PAY AND CONDITIONS

PAY SurveY 2013

Pay survey 2013 | healthandsafetyatwork.comII

pay and conditions

Positive signsOur eighth annual survey of pay in the health and safety profession, with recruiter Attwood Burton, finds more optimism and freezes on the wane

Over the past 12 months the UK economy has enjoyed a mild revival; the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts

it will have grown by 1.4% over the course of 2013, more than twice the level in its previous forecast of just 0.6%.

The outlook for 2014 is also relatively rosy; the OBR estimates the economy will expand by a robust 2.4%.

The crisis in the eurozone, which threatened the stability of both domestic and foreign financial systems, may not have vanished completely but the pros-pect of political and economic meltdown has receded in recent months.

The improved picture after almost six years of recession or economic stagna-tion is reflected in the results of our latest pay survey, which finds fewer pay freezes and an increased sense of job security.

These conclusions come from the aggregated data from 952 UK health

Based on a detailed analysis of the information provided by more than 950 health and safety practitioners, we find that:

■ The median annual salary across all job functions for full-time employees is pitched between £35,000 and £37,499, exactly the same as in 2012.

■ A gender gap persists with male full-time health and safety practitioners earning more than their female counterparts.

■ Midpoint salaries for full-time health and safety professionals have increased by 1% over the 12 months to the end of September 2013, below the median figure for the economy as a whole.

■ There has been a modest fall in the proportion of participants who have suffered an absolute pay cut but a more noticeable decline in the percentage of respondents who have had their salaries frozen.

■ The midpoint salary for a full time health and safety officer is between £30,000 and £32,499, and between £32,500 and £34,999 for a health and safety adviser.

■ The highest average rates in the UK are to be found in Scotland, with the lowest in Wales. ■ The highest median salaries for health and safety officers are in construction and the

lowest in manufacturing. ■ Almost half those surveyed say they believe they are underpaid for their qualifications

and responsibilities.

KeY fINDINgS

and safety practition-ers who completed our online questionnaire (sample details are on page VIII).

The total repre-sents a near 12% increase on the 844 who participated in

2012. The data relate to the 12 months to the end of September last year.

The research has again been con-ducted with Attwood Burton, the recruitment agency specialising in plac-ing health and safety professionals in a wide range of industries. Further infor-mation about the company’s services can be found at www.attwoodburton.co.uk

I don’t believe the role is adequately recognised; it saddens me to see people in administrative roles can be paid more than us”

Health and safety adviser, public sector

healthandsafetyatwork.com | Pay survey 2013 III

pay and conditions

Pay levelsWhile base pay is by no

means the only factor motivating workers, it remains by far the most

important element of remuneration for most employees. It is often a prime con-sideration when workers are thinking about whether to stick with their cur-rent employer or to apply for positions elsewhere.

As in previous years, we asked survey respondents to indicate their salary from a list of set bands, each rising in £2500 increments. At the bottom of the salary scale are full-time employees earning less than £20,000 a year. At the top are those paid £80,000 or more.

To ensure our data are useful and rel-evant, participants were asked to iden-tify the job title that most closely reflects their current status from a list of 11 roles. The largest single group (287) describe themselves as health and safety advis-ers. A further 252 say they are heads of health and safety.

We have deliberately excluded an anal-ysis of part-timers’ salaries, so the figures quoted below are for full-timers only.

The salary league tableAcross the whole sample, 3.4% of all par-ticipants in full-time positions are paid less than £20,000 a year, almost exactly

the same percentage as in 2012. This group of respondents is mostly concentrated in roles such as health and safety adviser or health and safety coordinator. There are also five participants in the lowest salary band who describe themselves as directors of health and safety. Four of these work in the agricultural sector.

Eight health and safety advisers receive annual salaries under the £20,000 threshold. Of these, four are in the public sector and two each in construction and manufacturing.

As is to be expected, there are also relatively few practitioners (4.5%) paid in excess of £79,999 a year. Most commonly, their job titles are either director of health and safety or head of health and safety. The vast majority of high earn-ers are employed in the private sector.

A whole sample analy-sis covering all full time employed respond-ents (919) reveals the median annual salary across all job functions is pitched between £35,000 and £37,499, exactly the same as in 2012.

The lower quartile salary band, below which only 25% of respondents fall, is £27,500 to £29,999, while the upper quartile marker for the top 25% is in the £45,000 to £47,999 range.

A distinct gender pay gap persists, with the median annual salary for full-time male health and safety practition-ers falling between £35,000 and £37,499 and between £32,500 and £34,999 for their female counterparts.

rises still subduedWe asked respondents whether they had received a pay rise in the 12 months to the end of September 2013. The mid-point salary increase was 1% with the lower quartile at zero and a 3% upper quartile. This is exactly the same as the

position 12 months earlier. The distri-bution of 2013 pay uplifts is set out in Figure 1 below.

