HSEQ. SHEQ. EHS. HSE. Put Lead, Manager, Advisor, Coordinator or Head of in front of any of them, and you have dozens of possible job titles.
The problem is that two businesses can advertise almost identical titles while needing completely different people. I see this regularly when recruiting across engineering, construction and infrastructure.
A company advertises for an HSEQ Manager, but when you get underneath the job description, there's very little management involved. There might be no team. There might be no direct reports.
What the company actually needs is someone who can spend time on live projects, visit engineers in the field, challenge unsafe working practices, manage contractor expectations, strengthen quality controls and make sure environmental requirements are followed. That's very different from someone running HSEQ from one fixed manufacturing site.
Start with where your risk actually sits
Before deciding whether you need an HSEQ Manager, SHEQ Lead or Health & Safety Advisor, ask one question first: where does the risk in our business actually sit?
For some companies, most employees work from one factory, depot or production facility. For others, the workforce is spread across ten, twenty or fifty customer sites at any one time. Engineers may be installing equipment, service teams maintaining plant, and project teams working inside operational factories, utilities sites, treatment works or construction sites. Some employees may rarely visit the company's own premises.
That completely changes the HSEQ requirement. Someone who is excellent at managing health and safety within one controlled site may not be the right person to manage risk across a mobile workforce on multiple live projects.
Contractors carry another layer of complexity
If you're a contractor, your people are often working inside somebody else's environment. Your HSEQ person needs to understand far more than your own internal policies: client standards, RAMS, permits, inductions, site rules, subcontractors, temporary works, lifting operations, interfaces with other trades and constantly changing site conditions.
They'll often need to visit projects regularly rather than manage everything from an office. They also need the credibility to speak with engineers, supervisors, project managers, customers and site teams alike.
For these businesses, visibility matters. The strongest HSEQ professional on paper isn't always the strongest person in the field.
Principal contractor duties change the role again
The requirement broadens further when a business acts as principal contractor under CDM 2015. You're no longer only thinking about the safety of your own employees. There may be multiple subcontractors working across the project, each bringing their own people, systems, equipment and risks onto site.
The business needs robust arrangements for selecting, coordinating and monitoring contractors, ensuring they are suitably competent, properly inducted and working to appropriate RAMS and site controls. On top of that come the wider duties of planning, managing and monitoring the construction phase, and securing cooperation between contractors.
That's why principal contractor experience can be so valuable. A candidate may have an excellent HSEQ background, but if they've only ever worked within one fixed facility, moving to a contractor running numerous live projects is a significant step.
How much Q and E is really in your HSEQ role?
Another common issue is advertising a genuinely broad HSEQ position when most available candidates are predominantly health and safety professionals. That isn't necessarily a problem. The question is how much quality and environmental responsibility genuinely sits within the job.
Does quality mean maintaining ISO 9001? Or does it mean introducing inspection and test plans, hold points, traceability, sign-off procedures, NCR processes and project quality controls?
Does environmental mean overseeing ISO 14001? Or will this person be managing waste, pollution risks, spills, environmental incidents, legal obligations and controls on live project sites?
Those are very different levels of responsibility, and they point to very different candidates.
Culture is different from compliance
There's a major difference between someone who is excellent at systems and someone who is particularly strong at influencing behaviour. Both are valuable.
Some businesses need a highly structured person who can strengthen management systems, documentation, audits and compliance. Others already have that infrastructure in place. Their problem is getting people to engage with it.
Those businesses need someone who will visit engineers on site, challenge a project manager when necessary, talk to subcontractors, sit with senior leadership and explain why something needs to change. Someone who makes HSEQ part of how the business delivers projects, rather than something that sits in a folder.
The best candidate for those two businesses may be very different.
"Manager" doesn't always mean managing people
Candidates naturally read an HSEQ Manager vacancy as a management position. But many businesses actually need a senior hands-on practitioner. There may be no HSEQ team and nobody to line manage.
Instead, the person might be supporting five project managers, twenty field engineers and several subcontractors across numerous sites. That's still a significant responsibility. It just isn't traditional line management.
Sometimes HSEQ Lead, Senior HSEQ Advisor or HSEQ Business Partner describes the role better. Sometimes HSEQ Manager is exactly right. What matters is understanding what the person will actually be responsible for.
Define what success looks like
One of the most useful questions to answer before recruiting is this: if the person has been successful after 12 months, what will actually be different?
Perhaps:
- Your project managers are stronger on HSEQ
- Subcontractor standards have improved
- Site visits and inspections happen consistently
- RAMS are more robust and site-specific
- Near-miss reporting has increased because people are more engaged
- Quality failures and NCRs have reduced
- Environmental controls are stronger
- Systems are consistent across every project, rather than changing depending on who's running the job
- HSEQ has finally moved off the desk of an Operations Director, HR Manager or Engineering Manager who's been covering it alongside their day job
Once you understand the environment, the risks and what you expect the person to change, the candidate profile becomes much clearer. Only then should you decide what to call the role.
Five questions to answer before you advertise
- Where does our risk actually sit: one site, or many?
- Are our people working in our environment, or our clients'?
- How much of the role is genuinely quality and environmental, and at what depth?
- Do we need someone to build systems, or someone to change behaviour?
- What will be different in 12 months if we hire the right person?
Final thought
Ultimately, you aren't recruiting four letters and a job title. You're recruiting somebody who needs to understand how your business actually delivers its work.
Get the environment, responsibilities and desired outcomes right first, and both the role and the right candidate become much easier to define.
Weighing up an HSEQ hire? If you want to sense-check the role before going to market, EMT Talent can help define the brief and identify the type of candidate the role actually needs.
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