I'm considering trying to make a career change and I think I might find Health and Safety fulfilling, plus the retraining required seems do-able from a time and finances perspective. I'm looking at the Nebosh General Certificate as a starting point (with possibly the IOSH Managing Safely first). I have some experience of doing risk assessments and also governance and compliance, but in the tech field.
If you're in Health and Safety, would you recommend it as a career? Is progression possible? Is it stressful? Are you able to maintain a work/life balance? Do you get taken seriously by your organisation, or is it a battle to make changes happen? What's your day to day life (especially in terms of the balance between office/remote working/site visits?) I know it's a huge field covering different industries, but it would be really good to hear some first hand experiences.
I think I'm ADHD (waiting for assessment) and I'd be particularly interested to hear from anyone with neurodiversity in the field. I benefit from variety and struggle with repetition, so I'm wondering about how varied the job is. I wouldn't deal well with 100% compliance, for example. And I get swamped with admin if that's the only thing I'm doing. But risk assessing, evaluating situations and communicating with people are things I feel good at. I work fully remotely at a computer 100% of the time currently, and it's made me realise I would benefit personally from a career where I'm out in the world sometimes, but the possibility of some degree of home-working would be really useful from a family logistics perspective (I've seen a number of H&S jobs advertised which are work from home with regular site visits for example, which I think could work well for me, I'm just not sure how common or achievable this is within the industry).
Any other hints and tip for getting started (or tips to avoid the industry!) would be much appreciated. Thanks.