By contrast, according to pay ana-lysts XpertHR, over the 12 months to the end of September 2013, the median basic whole economy wage increase was pitched at 2%.

Health and safety freelancers and contractors fared considerably worse than their directly employed counter-parts in terms of basic pay rises.

The median increase for these prac-titioners over the year to the end of September 2013 was zero. It was also zero this time last year, suggesting that the market for these workers will, in the round, still not bear any increase in fees.

However, there is some modestly good news — the overall percentage of survey participants suffering wage freezes has fallen from 41.3% last year to 34.7% this time.

There has also been a marginal decline in the percentage of respond-ents reporting their employers had cut their salaries, falling from 4.5% over the year to the end of September 2012 to 3.2% over the comparable period in 2013.

Only 15% of respondents said their pay rise had been lower in 2013 than the year before, though half said they had received the same increase in both pay years.

fIgure 1: 2013 PAY INCreASeS

3.8%

Pay cut

Pay freeze

1%

2%

3%

4%5%

6–10%>10%

35.6%

18.8%

17.7%

10.7%

1.9%1.9%

4.5%5.1%

n=952

This year was the first pay rise for three years ... all of 1%”

Health and safety adviser, public sector

Pay survey 2013 | healthandsafetyatwork.comIv

pay and conditions

rate for the jobTable 2 sets out an analysis of the salaries for full-time employees for a selection of job titles.

The median annual salary for a free-lancer working as a health and safety adviser is between £37,500 and £39,999, compared with £32,500 and £34,999 for their full-time employed counterparts.

As in previous surveys, we have used the median, rather than the mean aver-age, when calculating pay data. This statistical yardstick gives a better guide to salary trends as it smooths out any potential distortions caused by respond-ents who are very highly paid and those with exceptionally low salaries. An error in the survey form prevented us calculat-ing median rates for those in the health and safety manager grade.

People’s perceptions of their own remuneration can give an important indication of how they feel about their job and, indeed, how they view their

relative value to the organisation. At first glance, you would expect a substantial majority of workers in most professions to say they are underpaid.

But this is not the case among our 952-strong sample. As Figure 2 shows, there appears to be a surprisingly high level of salary satis-faction, though just under half (46.4%) of those questioned say they are underpaid. Five hard-to-satisfy respondents earning at least £80,000 say they are not paid enough. Four participants with annual salaries below £20,000 hum-bly describe themselves as overpaid.

There is a noticeable split by sector, per-haps reflecting harder times in the public services. Just over two-fifths (43.8%) in the private sector think they are underpaid,

compared with 52.8% of their counter-parts in local and central government.

In a follow-up question we asked participants about their perception of the salaries of the health and safety

profession as a whole. Almost two-fifths (38.4%) say it is underpaid while 45% think it sufficiently remunerated. According to our data, those working in the public sector are more likely to think the profession is underpaid than those in the private sector.

Strong candidates will have more options as the market improves and will need to be well rewarded to be recruited or retained”

Mark Burton, Attwood Burton

Job funcTIon Whole economy (£pa) prIvaTe SecTor (£pa) publIc SecTor (£pa)

Health and safety coordinator 27,500 – 29,999 27,500 – 29,999 27,500 – 29,999

Health and safety officer 30,000 – 32,499 30,000 – 32,499 30,000 – 32,499

Health and safety adviser 32,500 – 34,999 35,000 – 37,499 32,500 – 34,999

Health and safety consultant 37,500 – 39,999 35,000 – 37,499 45,000 – 47,499

Head of health and safety 45,000 – 47,499 45,000 – 47,499 42,500 – 44,999

* For full-time employees, excluding contractors and consultants

fIgure 2: PAY SATISfACTION

TAble 1: MeDIAN ANNuAl SAlArY bANDINgS bY jOb fuNCTION*

underpaid

Well paid

Overpaid

Sufficiently paid

46.4%40.5%

12.4%0.7%

n=952

healthandsafetyatwork.com | Pay survey 2013 v

pay and conditions

region and industryAs with most professions, base

salaries of survey partici-pants vary by region.

Table 2 sets out median regional salary bands for full-time health and safety professionals. The sample for Northern Ireland was too small to allow us to quote a reliable fig-ure.

Scotland offers the highest base remuneration, with a median annual salar y of bet ween £37,000 and £39,999. This may be a reflection of well paid jobs in the offshore oil and gas industry. There appears to be little regional variation across England in this year’s sample. Wales languishes again at the bottom of the salary league table.

