Group Health & Safety Manager

The Company

Newly Weds® Foods is a leading, privately owned global food ingredients business. The European division is a market leader in the manufacture of coatings, seasonings and functional ingredient systems.

Today, Newly Weds® Foods is a world leader in food ingredient technology. A network of R&D, manufacturing and service facilities around the globe allows us to serve our customers’ needs in more than 90 countries. Despite our size and scope, we’ve continued to be an independent, family-owned business answerable only to the demands of our customers. That’s why we continue to invest in infrastructure, human resources and capacity to keep pace with our customers’ needs and expectations.

The Position

Newly Weds® Foods Ltd are currently seeking to recruit a highly motivated, proactive and driven individual to work as a Group Health and Safety Manager. Reporting into the Managing Director for the UK and Europe, with a dotted line to the Global EHS Director, this leadership role has the responsibility for developing Health, Safety and Environmental standards, and ensuring that they are embedded within our business. You will be responsible for setting the strategic framework for the management of these standards and for defining and delivering against objectives that enable both the achievement of these standards and continuous improvement. You will give technical guidance on all Health, Safety and Environmental matters and identifying and advising on current and future requirements. The most important aspect of the role is to improve the HSE culture across the organisation and, working alongside the existing Operations team and Plant Manager group, deliver significant improvement. You will work at all four sites in the UK and support new projects and developments in the UK and EU. You will have the ability to work at all levels across the organisation and have demonstrable experience in a similar role.

Key for success in this job is a passion and identification with Operations and Manufacturing, ideally with some prior experience, or ambition to develop in, site operations roles.

Deliver:

• Develop Weekly and Monthly H+S Reporting – combining and unifying Accident reporting to send a clear report detailing events, as well as One Pagers to communicate and inculcate a culture of improvement and learning across all sites using graphs and clear tables. Ensure wide distribution.
• An overall H+S Strategy – based on a gap analysis of where we are now vs where we should be. To include:
• An overall campaign. Style: “Safety Starts with Me” / “Project Zero” which ‘brands’ an initiative to ensure that all employees are aware of the focus. This should incorporate an annual calendar of events.
• Should ensure there is a programme of site-based initiatives
• Look outside the business to see what ‘best practice’ in behavioural safety campaigns is.
• Alongside Plant managers, a ‘Health and Safety’ element to the 5 Year Plans. So that we can identify a ‘strand’ of H+S investment through the 5 Yr Plan for each site. This will involve working with the Plant Managers.
• Develop Personal Development Plans for each of the H+S managers, clearly identifying their objectives, monitoring their delivery, ensure these are aligned with the Plant Managers.
• Work with colleagues in the USA to understand each of the site’s gaps vs last year’s H+S Audit to ensure all sites demonstrate an improvement in H+S Audit scores.
• Work with internal H+S team and site leadership to roll out IOSH “Working Safely” courses – ideally across all operatives. Explore the option of altering our registration to enable us to deliver ‘Managing Safely’ as well for all colleagues with leadership responsibilities.
• Encourage cross-pollination across the sites – bring together best practice across the UK sites, encourage team collaboration. Establish the “H+S” team, meeting on a regular basis.
• Execute the Corporate EHS objectives and strategy as directed by the Global EHS Director and Board

Way of working:

• Take personal responsibility for delivery. Work closely with Plant Managers to understand their site situation. Provide practical help and assistance to drive change and delivery.

Person Specification

The ability to work collaboratively within a team and demonstrate excellent interpersonal skills is essential to this role, as well as the ability to communicate effectively at all levels. Individuals must be able to prioritise their workload and work effectively when under pressure, as working to tight deadlines is part of this role. You must have excellent organisational skills and have good knowledge of data analysis, risk assessments, negotiation and influencing skills. This position requires a sound knowledge of lean initiatives with excellent computer software skills. As this is a multi-site role you must hold a full driving licence and have a flexible approach to working as you will be required to visit other sites within the UK.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in occupational health and safety; or related field; or three to five years related experience and or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience in a manufacturing facility.
• Extensive experience operating at a senior level within SHE contributing to the leadership teams strategic objectives.
• Strong leadership skills with demonstrated experience managing, developing and coaching a team.
• Strong communicator, with demonstrated experience influencing at all levels.
• Change agent, focused on continuous improvement with demonstrated results in driving the SHE agenda.
• Strong aptitude for solving complex problems.
• Demonstrated experience in driving behavioural safety with tangible results.
• NEBOSH Diploma in Health and Safety.
• Chartered member or working towards becoming a chartered member of IOSH.

Hours of work

This is a day staff position, working a basic 37.5-hour week, Monday to Friday, however due to nature of this role you will need to demonstrate a certain amount of flexibility.