Every little does help our profession

I have been sitting amongst the forest of stands at a huge catering conference, doing my best to read delegate’s badges, sifting the punters from disinterested exhibitors.

Each time someone drifts past I have a few seconds to work out if they might be a possible convert to environmental health or if they are a disciple of their industry, set on managing their service or pressing their trade as a chef. However, not all of them were so set on their trade and it was for just those individuals I was there!

I had spent quite a lot of time bending the ear of my faculty’s Head of Student Recruitment for funding to attend the Hotel, Restaurant and Catering show (HRC show) in London following a sharp dip in the number of students on my undergraduate course. My rather grand sounding title of Programme Director for a BSc in Environmental Health has put me at the sharp end of our profession’s recruitment crisis. I know we have a great programme, with a superb teaching team, and a subject area which guarantees our graduates a ridiculously wide range of posts in interesting and worthwhile areas. The issue is that the general public don’t know this.

The problem

The problem is course leaders aren’t permitted to contact schools and colleges or engage directly with the National Careers Service. This means I cannot get direct access to events where we can tell people about the treasures we can offer students. Cardiff Metropolitan University has around 150 degree courses but when all those Programme Directors start bothering the local colleges to promote their programmes they get a bit fed up, so we have to wait for invitations before we can attend careers events and speak to schools/colleges.

Trying a different approach

Like any good EHP I had to take a step back from the problem and work out other ways of solving it. I knew that 30-40% of our students come through our foundation courses. These provide a route for those without A-Levels (or equivalents) to get them ready to study for a degree. Almost all of that 30-40% had started life in catering.

The President of the American National Environmental Health Association David Dyjack says that ‘Environmental health is a contact sport’ and that is particularly true for frustrated chefs. People find out about our profession through meeting EHPs. Ex-chefs on our programme had all received a food safety inspection and thought ‘I could do that!’ After some deliberation they had gone back to university to requalify, chasing better wages and working conditions. I wanted to take a punt on the catering event to raise our profile as a profession and see who I could convert to environmental health.

At this event I spoke to plenty of companies doing food safety/health and safety and it seems that private industry is as short of people as the public sector is. We are all struggling with low recruitment, and everyone has thoughts on what we should do about it, but very few are taking active steps to resolve the problem. Looking after my degree programme has motivated me to direct action but reflecting on my approach when I speak to people at the conference, I am spreading the word about the environmental health profession, not just my degree. It helps to remind me about all the good we do in the world. Being pressed to explain it to others really brings the merits of our profession home to me and why people chose to go into it.

Small actions, big impact

We are all passionate about environmental health and we can all point to others to respond to our reducing numbers, or think about what we should be doing, but we are only going to raise the profile of our profession and improve our situation by direct action. I have plenty of ideas for things I can do personally to further our cause and I am working on anything I have the power to influence. If you have some ideas, then turn one of them into an action. Think about what you can influence, what you have the power to do. There are thousands of us out there and collectively all those small actions can and will have a hell of an impact.

Anyway I have finished my break, so I had better return to scanning badges. Try and be an ambassador for environmental health.

If you’re interested in becoming a career ambassador, get in touch with the CIEH team.