Sectoral differencesAs well as varying by region, base pay among our sample differs widely by industrial sector. For example, as shown in Table 3, the highest base rates for full-time health and safety advisers are in the construction industry, where the median annual salary is between £37,500 and £39,999 a year.

The lowest salaries, bet ween £30,000 and £32,999, are paid in the general services sector. But this sec-tor also leads the pay league table for heads of health and safety. The high-est median average salaries for health and safety officers, as set out in Table 6, are to be found in construction. Manu-facturing sits at the bottom of the pay league for both roles.

regIon (no of reSpondenTS) medIan annual Salary band (£pa)

Scotland (93) 37,500 – 39,999

South East (212) 35,000 – 37,499

East Midlands (78) 35,000 – 37,499

East Anglia (61) 35,000 – 37,499

North West (125) 35,000 – 37,499

South West (85) 35,000 – 37,499

North East (64) 35,000 – 37,499

West Midlands (98) 35,000 – 37,499

Wales (45) 32,500 – 34,999

*For full-time employees excluding contractors and consultants

InduSTry (number of reSpondenTS)

healTh and SafeTy advISer (£pa)

healTh and SafeTy offIcer (£pa)

head of healTh and SafeTy (£pa)

Construction (185) 37,500 – 39,999 32,500 – 34,999 45,000 – 47,499

Manufacturing (241) 32,500 – 34,999 27,500 – 29,999 40,000 – 42,499

Public sector (including defence, education, health, a n d c e nt ra l a n d l o ca l government) (197)

32,500 – 34,999 30,000 – 32,499 42,500 – 44,999

General services (including law, facilities management, and media) (131)

30,000 – 32,499 30,000 – 32,499 47,500 – 49,999

*For full-time employees, excluding contractors and consultants

TAble 2: regIONAl MeDIAN SAlArY bANDS fOr heAlTh AND SAfeTY PrOfeSSIONAlS*

TAble 3: MeDIAN ANNuAl SAlArY bANDS bY INDuSTrY*

We tend to see jobs carrying a ‘South east premium’ but these figures don’t necessarily bear that out” Alistair Attwood, Attwood Burton

Pay survey 2013 | healthandsafetyatwork.comvI

pay and conditions

Qualifications and budgetOver the past couple of decades

the health and safety profes-sion has moved from one where experience was the

determining factor in securing work to one where employers increasingly specify qualifications or chartered sta-tus in advertisements. Table 4 pre-sents median annual salary bands by respondents’ highest educational quali-fication. This year’s data reinforce the pattern revealed in previous years: the better qualified the health and safety practitioner, the higher the annual salary they attract.

We asked respondents for details of the annual budgets they are responsi-ble for. The results show that more than

two-fifths of directly employed safety practitioners have no autonomy over safety spending. Among the remaining

majority, median salary levels rose evenly with the size of budget managed, though with a slight dip for those handling

annual spends in excess of £1 million. We also asked how many staff respond-ents had reporting to them. Almost

half the sample (436 respondents) said they had no subordi-nates and a further one in nine (116) had only one direct report. At the far end of the spectrum, 29 practitioners, almost all of them heads of function or direc-tors, had more than

50 reports. Unsurprisingly, median earnings rose steadily according to the number of staff respondents managed.

QualIfIcaTIon (no of reSpondenTS)

medIan Salary (£pa)

MSc (88) 50,000 – 52,500

Postgraduate diploma (50) 47,500 – 49,999

NEBOSH diploma (including NEBOSH diploma in environmental management) (203)

37,500 – 39,999

Degree (86) 37,500 – 39,999

NVQ level 4 (138) 35,000 – 37,499

British Safety Council diploma (41) 35,000 – 37,499

NEBOSH construction certificate (39) 32,500 – 34,999

NEBOSH certificate (237) 30,000 – 32,499

*For full-time employees

budgeT SIze (£) (no of reSpondenTS)

medIan Salary (£pa]

More than 1 million (41) 50,000 – 52,499

500,000 – 999,999 (25) 55,000 – 57,499

250,000 – 499,999 (48) 47,500 – 49,999

100,000 – 249,000 (90) 42,500 – 44,999

50,000 – 99,999 (77) 35,000 – 37,499

20,000 – 49,999 (95) 35,000 - 37,499

10,001 – 19,999 (60) 32,500 - 34,999

Less than 10,000 (86) 30,000 – 32,499

Zero (430) 32,500 – 34,999

*For full-time employees

TAble 4: MeDIAN SAlArY bANDINgS bY hIgheST QuAlIfICATION*

TAble 5: MeDIAN SAlArY bY ANNuAl heAlTh AND SAfeTY buDgeT*

currently required to reduce expenditure by 5% ... while other areas in the organisation overspend by up to 10%”

Head of health and safety, public sector

healthandsafetyatwork.com | Pay survey 2013 vII

pay and conditions

job satisfaction and securityAll things being equal, low pay

is likely to dent morale and high pay improve it, but this is by no means an iron law and

salary is only one factor, albeit an impor-tant one, contributing to an employee’s happiness at work.

