Choosing a Career as a Safety Health Advisor

An environmental safety health professional needs to be concerned about the health, safety, and well being of the people. A safety health advisor is a very prestigious and highly paid profession. As a health and safety advisor the main job would be to prevent any accidents, injuries, or any kinds of other problems within a workplace it could be an organization, industry, hospitals. A safety health advisor advises people on what are the various safety procedures one needs to follow in an organization and also tells them about the hygiene standards. The jobs of a safety health advisor are mainly in the sectors like oil and gas, construction, chemicals, and industries where employers need to learn about health and safety procedures.

The job of a safety health advisor is monitoring whether everything is in place, create some strategies and guidelines for health safety and also make sure that workers put your plan into practice. Now depending on the employer your work may vary; you could cover various areas like occupational health, fire safety, safety standards for use of machinery and avoidance or reduction of use of hazardous substances. A Safety health advisor is responsible for controlling occupational risk and maintaining a safe and healthy environment in an organization.

In general a health and safety advisor needs to take the following responsibilities:

• Suggest safe industrial hygiene methods
• Create effective safety policies and procedures
• Maintain accident records
• Do safety inspections
• Advise on safety practices and safe equipments
• Improving safety and health procedures
• Keep on updating the procedures
• Conduct training for employees
• Make Safety guidelines

For a health and safety advisor one needs to have a master's or bachelor's degree in safety sciences, industrial hygiene, industrial health and safety, or one can have an engineering degree in civil or mechanical with knowledge of health and hygiene. Also one can have degree in occupational health and safety.
The required skill set is as follows:

• Good communication skills (spoken as well as written)
• Good level of fitness and stamina
• Good intrapersonal skills
• Able to think logically and also good problem solving abilities
• Ability to work under pressure
• Knowledge about computers
• Able to understand problems and interpret them quickly

You need to develop your skills if you want to make it big in this sector. You can attend training sessions on health and safety provided by many institutions and companies. Working as an assistant with a senior officer of any organization would be of great benefit as you can really get good experience. You also need to regularly update your knowledge throughout your career. As a health and safety advisor you would be hired as a trainee initially and you would be given some business and technical training and the trainers would guide you how to go about the job.

Prior experience would be of much benefit in order to secure a job in an esteemed institution. You need to have a minimum of 4 to 5 years of practice to increase your knowledge and also expertise in the field of health and safety.

You could work as a health and safety advisor for most industries where health and safety is most important. Many companies have their own healthy and safety department and therefore the needs and demands of a health and safety advisor are significant. There are companies who also contract workers and if you have enough experience you can be self employed and be a safety consultant. One can choose from many different careers in this domain; one can become a safety health advisor, safety health consultant, safety health specialist, safety health technicians, safety health engineer, etc. You need to have higher qualifications if you need to have higher ranking jobs in health and safety. The job prospects for a health and safety advisor is going to increase in the near future.

An average salary which safety health advisor can earn is around $25,000. For a new comer basic salary is around $15,000. The more you are experienced and qualified the better you can earn. One can really earn as high as $70,000 or even more if he is employed with an esteemed organization and has a senior post.

Accidents witnessed during work are rising. Therefore there is a need for every company to hire a health and safety employee in order to educate the employees about the safety procedures for efficient working conditions. So safety health workers are in great demand and the trend is going to continue.