Human Factor Practitioner

Location: Durrington, Worthing (Hybrid - Site attendance and flexible working is required to accommodate interviews and investigation with our shift colleagues - It is essential for you to have a full driving licence)

Contract Type: Perm

Hours: 37

Salary: From £33,000 depending on skills and experience

About the role:

At Southern Water, we are committed to protecting and enhancing the environment. Our Pollution Incident Reduction Plan builds on significant progress already made, with a strong focus on identifying and resolving issues before they occur. While pollution incidents have reduced, we know there is more to do and that’s where you come in.

We recognise that people are complex, and behaviour and performance are influenced by a wide range of internal and external factors. As a Human Factors Practitioner, you will play a key role in understanding these influences and helping us optimise human wellbeing and performance across our Wastewater function. This is an exciting opportunity to make a tangible difference - supporting pollution reduction, driving continuous improvement, and ensuring our people have the tools they need to succeed.

What you will be responsible for:

• Carrying out reactive investigations where human error has been identified as a primary contributor of a pollution event (or near miss) using all SW applications and empathy-led interview techniques.
• Collate and build all necessary reports and data packs using human factors findings, providing insight and trends for the wider function, assisting in pollution reduction.
• Raising pollution risks through identification and discussion of findings at regular and wider wastewater meetings, addressing not only incident specific opportunity but also wider/global risk.
• Produce engaging communications sharing ‘learning moments’, championing and fostering a continuous improvement culture, recognising the value of a Human Factors methodology.
• Delivery training and promote human factors awareness across the business as and when requested or a need is identified.

What you’ll bring to the role:

To be successful in this role, you will be a confident and engaging communicator with a passion to make a difference by delivering awareness sessions to internal teams, able to build trust, rapport and empathy, and being able to solicit honest and open feedback about Human Factors in interviews and produce engaging presentations for a diverse audience and technical skillset.

Being an advocate to develop best practices, you will be analytical and will bring in creative thinking to identify opportunities and activities to address sources of Human Factors and consequently facilitate and lead workshops extracting opportunities/challenges and helping the training team to design person centred, effective and sustainable materials that address identified challenges. You will have a strong exposure in people engagement skills, we welcome applicants from diverse functional experiences such as HR, social services, academic, forces or relevant consultative background with behaviour assessment being highly advantageous. Your analytical skills will be key in this role working on qualitative data, extract and present the findings to work on improvement plans. It will be great if you have experience working on continuous improvement methodologies, ideally degree qualified in social or behavioural field however we certainly value equivalent level of experience!

Southern Water is at the forefront of transforming Britain’s water industry, investing significantly to enhance resilience, sustainability, and service excellence. With £7.8bn planned investment for 2025-30, this is an unparalleled opportunity to join a business committed to delivering a generational shift in the way water services are managed.

You will be joining at a time of significant change, working alongside a highly skilled leadership team with a clear vision for the future. We offer an environment where senior professionals can make a meaningful impact, influence major strategic decisions, and drive long-term value creation.

At Southern Water, we believe diverse perspectives drive innovation. If you’re passionate about making a positive impact and think you can bring value to our team, we’d love to hear from you—even if you don’t tick every box. Your unique skills and experiences could be exactly what we need.

Our Commitment to Diversity: We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic. If you need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.

Additional information: In line with Southern Water’s security requirements, successful candidates will be required to provide evidence of their identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record check (DBS) and verification of their employment and/or education history for the past three years. Appointment to this role is subject to the successful completion of all pre-employment checks, including security vetting. Please note that if a candidate does not meet the required security standards or fails to pass the vetting process, Southern Water reserves the right to withdraw the offer of employment. Some positions may also require higher levels of security vetting, which may involve providing additional documentation.