FEW people understand the safety and health needs of the oil industry better than Jim Clark. After training as a nurse and then a health visitor, Jim spotted an opportunity to become an offshore medic in 1979, during the early years of the Scottish oil boom.

Jim continued to work for Shell and remained with the company for more than 20 years, moving into a role as a medic and safety trainer, all the time gaining valuable experience about health and safety on offshore installations.

Three decades on, Jim is an adviser with Healthy Working Lives, based in Aberdeen, and many of the clients he helps are either working in or connected to the oil industry. Thanks to his career background, Jim believes many companies welcome the fact that he can “speak their language”.

In fact, he recalls that he was once a client of Scotland’s Health at Work – the scheme now replaced by Healthy Working Lives – when his adviser suggested he might apply for her job!

“I retired from offshore in 2003, and I was a client of SHAW. The SHAW adviser came to assess me for the Bronze award, and at that point I knew I was leaving and she said there was a job going with SHAW in Aberdeen. I got the job and then I found out it was her job!

“Health promotion has been embedded in my training, so it seemed like a natural progression.”

Jim adds that it is important that Healthy Working Lives maintains its awareness of the unique challenges that are facing the oil industry. As he was working in the industry at the time of the Piper Alpha disaster, Jim reflects that offshore safety has “changed beyond all recognition”, but acknowledges there is no room for complacency if further accidents are to be prevented.

“Every ‘t’ has to be crossed, every ‘I’ has to be dotted, and that spills over to the on-shore side,” he says.

“Grampian is unique in Healthy Working Lives because we have all the offshore installations. I was given many of the offshore clients because I understand the problems they have.”

Jim hopes that his support and advice may help to persuade more oil industry companies to sign up for the Healthy Working Lives Award Programme. “They can look at this and see, here is someone who can identify with what I am doing here,” he says.

The benefits of the Award Programme go beyond health and safety or health promotion and offer employers a framework to improve the health and well-being of their staff. “The programme is a more holistic one than the SHAW scheme – there are more things to it,” says Jim.

Jim also works with employers from other sectors including the Scottish Prison Service – he is supporting Aberdeen and Peterhead prisons through the Award Programme. “They are both my clients and I am working with them in the transitional process. I had never been in a prison before they signed up!”

Whatever the sector, Jim’s favourite part of the job is meeting new people and helping them to understand more about the practical and often simple changes they can make to improve health in the workplace.

“I like engaging with the clients. If you take a new client and you go and introduce the programme to them they are usually very interested and very enthusiastic.

“I do like talking to people and introducing and explaining ways they can work through the programme.”