Health, Safety & Workplace Lead

The Wise Group; Glasgow; Hybrid; GBP 42,000 - 45,000; Full time

Job summary

The Wise Group is seeking a Health, Safety & Workplace Lead to drive safety, risk and compliance across our growing UK hub network. This role combines professional expertise with pragmatic, people-centered approaches to create safe, welcoming spaces for colleagues and customers.

You will lead safety strategy, coordinate facilities and workplaces, and influence leaders to embed proportionate risk management across diverse sites.

Qualifications

• NEBOSH qualification or equivalent is required.
• Strong professional health and safety knowledge and risk management.
• Experience in managing risk, compliance and workplace environments.
• Familiarity with UK health and safety legislation.

Responsibilities

• Lead the health, safety, and risk management agenda across UK hubs.
• Coordinate property, facilities and workplace environments to ensure safety and compliance.
• Develop practical, proportionate safety approaches that staff can easily follow.
• Liaise with landlords, contractors and partners to keep buildings safe.
• Use incidents and feedback to inform continuous improvement.

Skills

Health & safety expertise

NEBOSH qualification

Risk management

Education

NEBOSH qualification or equivalent

Job description

Position Health, Safety & Workplace Lead

Location Flexible working- home based within commutable distance of our Glasgow hub, with flexibility and travel across our growing UK hub network

Salary £42,000–£45,000 + excellent benefits

Hours 35 hours per week (flexible working)

Status Permanent

Closing date 12 October 2026

Help us create places where people can do extraordinary work.

At the Wise Group, we transform lives.

We do that through relationships — between our colleagues, the people we support, our partners and the communities in which we work. And increasingly, we do it through place.

Across the UK, we are developing a network of hubs that bring us closer to communities, partners and opportunity. They aren't simply offices. We want them to be places that feel welcoming, human and connected to their communities; places where colleagues want to spend time, where relationships can develop and where great work can happen.

That creates an exciting opportunity for our next Health, Safety & Workplace Lead.

Yes, we need someone who understands health and safety, risk, property and compliance.

But we're looking for much more than someone who can tell us whether we've followed the rules.

We want someone who can help us create safe, brilliant places to work.

Someone who understands that good health and safety should enable people rather than constrain them. Someone who can combine professional expertise with pragmatism, trust and good judgement. And someone who gets excited about helping shape the physical environments in which our colleagues deliver life-changing impact.

This isn't your typical Health & Safety role.

What you'll be part of

The way we work at the Wise Group is changing.

We are a flexible organisation with colleagues working across communities, from home, with partners and from a growing network of physical hubs across the UK.

Our hubs give us something important: a presence in place.

They connect our colleagues with each other and with the communities we serve. They create opportunities for collaboration, learning and relationships. And they provide welcoming environments in which colleagues and customers can meet and do their best work.

We want to make those environments exceptional.

As our Health, Safety & Workplace Lead, you'll help us think differently about what our physical presence should look and feel like as we grow.

You'll help us create environments that are safe and compliant, but also welcoming, inclusive, flexible and distinctly Wise Group.

What you’ll actually do

Reporting to our People Director and working closely with colleagues across the enterprise, you'll bring together three things that we think belong together:

keeping people safe; creating great environments; and enabling impact.

You’ll lead our approach to health and safety, providing the expertise, assurance and systems we need to meet our responsibilities and manage risk well.

But you won’t be expected to become the organisation's "health and safety police".

We work on the basis of trust, shared responsibility and good judgement. Your job will be to build confidence and capability across the Wise Group so that leaders and colleagues understand the part they play in creating safe environments.

You’ll also lead and coordinate our approach to property, facilities and our physical workplaces — helping us make good decisions about existing spaces and contributing to the development of new ones.

That could mean:

shaping our health and safety approach so that it is proportionate, practical and easy for colleagues to understand;

helping a People Leader think through a risk rather than simply handing them a rule;

making sure our statutory responsibilities, systems, inspections and assurance are rock solid;

working with landlords, contractors and partners to keep our buildings safe and working well;

spending time in our hubs, listening to colleagues and noticing the things that could make their working environment better;

helping us think about accessibility, inclusion, wellbeing and colleague experience within our physical spaces;

supporting decisions about new hubs, relocations, refurbishments and our future property footprint;

using incidents, data and colleague feedback to help us learn and improve rather than simply record what happened; and

making sure our physical environments enable colleagues to focus on what matters most — delivering extraordinary impact for people and communities.

There will be audits, risk assessments, statutory inspections, incident investigations and compliance records. Those things matter.

But they are the foundations of the role, not its ambition.

Who we're looking for

You might already be a Health & Safety Manager, Property or Facilities Lead, Estates Manager or Workplace Experience professional.

You might come from housing, hospitality, healthcare, education, the public sector or another organisation with multiple sites and a strong focus on people.

We're less interested in the label on your current job and more interested in how you think and how you work.

You’ll need strong professional health and safety knowledge and a NEBOSH qualification or equivalent, alongside experience of managing risk, compliance and workplace environments.

You'll understand UK health and safety legislation and be comfortable providing professional assurance where it matters.

But technical expertise alone won't make you successful here.

You’ll be someone who can walk into one of our hubs, talk naturally with colleagues and understand their experience.

You'll be curious before being prescriptive.

You'll know when something genuinely needs to change — and when a proportionate, pragmatic solution is the better answer.

You'll be comfortable influencing senior leaders while also building trusted relationships with colleagues across the organisation.

And you'll understand that the best safety cultures aren't created by one expert holding all the responsibility. They're created when everyone understands the part they play.

Why the Wise Group?

Because this is an opportunity to do something a little different.

You won't be joining a large estates department to maintain a property portfolio exactly as it has always been managed.

You'll be joining a social enterprise with significant ambitions for the future and helping us shape what our physical presence looks like as we grow.

You'll have the freedom to bring ideas, challenge how we do things and help us build an approach that reflects the kind of organisation we want to be.

An organisation built around relationships rather than hierarchy, trust rather than unnecessary control, and impact rather than process for process's sake.

You'll work with colleagues who care deeply about what they do and who are united by a simple ambition: to help people change their lives.

And your contribution to that matters.

Because when our colleagues feel safe, trusted, connected and proud of the places in which they work, they can give more of their attention to the people and communities who need them.

Think this sounds like you?

You don't need to come from the social enterprise sector.

You do need to bring the professional credibility to keep us safe and compliant, the judgement to help us manage risk intelligently, and the curiosity and imagination to help us create brilliant places for our colleagues and customers.

If you're looking for a traditional Health & Safety role where success means writing policies and policing compliance, this probably isn't it.

If you want to use your expertise to enable people, shape places and contribute to something with genuine social impact, we'd really like to hear from you.