Health and Safety at Work’s “happi-ness” index suggests that, by and large, health and safety professionals are fairly content with their lot. Almost three-quarters (73%) say they are either happy or very happy in their current roles. Only 51, or 5%, of our 952 UK respondents described themselves as very unhappy at work. Among the 27% who said they were unhappy, there was no discernible pattern; they were evenly spread across earnings levels and industries.

The balance in favour of happiness in the face of pay freezes or low increases and job insecurity may reflect the inher-ent satisfaction of health and safety work. Mark Burton, of Attwood Burton, says his interactions with safety profes-sionals bear out this view.

State employees are less likely to be happy. Almost three-quarters (74.4%) of private sector workers say they are either happy or very happy compared with 65.4% in the public sector.

Freelancers and contractors are twice as likely as their employed counterparts to be “very happy” at work.

job securityOur survey finds that health and safety practitioners feel at least fairly secure in their current roles. In excess of three- quarters (78%) of all respond-ents say they are either “quite” or “very” secure.

Unsurprisingly, given the government’s continued drive to reduce spending, public sector employees are noticeably more pessimistic about their immedi-ate employment prospects than those working in the private sector. A total of 28% of the former group say they are either “not very” or “not at all” secure, compared with 20% of their private sector counterparts.

Things are looking upAccording to most indicators, there seems cautious confidence in the UK’s economic future; several business surveys suggest the recent pick-up in activ-ity may be more than just a flash in the pan.

But some economists have expressed concerns that growth, which is currently

driven primarily by consumer spending and a buoyant housing market, could lead to a bubble which would be liable to burst when interest rates rise, as they are bound to do at some point.

Despite any economic clouds on the horizon, more health and safety practi-tioners as a whole think that things are

on the up — certainly compared with last year — as Figure 3 indicates.

There is a drop of around one-third in the percentage of respondents who anticipate a worsening of conditions this year, and moderate increases in those who think things will stay the same or improve.

Alistair Attwood notes that increased activity in the construction sector last year saw vacancies increase, but not sal-aries. “I expect this to change in 2014,” says Attwood.

fIgure 3: TrADINg OuTlOOK Over The NexT 12 MONThS

Slight improvement in business trading expected but only by 2% to 3%”

Head of health and safety, general services

OuTlOOK 2013–14

OuTlOOK2012–13

SameSame betterbetter

WorseWorse

45%48%

27%33%

28%

19%

n=952 n=844

Pay survey 2013 | healthandsafetyatwork.comvIII

pay and conditions

The 2013 survey sampleHealth and Safety at Work’s

online survey was conducted during the fourth quarter of 2013.

In total, responses were received from 1007 practitioners. Of these, 96% (952) were based in the UK and formed the basis of our survey analysis.

The majority of respondents (73%) ply their trades in the private sector, with 21% working in the public sec-tor. The remaining 5.7% are employed in not-for-profit organisations such as

charities and housing associations. The vast bulk of participants (91%) are in full-time employment. Only 2.8% work part-time. Not all health and safety pro-fessionals are directly employed: 6% of respondents state they are self-employed, primarily undertaking freelance and con-sultancy roles.

Male respondents outnumber their female counterparts by a factor of four to one, though this marks a rise on last year’s survey when women made up only a fifth of the sample.

As in previous years, large and small organisations predominate. As Figure 5 shows, more than a third of respondents work for organisations with workforces at least 1000 strong, while almost two-fifths are in organisations with fewer than 250 employees, technically classed as small or medium sized enterprises — though less than 13% had fewer than 50 workers.

fIgure 4: INDuSTrIAl SeCTOr

fIgure 5: eMPlOYer SIze (NO Of eMPlOYeeS)

1–49

Agriculture (including forestry and fishing)Wholesale/retail

utilities (electricity, gas and water) Construction

financial services

general services (including law, facilities management, media)

hotels, restaurants, leisure

Manufacturing

Mining and quarrying

Public sector (including defence, education, health, central and local government)

Transport and distribution

50–99

250–499500–999

100–249

1000+

12.8%

1.9%

19.4%

1.4%

13.8%

2.3%

25.3%

1%

20.7%

5.5%

4.8%3.9%

9.9%

14.9%

14.9%13.2%

34.3%

read more onlinewww.healthandsafteyatwork.com/pay-survey-2013

n=952

n=952