About the job

Job summary

The Civil Service embraces equality, diversity, and inclusion. At HSE, your personal qualities are as important as your professional experience. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and all walks of life. Our approach is to recruit “on merit on the basis of fair and open competition”, in line with the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. As such, our thorough selection process ensures that you and every other candidate receive equal and fair treatment.

At the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), our mission is to ensure everyone comes home safe and well from their job. We take great pride in preventing work-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses by inspecting workplaces, investigating incidents, and campaigning for better health & safety practices. As a Higher Work Psychologist within our Risk and Human Factors Group, you'll play a vital role in fulfilling our key strategic objectives for the next decade.

You'll work alongside a team of dedicated psychologists, ergonomists, human factors practitioners, and other experts to support the move towards net zero while maintaining Great Britain's record as one of the safest countries to work in. This is a unique opportunity to apply your knowledge and experience to a wide variety of industrial sectors, developing and leading contributions to valuable HSE and industry projects, incident investigations, and training delivery. You'll also engage at different levels with scientific peers, regulatory and policy colleagues, colleagues across government, and senior-level external organizations.

This role will give you the chance to collaborate with technical experts from numerous other disciplines, allowing you to broaden your skills and knowledge in a diverse and stimulating environment.

We're seeking an enthusiastic and experienced practitioner who is passionate about making a difference and improving the lives of people in their workplaces in the UK and occasionally internationally.

You will be part of a team of Ergonomics, Human Factors and Psychology specialists and your work will require collaboration with a range of other technical discipline specialists, as well as Policy and Regulatory colleagues.

Job description

Following a period of supported on-boarding your role will involve:

• Supporting and where appropriate leading technical contributions to projects related to workplace stress and mental health, safety culture and safety leadership and the wider human factors discipline and demonstrating high professional standards in science and application of research methods, including constructively challenging existing methods and approaches. This may involve taking on a role as a technical lead on a topic from within the discipline.
• Supporting technical contributions to incident investigations focused on non-compliance in the reduction of workplace stress and mental health as required (following a period of training and support), technical contributions to support regulatory colleagues (following a period of training and support). This may involve acting as an expert witness.
• Providing expert advice to a range of internal and external stakeholders on key work psychology issues including:

• • management of work-related stress and mental health at work;
  • safety culture and climate
  • safety leadership
  • managing human performance through identifying / managing potential performance influencing factors;
  • understanding of human errors and how to mitigate their occurrence or effects;
  • management of fatigue and shift work;
  • safety critical communications;
• Collaborating with other disciplines, and taking into account different views and perspectives.
• Supporting the development of research and consultancy work with industry by engaging with potential customers, providing quality technical content to proposals and presenting technical solutions to both technical and non-technical staff and customers.
• Delivering presentations at conferences and events.
• Design and facilitate workshops to support colleagues and internal / external stakeholders.
• Delivering training courses in your areas of technical expertise on open and in-company courses.
• Writing high quality, reports that are suitable to be made available to the public (when appropriate), used by policy colleagues, shared with industry or as evidence in legal proceedings.

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 (approx. 3 times per week) 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 30 per week.

Person specification

Essential skills and criteria

• Developing skills and competence in psychology/human factors related research methods, including practical experience of facilitating focus groups and interviews in different settings.
• Experience of planning and delivering projects safely and to time and cost.
• The ability to work independently or as part of a team.
• The ability to work in partnership and collaboratively with clients.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills with experience communicating complex matters to different audiences.
• The ability to form strong professional relationships with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £32,802, Health and Safety Executive contributes £8,857 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Technical skills.

This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Application Information

At application stage, you will be asked to complete a personal statement of up to 500 words which demonstrates how you meet the essential skills and criteria of the job advert. You will also complete a behaviour write up of 250 words for the lead behaviour 'Delivering at pace.'

Application Guidance

Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply and how to complete a personal statement https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/how-to-apply/

Sift information

At sift you will be assessed on your personal statement and your 250 word write up on the behaviour 'Delivering at pace.'

Sift will take place 11th March 2024.

Interview Information

At interview, you will be assessed against the technical skills and behaviour detailed within the job advert.

Interviews will take place week commencing 25th March 2024.

Please note that a Reserve List will be held for the period of up to 12 months

AI Tools & Platforms

During the application process candidates are allowed to utilise AI (artificial intelligence) platforms and Tools to support them in writing their Behaviours, CV’s and Personal Statements. However, all information submitted must be factually accurate. This includes presenting the ideas and experience of others, or those generated by artificial intelligence, as your own. All presented information will be assessed at the Interview Stage.

Sponsorship

This role is not open to application from those who will require sponsorship under the points based system. Should you apply for this role and require sponsorship your application will be rejected, and any provisional offers of employment will be withdrawn.

It is the candidate’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of the terms and conditions they will adopt should they be successful in their application.

For a summary of HSE terms and conditions as part of Civil Service Reform, please see the attached document.

Any move to HSE from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at here

HSE is proud to be a part of the Disability Confidence Scheme (DCS). As a Disability Confident employer, we positively welcome applications from disabled people. We are committed to making workplace adjustments to ensure anyone can participate in the recruitment and selection process. We offer a guaranteed interview scheme for all disabled applicants who provide evidence of meeting the minimum requirements necessary for the post. If, during the application or interview process, you require any assistance due to a disability or a medical condition, please contact us at the email address below to discuss how we can support you. If successful in securing your role, HSE can provide suitable workplace adjustments to support you throughout your career with HSE.

If you have a disability and you need an application form in an alternative format or you would like to know more about our recruitment process, please contact: hr.resourcing-team@hse.gov.uk

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

Open to UK nationals only.

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.