In 2024 the Netherlands Labour Authority completed 2,702 accident investigations involving 2,001 casualties and 58 deaths. That underlines how directly safe working affects health, employability and continuity within your organisation. The role of a senior safety expert, known in Dutch as a hogere veiligheidskundige or HVK, is therefore more important for many employers than is often assumed. A senior safety expert is a legally recognised specialist who helps recognise, assess and tackle complex risks at work, such as risks around machine safety and working at height.
For employers, HR and occupational physicians, good safety management is inseparable from absence guidance and sustainable employability. By identifying risks early and organising a sound safety policy, you reduce not only the chance of accidents but also the chance of long-term absence and complicated reintegration. The risk inventory and evaluation (RI&E) plays a large part in this; it has to be drawn up and in certain cases reviewed by a certified expert.
In this article you will read what a senior safety expert does, when to call on one and how this expertise contributes to a healthier and safer working environment.
When a senior safety expert comes into the picture
A senior safety expert is a safety specialist at a higher level of training and advice who supports organisations with complex safety questions. Within the Working Conditions Act the safety expert is one of the four recognised core experts, alongside the occupational physician, the occupational hygienist and the work and organisation expert. According to Arboportaal on occupational health and core experts (in Dutch), these experts advise employers and employees on healthy and safe work and on preventing accidents.
The value of a senior safety expert lies above all in situations where safety is not only a question of execution but also of policy and organisation. Think of working with machinery, working at height, hazardous substances, logistics movements, complex production processes or organisations with several sites and many different roles. Then you need more than a practical fix: you need a coherent approach in which legislation, supervision, behaviour, technology and management come together.
For employers that matters, because the figures show risks at work are still considerable. In its 2024 monitor of accidents at work (in Dutch), the Netherlands Labour Authority reported that 2,702 accident investigations were completed in 2024. Of those, 1,990 were notifiable, with 2,001 casualties and 58 deaths. The most common types of accident were falls, contact with equipment or objects, and being struck by something. It is precisely with risks like these that a senior safety expert can help make structural improvements.
What a senior safety expert does in concrete terms
A strategic adviser
A senior safety expert looks not only at individual incidents but at the whole safety policy. That means, among other things:
- inventorying and analysing risks
- assessing whether existing measures are enough
- advising management on priorities
- drawing up or sharpening safety policy
- supporting supervision during audits and inspections
- strengthening safety awareness and safety culture
Where a safety officer at operational level sits closer to daily practice, a senior safety expert looks more at patterns and underlying causes. If employees regularly report near misses around internal transport, a senior expert looks not only at the routes but also at workload, training, responsibilities, maintenance, instructions and the way managers respond to unsafe behaviour.
The senior safety expert and the RI&E
One of the best-known tasks is the role in the risk inventory and evaluation. Employers are legally required to draw up an RI&E. In certain cases that RI&E also has to be reviewed by a certified occupational health service or core expert. The Netherlands Labour Authority on core experts (in Dutch) explains that this review is meant to safeguard the quality of the RI&E.
According to Arboportaal, companies with more than 25 employees must always have the RI&E reviewed by a core expert, unless a specific exception applies to smaller companies working with a recognised sector instrument. Since 2022 it has mattered that core experts may only review within the scope of their certification. The Dutch Social and Economic Council on the renewed certification scheme (in Dutch) also stresses that a review may only cover the risks the expert is certified for.
For you as an employer that means a senior safety expert does not simply "have a look", but formally assesses whether risks are well described and whether the action plan is logical, complete and fitting. For employees it means the RI&E becomes more than a document in a folder: it becomes an instrument that really reduces risks on the floor.
The senior safety expert and employer, employee and physician
For employers: from obligation to steering
For employers a senior safety expert helps make safety more manageable. That starts with law and regulation, but goes further than compliance alone. A senior expert helps you with questions such as:
- Which risks call for immediate measures?
- Where do we run legal or operational risk?
- Does our RI&E still match practice?
- Which safety measures are feasible and demonstrable?
- How do we prepare for an inspection or an audit?
That fits the wider responsibilities of employers around working conditions and absence. Our overview of your obligations as an employer shows how prevention, guidance and statutory tasks connect. A senior safety expert supports above all the preventive and organisational side of that.
