Unless you already specialise in the world of health and safety, you may not really understand what jobs there are in the sector. To those outside of it, the world of health and safety is something we talk about without much knowledge. People will say, “we can’t do that now due to health and safety” or joke around and say “be careful there or health and safety will be knocking on your door”; but the jobs within the health and safety sector extend much beyond telling people not to do things and inspecting houses.
The range of Health and Safety Jobs that are available is surprising. Just today we’ve seen postings for both a Facilities Assistant Manager at a Hilton resort, where you would be assisting with the management and maintenance of operations within a resort and making sure the resort was complying with health and safety regulation, as well as a call for a safety and environmental engineer for the Ministry of Defence’s Submarine Delivery Agency, who keep Britain’s nuclear submarine’s in action. Both of these jobs are within the health and safety sector, but on a day to day basis they are two worlds apart. It can be quite hard to summarise a sector that contains such multitudes.
Because of this great range though, you are able to find jobs in the health, safety, and environmental sector. When you are picking out which jobs you want to choose, because of the ubiquity of health and safety, you are able to cater your search to your more individual interests eg. working as a safety engineer on a submarine if you have an existing interest in the navy, or working as a health and safety coordinator at a university if you have an academic background.
These health and safety jobs are available at all levels of experience. When you look at health and safety jobs on job search websites like Indeed or LinkedIn, or more targeted places like HSE Networks Health and Safety jobs board; you will find entry level roles such as a Health and Safety Apprenticeship at Amazon, as well as top level managerial and administrative roles.
Outside of jobs acting to promote health and safety in various locations, like the ones we have mentioned in the Navy for example, there are also jobs within the Health and Safety Executive. The HSE is the government body responsible for health, safety and risk management. The agency’s aims are to encourage workers and companies to comply with the Health and Safety Act of 1974, encourage research and training into H&S, provide information to the government on H&S and propose new regulations. There are many roles within the agency, each of which focus around one of these certain areas.
Looking to the future, there are also jobs within the health and safety sector that don’t currently exist, but there will soon be a wave of new positions. The increasing importance of the internet will change health and safety in the workplace, as well as developments in Artificial Intelligence; and both of these will radically change some of the roles within the health and safety sector.
