or at risk of redundancy. However, well or not the organisation might be managing Work Related Stress, you wouldn't want to exacerbate this, would you? Will the H&S Director (or whatever title) decide on furlough or redundancies? Probably not - very unlikely to have the executive authority, and usually wouldn't be expected to have this (unless perhaps they run an H&S Consultancy business!)

But that person is likely to be called on to help in assessing when it is safe enough to let people return to their work and with what precautions in place, some of which might significantly affect the bottom line. Lots of CPD on offer with that!! 

P

Personally reading some of the comments on here some folk forget it is the employer who will be held accountable, a health and safety advisor, manager etc works for the employer (unless self employed consultant), is in essence advising the employer and employees.

If the employer or employee fail to act on that advice and do their own thing, then it will be them who will face the wrath, in my opinion department line managers should be IOSH quailified as a minnimum, and should be managing their arrangements for health and safety, such as risk management and safe systems of work, the health and safety advisor/mangaer offers them advice on how to do it and audits their performance............

My opinion.............

Lawlee, I don't think that qualifications in STEM (either interpretation!) are necessary.

Health and safety by its nature is multi-multi-disciplinary and "no man is an island", though I can see that for some roles STEM qualification might be sometimes, but not always, an advantage.

When I joined the HSE, it had a policy of not allowing one near the sector that one had been working in until all preconceptions had been firmly put to bed. In my case that meant that I didn't inspect a large engineering factory for about 10 years. My half a degree in STEM (Production Engineering and Economics) was helpful, but so was the half a degree in a social science subject.

So, it's about the ability to know one's own limitations and ask "stupid questions". If you actually know the right answers to some of those QQ, it is much easier to assess the validity of the answers to the QQ that you don't know the correct answers.

Then whatever the role, the health and safety professional is always likely to be coming across scenarios with which they have limited familiarity, so it's about collaborating with those planning and executing whatever is to be done. Talking to them, posing QQ and coming up with solutions.

Sometimes that takes a philosopher, sometimes a psychologist, sometimes a STEMmer, sometimes something completely different.

Health and safety is such a broad field that no-one can be an expert in every aspect. What is important, and perhaps difficult, is to recognise the limits of one's own expertise and thus when to seek support from others. I have specialised now for 40 years in one particular aspect of health and safety and am still learning. Indeed, in my field (a specialised aspect of health) the more the science develops the more we recognise how much we still have to learn - also with only limited knowledge how easy it is to reach conclusions that may appear logical but that are not borne out by the scientific evidence. 

You may as well ask is joining IOSH worth the effort/expense? Because both are dependent on what you are prepared to put in. If you just want the letters after your name to apply for jobs, then yes it is worth it as many employers (who do not even know what it is) make it an essiential requirement.

If you want to expand your knowledge and experience, beyond academia, and be recognised for your achievements by your peers then yes it is worth it.

Hope this clarifies the position

Becoming Chartered is not about others, but about your self.

If the "guy" lied about his working experience, and answered to the panel question properly given practical examples, they couldn't do more.

Don't forget that to be chartered, you also need an occupational safety and health qualification equivalent to the  European Qualification Framework (EQF) Level 6 or any other qualification that IOSH assesses as meeting the criteria. If he also lied about it, he has committed fraud, and in line to the IOSH code of conduct, the title can/should be withdrawn.

Originally Posted by: Wailes900134

Originally Posted by: arnoldisnumerouno

Fantastic that the knowledge gained to reach CMIOSH status is hopefully being shared with trainees/candidates etc to bring though the next crop of practitioners.

A potential problem of course is that he may inadvertently spread the message that the effective way to become chartered is to avoid the coal face completely in favour of the classroom... This in time will leave it as a home for trainers much more than one for practitioners. I increasingly meet practitioners who describe IOSH is an irrelevance to them and trainers who describe it as a necessity. They may both be right of course.

The reason for this is that if you want to deliver IOSH courses you MUST be a member of IOSH, and certain courses require certain levels of membership. 

As for the criticism of trainers who have little experience of the 'coal face', the true measure of knowledge is to be able to explain a complex subject in a simple easy to understand context that most people can readily understand.

Why should such people, who are training the safety practitioners of the future, be denied CMIOSH status? I have often said that there should be seperate membership grades for trainers to reflect their role within our profession. Perhaps CTIOSH? 

Possibly there might be a route to both CTIOSH and CMIOSH.