At the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), we believe everyone has the right to come home safe and well from their job. That’s why our mission is to prevent work-related death, injury and ill health. Combining specialists from numerous fields, we campaign for better health & safety practice, develop and review guidance and regulations, develop specialist products and deliver training, and we produce crucial research to keep people and their working environments healthy and safe.

We are excited to welcome an enthusiastic and experienced person to become a Senior Psychologist within our Risk and Human Factors Group in the Health & Safety Executive’s (HSE) Science Division (SD).

You will be responsible for supporting HSE to fulfil our key strategic objectives which include reducing work-related ill health, with a specific focus on mental health and stress over the next 10 years. You will lead and contribute to applied research projects directly improving the lives of people in their workplaces. You will need to engage at different levels with scientific peers, regulatory and policy colleagues, colleagues across Government and at senior levels within organisations.

This challenging, permanent position is an excellent opportunity for a professional to make their mark in a wide variety of industrial sectors in an organisation dedicated to saving lives and promoting health.

In HSE SD, we use applied science to underpin and inform pragmatic guidance and advice to meet the current and future needs of industry. We are a leading provider of health and safety solutions to industry and government, nationally and internationally. The scope of our work requires a diversity of talented individuals. This breadth of expertise underpins our particular strength in creating multidisciplinary teams to support major incident investigations, policy development, undertake high quality research, provide commercial consultancy and deliver training.

You will be part of a dedicated Human Factors Team which includes psychologists, ergonomists, human factors practitioners and other disciplines. You will also collaborate with technical experts across many other disciplines.

Your role will involve providing expert advice to a range of internal and external stakeholders on workplace health and safety such as:

• Stress risk management (following and building on HSE approaches);
• Job design to support good psychological health;
• Organisational change;
• Leadership;

The role will require you to undertake and lead others in project work on a variety of work psychology related topics across different occupational sectors and take responsibility for your own workload.  Your responsibilities will include:

• Developing projects which support HSE’s strategic objectives in collaboration with HSE Policy and Regulatory colleagues and project managers.
• Supporting proposed projects through the necessary commissioning and ethics approval processes.
• Working with business development and project management professionals to develop external support consultancy following quality procedures, from initial discussions with potential clients through to fully-costed proposals.
• Delivering both HSE and external projects, often concurrently, independently and leading and being part of teams, working with project managers and sometimes other disciplines and following quality procedures.
• Delivering standard and bespoke training, including virtual delivery, both within HSE and also external clients.
• Engaging with a wide range of stakeholders from organisations, industry bodies and academics from board level to shop floor through attendance at meetings and presenting at conferences and webinars.
• Having high levels of topic knowledge and appropriate research skills including literature reviews, facilitating face-to-face and virtual focus groups and interviews, qualitative data analysis, report writing and presentation of results to end users.
• Coaching team members.
• Keeping abreast of the latest research in a topic and contribute ideas for further research, offerings and products to support HSE’s mission.
• Applying your knowledge to a wide range of sectors and recognise common issues and learning across different sectors.

Some overnight travelling is expected but you will be mostly based in HSE’s Science and Research Centre in Buxton. We encourage and enable hybrid working with regular (weekly) attendance at our purpose-built centre in Buxton, Derbyshire.

At HSE, we are proud to be able to offer our people the opportunity to work in a hybrid way which combines working from home and the office. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your allocated office will be your contractual place of work. There will be a requirement to travel to the office for various activities e.g., collaborative working, supporting and training colleagues. If hybrid working is suitable for you and your role, the arrangements will be determined primarily by business need, but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. Therefore, we would encourage candidates to consider if the commute from home to the office is a feasible distance to travel before making an application. Please note that if you are successful, hybrid working will be discussed prior to taking up the post.

Part time working hours are available for this role. We can accept part time applicants who can commit to working a minimum of 28hours per week

We are looking for candidates who can demonstrate:

• A good understanding of work psychology related research methods (including qualitative and quantitative research approaches), ideally including practical experience of site assessments.
• Experience of delivering substantial, high quality projects safely and to time and cost.
• The ability to work well both independently and as part of a team.
• Strong communication skills, experience of writing clear concise reports and the ability to interact productively with a diverse range of stakeholders. This will include public speaking engagements delivering conference presentations, training courses, in court, etc.