The talent gap: Is health and safety running on empty?
The skills shortage is the biggest challenge facing many health and safety professionals, who are contending with increasing pressure to do more with fewer resources.
Away from the day-to-day pressures, environmental, health and safety (EHS) teams must confront longer-term challenges. According to the 2025 Health and Safety Report, produced by RS and Health & Safety Matters, the biggest concern for professionals is that of skills, which 46 per cent rated as their main worry.
Bethany Holroyd, Founder and Director of The Safety Superhero Academy, and author of the children’s book The Safety Superhero, says the industry struggles to attract people initially, meaning many come to it as a second or even third career.
“Unless you have a role model, you might never even consider health and safety as a career,” she says. “The industry struggles to attract people early on. There aren’t enough apprenticeships, traineeships, or work experience opportunities to change that. If we want to close the skills gap, we need to start showing young people that health and safety is a career worth choosing.”
This is compounded, says Steven Harris, Managing Director of Integrity HSE, by a reliance on older workers. “We’re not keeping pace with the development of the sector,” he explains. “We have HSE professionals who are still practising techniques that worked 20 years ago but which just are not relevant in the modern world.
“We also have a lot of people retiring. We did a study with a client, and found that a massive percentage of their senior leadership team was going to retire within the next nine years, and there wasn’t really any strategy to bring in people underneath.”
John Barnacle-Bowd, Vice President, Health, Safety and Environment at RS Group, argues more needs to be done to ensure the generation below is ready to step into more senior positions. “What do existing teams have in their development plans?” he asks.
“Can we give them stretching assignments that will take them out of their comfort zones and help them to find the person that they never knew they were? We need to think about how to retain staff and train them internally to get them to where we want them to be.” It’s important to protect training and development budgets, he warns, as these are often cut when economic conditions tighten.
We need to hold on to talent
In the last two years, the number of professionals who recognise retaining staff as central to improving health and safety compliance has nearly doubled. Our most recent report found 28 per cent who highlighted this solution, increasing from 25 per cent in 2024 and 15 per cent in 2023, suggesting EHS teams realise they have work to do.
Holroyd agrees this needs to be an area of focus. “Job descriptions these days are generally diabolical,” says Holroyd. “They often don’t even include a salary, and the benefits listed are things like free parking and fresh fruit – the bare minimum! Your workforce deserves more than that. If people are not satisfied with what a job is offering, they will walk away.”
She also stresses the importance of career development; an area too often overlooked. “Safety is a constantly evolving industry,” she says. “Organisations should be committed to upskilling their OSH staff and encouraging early career professionals to experience the industry and explore what’s out there, because ultimately it benefits their business. Legislation like the Building Safety Act is reshaping the landscape and, without ongoing training, professionals risk falling behind.”
Problems retaining staff can also be down to poor management, suggests Hugh Maxwell, Managing Director of Maxwell Safety. “As you get higher up the tree, soft skills become more important,” he says. “We don’t always put enough focus on this in terms of their development. A lack of development in these areas can lead to ineffective leadership, poor communication, and low team morale. These are all factors that are known to contribute to higher staff turnover.”
One health and safety manager from the public sector would also like to see executives and senior managers trained in aspects of health and safety, so they can understand just what’s required. “The more they understand the importance of health and safety, the easier it’s going to be. If they understand how much money can be lost and saved by good health and safety management, then you’re in a far better place.”
Productivity pressure is building
Aside from skills, budget cuts are also a concern for 42 per cent – up slightly from 41 per cent last year – and this is most notable for large organisations, where 58 per cent see it as a challenge.
A similar number (39%) identify the pressure to improve productivity as a risk, which has increased from 36 per cent the previous year. Taken together, these two suggest a greater push for health and safety teams to do more with less.
Technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), could provide one solution to this productivity problem, suggests Maxwell, as well as enhancing safety. “Leaders have to be prepared to take greater risk and move out of their comfort zone,” he says.
“They must evaluate and consider specific and novel AI and technological solutions which fit the needs of their business or even offer opportunities to change and expand their knowledge and skills through adoption and development. Such change needs to be embraced not seen as a threat.”
Barnacle-Bowd argues health and safety professionals also need to be prepared to understand more about business finances.
“We need more rounded safety professionals who understand how to plan a budget and ask for more money,” he says. “Taking management development courses will help to build confidence to ask the CEO for more money, or even just to have a conversation around budgets for a small piece of work.”