Northwest England, Field based with international travel

About James Walker

A private owned global industrial business, supplying a vast range of high-performance fluid sealing products and associated knowledge-based services to virtually every industry sector. With state-of-the-art skills in materials technology, particularly relating to elastomers, polymers, composites and engineering plastics plus extensive expertise in precision machining of exotic alloys for metallic seals, and tension control fasteners for bolted joints.

Your role

James Walker SBU is growing and evolving across the global marketplace. As Group Head of Health & Safety you will be responsible for establishing an efficient, effective and compliant health & safety strategy for James Walker SBU and consolidate health and safety reporting for the Group. You’ll chair the Group Health and Safety Committee to drive best practices. Identify, lead and support business initiatives that will continually improve the SBU’s H&S performance including creating a safety culture where proactive intervention is valued.

Within James Walker SBU you’ll ensure that every business unit has a HSE co-ordinator that will report directly into the local business unit leader, to guide their upskilling as required and to create a community where excellence and teamwork is fostered.

Provide input to the Group’s Environmental strategy, attend the Group Environmental Committee and proactively support and guide the Sustainability Business Partner.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for the oversight of health and safety reporting across the three SBUs in line with common standards.
• Administration of the SharePoint HSE Hub, news feed and content to ensure generic HSE policies, procedures, forms, performance objectives, statistics, safety alerts and information is available to all users.
• Production of a health and safety quarterly report for review by the James Walker Group and JW SBU Boards.
• For James Walker SBU review all serious incidents and accidents which may potentially result in loss, damage or absence from work over 7 days.
• Support the Environmental Business Partner to drive environmental and sustainability initiatives to reduce our environmental impact and encourage eco-friendliness in all our business practices.
• Lead health and safety to drive compliance with UK HSE requirements as a minimum and support local HSE Co-ordinators throughout the world understand local specific regulations and support implementation of best practices.
• Support local teams with their ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 accreditations

Requirements

About you

Skills

• Driven a step change in H&S performance across multiple sites.
• Understand what World Class Health and Safety looks like.
• Excellent written and spoken communication skills in order to explain health and safety processes and requirements to a range of people and to give presentations.
• Influencing skills to convince managers of the need to implement and maintain safety standards that may compromise speed or efficiency in the organisation.
• Patience and diplomacy to ensure a pragmatic and collaborative approach achieves stated goals.
• Ability to understand and analyse complex information and present it simply and accurately.
• An investigative mind and able to follow a forensic approach when required.
• Good IT skills to set up and manage knowledge networks on behalf of the HSE Communities.
• A driving licence - essential for travel between sites.

Experience

• Extensive leadership and management experience within an H&S role across multiple sites
• Proven leadership and teamwork skills with demonstrated abilities to both work collaboratively and to influence those with whom no formal hierarchical relationship exists.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills that can be used with people from different backgrounds and experience i.e. technical and non-technical.
• Effective communication, conflict and issue resolution skills.
• Experience in implementation and certification for ISO standards i.e ISO 14001 & ISO 45001.
• Some degree of International experience
• Good working knowledge of UK H&S regulations
• Ideally a knowledge of European environmental standards and reporting requirements
• Good working knowledge of ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems and ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems standards.

Qualifications

• BSc (Hons) OSHE/ NEBOSH Diploma Level 6/ NCRQ level 6 or Safety Management Diploma Level 5
• BSc (Hons) OSHE/ NEBOSH Environmental Diploma Level 6/ NEBOSH Environmental Certificate Level 4

Preferred

• MSc OSHE/ Occupational Hygiene
• Train the Trainer qualification
• Fire Warden
• First Aider
• Mental Health First Aider

Application End Date: 28/09/2025

Manchester Area, United Kingdom

Seniority level

• Executive

Employment type

• Full-time

Job function

• Management and Manufacturing

Industries

• Plastics and Rubber Product Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, and Metalworking Machinery Manufacturing

We’re looking to fill this role promptly. Please apply with your details.