Lessons in safety - September 2025

AT A recent NEBOSH webinar James Irwin and Michael Colton, from recruitment company Irwin & Colton, hosted a panel of experts to discuss health and safety careers. 

Soft skills emerged as a crucial element for career success and personal growth. Or, as Louise Hosking, head of UK health and safety transformation at The Scouts, said “I think they’re power skills.” 

Develop your power skills 

These power skills include communication and relationship building, building trust amongst the teams you work with. Sarah Basford, global head of HSE - property management at CBRE said: “You don’t want for there to be an accident or an incident and that to be the first time that the individual has ever spoken to someone from the HSE team….appreciating that in really large organisations that’s not always possble, but I think it goes a long way if you’ve got an understanding of the person doing the role.”

Louise added: “Understanding how the different generations within an organisation think and operate is important. It's another power skill. You know, we're all going to have to work longer. So, we're going to still be in the workplace when, the younger generations are coming through. They communicate in an entirely different way to us, and we have to adapt to each other, and we have to learn from each other.”

Emotional intelligence is also important, “really try to be empathetic, self-aware and work on those social skills and interactions with others. I think that really does build trust, not only within our own team and reports, but also with the wider organisation and external stakeholders” advised Sarah. 

Learn from others

But how can you develop non-technical skills? Kari Sprostranova, group health, safety and wellbeing director at Mace, said: “There's a wealth of different ways of getting information [buddying, leadership, books, podcasts]. But for me, I would start with knowing who you are and what you need to develop…when I worked at the HSE I did some buddying with lots of different inspectors and found that no one did it in the way that I would naturally do my visits, but what I could do is take a little bit from each person.”

Natalie Timms, director of SHEQ at United Living Property Services, has been a mentee and a mentor. She added “It can give you key elements around guidance, direction, skill development…you have conversations and get feedback. Know what you’re trying to achieve and then define your next steps to achieve that as a two-way partnership.”

“And align your choice of mentor to your own career path. If you’re heading in a certain direction, try to seek our someone who’s walked that path and you can benefit from their journey and learn from their mistakes,” advised Michael. 

Set goals and take risks 

As a health and safety professional, skills and attitude from your workplace can benefit your career journey too. Being curious and flexible were Sarah’s two pieces of advice: “I took a few decisions in my career early on where, optically, it may have been seen as taking a sidewards step or a step backwards. But that was with an end goal in mind that I wanted to learn more about different industries, different legal requirements in different countries. And ultimately that's led me to where I am now…So just be aware of what you want for yourself and adapt as you go.”

Kari added: “While you might have a long-term career goal, it’s really good to have those short-term steps as well, otherwise you can be thinking 10-15 years down the line and not measuring success in the interim. I think taking risks - and that might sound an odd thing to say from a health and safety professional - but in this sense, it's really important to take risks and opportunities, and never shut yourself off to something. Health and safety presents such a broad opportunity that you can go lots of different ways with it.”

Natalie echoed that need for flexibility: “We’ve seen how much things can change. It’s understanding what the demands are in the moment and how you can bridge that gap...There’s a lot of learning to be had every day.” 

The information in this article is taken from NEBOSH’s “Building a Successful Career in Health and Safety” webinar. You can watch the webinar by registering for free at:  https://webinars.on24.com/nebosh/buildinghsecareer 

For more information, visit www.nebosh.org.uk