Environmental health and safety directors oversee organizational compliance with local, state, and federal safety regulations and industry standards. They also ensure that environmental policy is available and updated at all times. They earn a cool average sum of $88,000 annually or $42 per hour.
Environmental health and safety directors inspect workplaces and minimize or eliminate hazards from processes. They are primarily tasked with protecting the employees, customers, and the environment. They identify potentially hazardous biological, chemical, and radiological materials in a bid to analyze them. Due to the nature of the job, they are fit physically and possess solid collaboration and leadership skills.
Environmental health and safety directors typically hold a bachelor's degree in occupational health, safety, or a related scientific field. However, some employers prefer to hire candidates with a master's degree in health physics, industrial hygiene, or a related subject. Since they work in various industries, on-the-job training is the way to learn the ropes and gain knowledge in the industries they find themselves in.
Environmental Health And Safety Director Overview
Environmental Health And Safety Director Careers
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an environmental health and safety director. For example, did you know that they make an average of $42.68 an hour? That's $88,776 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 5% and produce 1,400 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does an Environmental Health And Safety Director Do
There are certain skills that many environmental health and safety directors have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed creativity, problem-solving skills and communication skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be an environmental health and safety director, we found that a lot of resumes listed 10.5% of environmental health and safety directors included environmental health, while 7.8% of resumes included osha, and 7.6% of resumes included ehs. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the environmental health and safety director job title. But what industry to start with? Most environmental health and safety directors actually find jobs in the manufacturing and construction industries.
How To Become an Environmental Health And Safety Director
If you're interested in becoming an environmental health and safety director, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 41.2% of environmental health and safety directors have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 37.3% of environmental health and safety directors have master's degrees. Even though most environmental health and safety directors have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become an environmental health and safety director. When we researched the most common majors for an environmental health and safety director, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on environmental health and safety director resumes include associate degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become an environmental health and safety director. In fact, many environmental health and safety director jobs require experience in a role such as environmental health safety manager. Meanwhile, many environmental health and safety directors also have previous career experience in roles such as safety manager or manager, environmental and safety.
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Environmental Health And Safety Director Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, an environmental health and safety director can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as vice president, progress to a title such as senior vice president and then eventually end up with the title senior vice president.
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Average Salary for an Environmental Health And Safety Director
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
University of Alaska Director of Environmental Health & Safety and Risk Management Director of Environmental Health & Safety and Risk Management | University of Alaska University of Alaska | 12/15/2020 12/15/2020 | $89,47012/15/2020 $89,470 |
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Environmental Health and Safety Director Environmental Health and Safety Director | Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority | 01/27/2020 01/27/2020 | $94,00001/27/2020 $94,000 |
Randstad Environmental Health and Safety Director Environmental Health and Safety Director | Randstad Randstad | 01/24/2020 01/24/2020 | $90,00001/24/2020 $90,000 |
Randstad Environmental Health and Safety Director Environmental Health and Safety Director | Randstad Randstad | 01/24/2020 01/24/2020 | $90,00001/24/2020 $90,000 |
Randstad Environmental Health and Safety Director Environmental Health and Safety Director | Randstad Randstad | 01/24/2020 01/24/2020 | $90,00001/24/2020 $90,000 |
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Top Skills For an Environmental Health And Safety Director
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 10.5% of environmental health and safety directors listed environmental health on their resume, but soft skills such as creativity and problem-solving skills are important as well.
- Environmental Health, 10.5%
- Osha, 7.8%
- EHS, 7.6%
- Regulatory Agencies, 6.8%
- Environmental Compliance, 5.0%
- Other Skills, 62.3% See All Environmental Health And Safety Director Skills
Best States For an Environmental Health And Safety Director
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as an environmental health and safety director. The best states for people in this position are New Mexico, Wyoming, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. Environmental health and safety directors make the most in New Mexico with an average salary of $103,366. Whereas in Wyoming and Minnesota, they would average $102,154 and $100,499, respectively. While environmental health and safety directors would only make an average of $100,333 in New Hampshire, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Alabama
$99,216
Avg. Salary
2. Louisiana
$97,263
Avg. Salary
3. Arkansas
$96,086
Avg. Salary