For employees: safe work needs their involvement too
A senior safety expert does not work only for the board or management. Good safety practice needs employees' input as well. People on the floor are often the first to know where procedures do not match practice, where workload leads to unsafe choices or where instructions are not clear enough.
The Working Conditions Act assumes dialogue between employer and employees. A senior expert can make that dialogue concrete through workplace inspections, interviews, toolbox talks, observations and analyses of incidents or near misses. For employees that matters, because safety is not only about rules on paper but about whether they can do their work without unnecessary risk.
For the occupational physician: working together on shared risks
Within an occupational health team, the senior safety expert has a different role from the physician, but the themes often overlap. The physician looks above all at health, at what people can bear, at preventing people dropping out and at the relationship between work and health. The safety expert focuses more on safety risks, technology, processes and policy. In practice those domains touch regularly.
Think of physical strain, aggression, working under high pressure, exposure to harmful substances or recurring incidents in a shift system. Then cooperation between the two is valuable. In our article on what an occupational physician actually does you can read how the physician works on health and employability. The safety expert adds the analysis and control of safety risks in the working environment.
The difference with other experts
The term safety expert is used broadly in practice. Yet not every safety expert is the same. The distinction between a safety officer at intermediate level and a senior safety expert matters for employers. A senior expert operates more often at tactical and strategic level, particularly with complex risks and with questions where policy, legislation and organisational development come together.
On top of that, the certified senior expert is legally relevant as a core expert for reviewing the RI&E within their own scope. That makes choosing the right level of expertise important. A simple office environment calls for something different from a manufacturer with machinery, logistics and shift work.
A senior safety expert should also not be seen as a replacement for other occupational health experts. The legal explanation of core experts on Arboportaal (in Dutch) shows that employers are required to work with a core expert and to record arrangements about that in the basic contract. Which is exactly why it is wise to determine beforehand which expertise is needed and how specialists work together.
That fits the importance of a good basic contract with an occupational health service. In it you record how support in this field is organised and when which expertise is brought in.
In which situations a senior safety expert is often wise
A senior safety expert is often the right fit when your organisation has:
- an increased chance of accidents at work
- complex machinery or installations
- work at height or in confined spaces
- hazardous substances or explosion risks
- several sites or changing work processes
- a lot of hired labour, contractors or project work
- recurring incidents or near misses
- a need to improve safety culture
- preparation for inspections, certification or audits
Even when no serious incident has occurred, a senior expert can already mean a great deal. Bringing one in preventively is usually wiser than acting only after an accident, a shutdown or an enforcement measure. A senior expert helps not only with analysis but with setting priorities: what has to happen now, what can wait and what calls for a different specialist?
How a senior safety expert contributes to sustainable employability
Safety and sustainable employability are sometimes treated as separate subjects, but in practice they hang together. Unsafe work leads to incidents, physical complaints, psychological strain, absence and sometimes long-term drop-out. So a senior safety expert also contributes indirectly to employability.
By spotting risks earlier and tackling them structurally, you prevent not only accidents but also absence and disruption of the work process. That makes cooperation with the occupational physician, managers and HR valuable. In organisations where prevention is organised seriously, we often see safety, absence policy and employability reinforcing each other.
For employers that means fewer incidents, more grip on compliance and a clearer safety policy. For employees it means more clarity, better protection and more confidence that signals are picked up. And for the occupational physician it means health complaints can more often be looked at in relation to the work and the working environment, rather than only at the moment someone drops out.
Getting safety right early prevents people dropping out and builds a healthy, strong organisation.
With a senior safety expert you bring specialised knowledge in house to control risks, make policy workable and anchor prevention in daily practice.
Key takeaways
- A senior safety expert helps you translate complex safety questions into clear choices in policy, organisation, technology and behaviour.
- They turn your RI&E into a practical and testable tool that demonstrably contributes to fewer incidents on the floor.
- In the cooperation between employer, employees and occupational physician, a senior safety expert connects safety, health and policy.
- With recurring incidents, complex processes or several sites, a senior expert supports you in setting the right priorities.
- Bringing one in early limits drop-out, accidents and disruption of the work process, and strengthens sustainable employability.
- With structural attention to safety you work step by step towards healthy work, more confidence on the floor and early prevention.
Want more grip on risks while working on healthy, sustainable employability? Consider looking together with a senior safety expert at where you could take worthwhile steps today.