Head of Health & Safety

Head of Health & Safety

Location – Wash Barn. Buckfastleigh

Work with us at Riverford and join a thriving employee-owned business

• Be part of a passionate and supportive leadership team
• Help us to develop our Health & Safety culture in line with our values
• We’ll give you an abundance of free organic fruit an veg, an annual tax-free ‘co-owner’ bonus, and a bounty of benefits, including low-cost, home-cooked organic breakfasts and lunches!

What you’ll be doing… 

Riverford’s range of potential H&S risks is extensive, reflecting the breadth of our business. For example, we have production facilities, farms, a restaurant, public events, a large fleet of vehicles, and numerous delivery hubs across England and Wales. The business has also grown a lot in recent years, and we have over 1000 co-owners. You certainly won’t be bored!

We’re looking for an experienced and passionate H&S practitioner to support our senior leadership team in all aspects of H&S. Reporting to the Director of Operations, this is a leadership position.

A key objective for this role is to create cultural change across the business. With the support of a H&S Advisor, this role will be responsible for educating, mentoring, and inspiring stakeholders across the business to achieve H&S excellence by broadening their knowledge, skills, awareness and understanding. 

This position will be focusing on developing strategy, plans and objectives, and supporting processes, rather than the doing. We are looking to develop H&S champions across the business. The role is on the one hand to be an active influencer, embedding the H&S vision and day-to-day behaviours – and on the other hand, to be an objective observer and assessor of the current strengths, weaknesses and risks.

It is important for this position that the successful candidate understands Riverford’s culture and values and can create a Health & Safety philosophy that reflects this across the business.

What we need……

• Previous experience of working in a dedicated senior management Health & Safety position, ideally within a production or manufacturing environment with a progressive H&S culture.
• NEBOSH Health and Safety Diploma, degree or equivalent is essential.
• Experience of developing health and safety management systems across a multi-faceted, multi-site business.
• Strong experience in developing an integrative, combined top-down and bottom-up H&S culture.
• Being able to lead by influence, be a trainer, coach and assessor, and a mirror to make the current state transparent in a respectful, effective way to foster continuous improvement.
• Solution focused and passionate about making things better – showing what good looks like!
• Sympathy with Riverford’s values and culture.

What are the hours?

This is a permanent position. The role is 40 hours per week. Hybrid role, based at Wash Farm, Buckfastleigh, Devon, TQ11 0JU, with some travel to other sites. 

Salary – Circa £55,000 depending on experience.

Co-owner benefits

Riverford is a beautiful place to work, with lots of great people – and other perks too. Some of our benefits include: 33 days holiday pro rata (including bank holidays), generous company pension scheme, annual profit share (10% of all our profits are split equally between all co-owners), heavily discounted organic breakfasts and lunches, free organic fruit and veg and free parking.