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The workplace is full of hazards that need to be identified and dealt with as efficiently as possible, and as a business owner it’s your responsibility to ensure you’re taking action. It’s important to put the health and safety of your employees first and there are a number of work risk assessments you can arrange in order to achieve that, and here are just a few you might like to consider:

• Workstation assessment. A workstation assessment gives employees the knowledge they need to arrange their workstation effectively and safely, identifying ways that the position of the screen, desk, chair, mouse and keyboard can be adjusted for maximum comfort.
• DSE risk assessment. A complex case management procedure will often follow any incidence of illness or absence, and identifying clear DSE solutions to limit further staff sickness is a key part of that. Our DSE risk assessments can identify areas of improvement and can give you those necessary recommendations, ensuring you’re meeting all health and safety requirements.
• Stress auditing. Workplace stress can have a severe impact on the welfare, motivation and productivity of your employees, so it’s important to undertake necessary audits to try and limit the impact of workplace stress as much as possible.
• Pregnancy risk assessment. Pregnant women can be particularly vulnerable to workplace hazards and it takes specific expertise to manage the safety of such individuals, and our pregnancy risk assessments can help ensure the health and safety of any pregnant women in your employment.

These are just a few work risk assessments that you should consider and any one of them could be vital to the welfare of your employees, so make sure you’re on top of things by booking your assessments and you can have the peace of mind you need.

If you want to reduce employee absence, illness, and accidents in your workplace, here at O. H. Recruitment we can help by offering our professional, comprehensive d DSE Risk Assessment Service.

For more than 10 years, we have been helping companies with DSE Risk Assessment. Our fully comprehensive service includes contact with employee and line manager, on site consultation, full ergonomic assessment, post assessment debrief meeting, confidential medical history and current medical status report, recommendations for any future equipment changes, assessment of a vehicle or home based workplace, referral to an independent OH Physician if required, and much more.

One of the biggest dangers to the workplace when it comes to illness and absence, particularly in the winter, is the flu virus. This threatens staff efficiency and customer service, staff costs, deadlines, new clients, staff morale, and more.

You can probably think of many people who have been off sick with flu or a related virus already this year. How much has this already affected your company’s performance and ability to complete tasks?

This is one of the specific areas we target in our assessments. We can arrange to have a practitioner visit you on site for flu vaccinations.

There are many other specific areas that we target as we seek to help your workplace function better , and save you money by keeping staff in work where they need to be to get things done right and efficiently.

To find out more, visit the home page or get in touch by filling in our online contact form.

Hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) can be hugely debilitating. It is caused by the use of hand-held power tools and is the cause of significant ill-health in the UK and many other countries around the world. It involves painful and disabling disorders of the blood vessels, nerves and joints.

If your employees are at risk of developing this condition, it is vital that you take action to minimise the danger. Not only will you have your conscience to deal with if your personnel develop difficulties of this kind, you may also have to contend with lengthy and costly legal proceedings.

The good news is, there is help at hand. For example, here at Occupational Health Recruitment we can supply you with individuals in occupational health jobs who can screen your workers to see whether they are at risk.

Conducting such assessments is a legal requirement if any of your personnel are likely to be exposed to the possibility of developing such medical problems.

Bringing in experts with jobs in occupational health can be beneficial because such people have all the relevant training and expertise. Meanwhile, they can advise you on suitable health surveillance programmes for your workers and can even set these systems up.

If you are keen to find out more about how these people with occupational health jobs might be able to help you, simply take a look around our website or get in touch. Of course, we can also provide specialists with jobs in occupational health for a range of other purposes, including pre-employment health screening.

It is easy when you see injury statistics among UK firms to think that somehow your organisation is immune to such problems. In fact, it is impossible to rule out the risk of accidents occurring and it is vital to always be on your guard when it comes to safety issues.

This is why it is so important to make use of superb work risk assessment services. By identifying and mitigating any dangers that exist in your workplace, you can dramatically reduce the likelihood that problems of this kind will arise.

