Prompted by this IOSH post-nominals | IOSH

including......They show your employer, peers and external contacts that they’re dealing with someone with the relevant professional status and experience.

However, I am not convinced that simply having some letters after your name proves or even suggests that you may have the "relevant professional status and experience", and each case needs to be considered on its merits.

Someone could gain e.g. CMIOSH with experience that has rarely gone beyond generally lower risk environments.

Conversely, someone could be a key player in a high hazard environment without any postnoms whatsoever.

Postnoms do NOT equal competence but MIGHT indicate a level of competence in SOME scenarios.

Would you think that someone who is CMIOSH and with experience mostly in looking at risks in offices would be competent let loose in a chemical works?

Possibly, but probably depending on what you actually want them to do. If it's assurance work on checking that the organisatoin does what it needs to maintain an ISO accreditation, probably. Helping do the DSEAR or COSHH assessment, may be not!

When I worked for HSE there came a point where our employer suggested we might want to have new calling cards with our postnoms. Most of the Inspectors working around me declined this offer, most on exactly the same basis - why create an entirely artificial barrier to communication with people without such grandeur alongside their name?

At the time I was working a a Group covering Construction and Fairgrounds. I gave my calling card to all and sundry and I wanted the bosses and the labourers to understand that they would be treated equally in my eyes.

Then into the private sector and I assumed that it was the content of my CV that "sold" me - not mention of my educational qualifications and professional memberships at the back end of the CV.

How important are these postnoms in reality?

The postnominals are the only way that IOSH has now to retain my membership, as I don't much value any of the other benefits. 

I worked hard to get the postnominals and I do think they have value, both for impressing prospective clients and for my own confidence.  Confidence is, I gather, much more of an issue for women than for men, and for my generation that is presumably as a result of being brought up and introduced to workplaces in much less enlightened times than today. 

Postnominals are all the more important to me now that I am no longer an employee but self-employed and so have to sell my skills more frequently.

Do postnominals mean I can do any H&S work in any sector, no of course not.  It's my responsibility as a professional, indeed it is included in the IOSH Code of Conduct, that I have to refuse work I am not competent for.  Have I ever had to do this, yes I have.

Edited by user 15 July 2024 15:36:46(UTC)  | Reason: Psotnominals don't mean I type accurately

Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel

“She does not need any training; she has a Ph.D. for God’s sake!”

I feel that pain.

Having commenced employment at a time when personnnel were transitioning to Human Resources and there was a surge in graduate recruitment (graduates employing graduates) there was a proliferation of business cards with ever greater pre & post nominals listed. Trouble is their degree is sociology really didn't talk to the individuals capability as a production manager.

The EU only recognised Chartered Members of iosh on their regulated professions database.

I have had the miss-fortune to cross paths with many a stuffed shirt with post nominals on their business card and no idea in regards of the business they have walked in to. Following on from this experience do post nominals themselves adequately display and demonstrate the necessary individual competence demanded by HM gov response to Grenfell?

My money is on some form of NVQ or yet another Construction Card being held up as a "gold standard".

Post (and Pre) nominals do not always mean that “you are committed to CPD.” Academic degrees don’t; the number of academics I deal with who still want to run their labs  how they were run 30 or more years ago(when they were  acquiring their PhD)  is gobsmacking!

Thanks Toe

Imagine the hullaballoo if the locally born site chemist in a major hazard works in Africa who might be an Affiliate member of IOSH had the audacity to tell the expat CMIOSH that said site chemist disagreed with the CMIOSH!!

CMIOSH - "My post noms trump yours".