Here at Occupational Health Recruitment we can supply you with specialists to conduct a workplace assessment for your company. Getting an expert in to have a look at your premises and operating procedures can make all the difference. Not only do such people bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to such analyses, they also offer a fresh pair of eyes. Their independence from your everyday operations means they can more easily spot potential problems.

And by making full use of work risk assessment services like this you can help to avoid contributing to the Health and Safety Executive’s accident statistics. According to the organisation, in 2010-11 a total of 200,000 reportable injuries occurred that resulted in more than three days of absence. Meanwhile, 1.2 million working people were suffering from an illness related to their employment.

Furthermore, 171 workers lost their lives while performing their duties during the 12 month period.

To find out more about our workplace assessment services, just take a look around our website.

The palette of skills and qualifications that can make up a career as a Health & Safety officer do, of course, have a base e.g. BSc or MSc in Environment Health etc. But what directions are on offer to further the career prospects of H&S officers across both the public and private sectors?

The current view of H&S in many working environments is as something still not taken as seriously as it should be. Many establishments simply view the job of the H&S officer to be something of a nuisance; someone complaining about where they put their morning coffee cup down and so on. But the reality is that H&S is something that needs to be managed in all environments by a dexterous, skilled professional.

Those in advanced Health and Safety officer jobs often sing the praises of working under Local Authority rule for a period, usually near the beginning of your career. Local Authority Health & Safety jobs tend to offer much in the way of dynamic experience, great on-the-job learning and a high level of day to day job variation. For example, enforcing H&S in a Local Authority-run elementary school offers different challenges to that of a car garage, hair dressers, farm etc.

Environmental “eco” guidance is a growing sector within H&S. More businesses than ever are jumping onto the green bandwagon, meaning an H&S officer with enhanced environmental compliance training is often highly sought-after. In this light, Health and Safety officer jobs with skills focussing heavily on environmental enhancement in the workplace look set to be the golden ticket to a bright future career.

The role of HSE representatives in all environments can present diverse challenges and bizarre opportunities (even Alton Towers needs to be H&S compliant, after all!), and in terms of the day to day role, few are less than ordinary.

Perhaps the most dexterous positions are within Local Authority Health and Safety jobs. Local Authority Healthy and Safety officer jobs can focus across the working spectrum, from garages to churches, nurseries to catering premises. Whereby large corporations tend to employ industry-specific Health and Safety officers, Local Authorities rely heavily upon dexterous officers who learn fast, carry extensive knowledge and can adapt easily and comprehensively to the varied tasks ahead of them.

The reputation of H&S in the public arena has been somewhat tarnished of late thanks to the widespread use of “political correctness gone mad” as an excuse to either ban an event or activity (e.g. not allowing kids to play football at break in case they trip over the ball) Or, conversely, to complain about legally relevant H&S implementations simply because they’re mildly inconvenient (e.g. not allowing employees to hop over the car park fence next to the front entrance because it’s closer than walking to the gate, even though the fence is waist-high and could easily cause a serious fall)

In the public sector, this kind of view is common and tends to be to the eternal frustration of those working in Health and Safety jobs. As far as career development and experience go, working under the public sector banner can be invaluable in offering broad knowledge and priceless on-the-job know-how.

Although we primarily operate as an organisation to put professionals in touch with their ideal Health & Safety jobs nationwide, we can also offer an insight into the varied career of the H&S professional. So, if you’re thinking about a career in Health & Safety, here’s our expert checklist of skills and qualifications.

Skills

•    A calm demeanour is essential. H&S officers are frequently ignored and disliked in the workplace; whilst this is unacceptable, it’s likely to feature – at least in part – in the career of a Health and Safety officer. The ability to stay calm under pressure is a given; it may be that the Health and Safety officer has to compile accident reports and advisory notices following the death of an employee etc. H&S is often not for the squeamish!
•    As in medical careers etc, Health and Safety jobs require continuous self-motivated study and technical development. The drive for constant skill and knowledge growth is indispensable.
•    H&S officers frequently need to communicate unwelcome or serious information. Like police officers, H&S officers need excellent communication skills.
•    A basic level of health and physical capability is a prerequisite. Few Health and Safety jobs operate from the comfy seat of a chair!

Qualifications

•    Along with an accredited BSc or MSc in Environmental Health, the best H&S professionals seek out career development qualifications. These tend to focus around industry specific areas such as NVQs, NEBOSH diplomas or University Masters in areas such as agriculture, working at height, chemical transport etc.

Modern occupational health jobs have developed over the last couple of decades from the school nurse treating bumps and grazes to a dexterous professional medical all-rounder position of mental support, lifestyle guidance, fitness advice, environmental safety assessment and so on. In light of this, organisations like the NHS seek to further develop jobs in occupational health to foster better social mobility amongst a variety of workforces.

According to aims laid down in a document covering the new challenges faced by UK nursing personal (New Challenges and Opportunities for Occupational Health Nurses by Di Sherlock) there are three key goals in terms of occupational health and social mobility – to discourage people from going on benefits, to decrease the number of Incapacity Benefit claimants, and to get more claimants overall back into the workplace long-term.

Sherlock points out that the aim of “a society where the health and well-being of people of working age is given the attention it deserves and where work, remaining in work and returning to work are all recognised as being potentially beneficial to health” isn’t unachievable by any means.

So, why is the workplace such a conspicuous arena for overall health and wellbeing strategy implementation? Those with jobs in occupational health are ideally placed for regular interaction and effective, serious influence over a workforce, perhaps even more so than a GP.

Whether such proposals have a serious effect on social mobility will likely be the subject of much scrutiny over the next decade.

We live in an age of creation, an age of conceptual cityscapes, eco towns and some of the highest structures the world has ever seen. The bones of all this are workers. Construction workers, component engineers, scaffold builders, fall arrest safety equipment trainers, crane drivers, mechanics – all under the broad banner of the construction industry.

With more than two million people working within the UK construction industry, the rate of workplace-related illness is high when compared to other sectors like office work. Common work-related health issues can include musculoskeletal disorders (e.g. back pain, repetitive strain injury etc), respiratory problems, skin complaints and stress.

Jobs in occupational health within the construction sector focus heavily on the standards and requirements laid out by the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CMD), which covers everything involved in the processes of checking environmental conditions are safe and promote health before any work begins and throughout the lifespan of the project.

But managing occupational health in the construction sector is about more than environmental control. It’s about providing effective physical and mental health-related services covering the likes of regular health screening, first aid, lifestyle guidance, fitness advice, sickness monitoring, return to work appraisals, stress management, conflict resolution and so on.

Our OH recruitment systems aim to put skilled professionals looking for occupational health jobs in touch with the best possible employers. If you have occupational health experience within the construction industry and are looking to continue in this sector, get in touch with us today.

Are you searching for your dream job? Perhaps you have always wanted to be a school nurse? Or maybe you want to work in a hospital? But sometimes even if you have all the qualifications and education you need, it can still be difficult to find the occupational health jobs you want to apply for. Here at OH Recruitment, we can help.

For years we have been helping to place candidates with the occupational health jobs that are exactly right for them. We put a great deal of effort, and much expert knowledge, into finding precisely the right job for the right candidate.

We want to fill each candidate’s needs by allowing them to benefit from rewarding work, variety in work, challenging tasks, and job satisfaction.

You’ll find a great choice of jobs in occupational health through us as we work with 800 different companies to provide vacancies to appropriate candidates. We offer exclusive information and access to many unadvertised jobs in occupational health, allowing you more opportunity than any other health care job agency.

We can also offer you career guidance as you seek to find the right employment. Our consultants will use their specialist knowledge to work with you on a personal level and help you to achieve your goals.

And although we want to be careful about who we place where, to ensure that you get the right job, we will still place you as quickly as we can, and where possible, always within the agreed time frame.