Worker Involvement is key in Health and Safety

Many factors affect how you can engage your employees:

The business
Structure of the business
Management style
Organisational and safety cultures
Trade union recognition and employment relations
The workplace
Size of workplace
Location of sites
Types of work done
Degree and nature of inherent dangers
The workforce
Size of workforce
Diversity of the workforce
Employment structures (for example, direct employees, agency and contract workers)
Work patterns (for example, shift systems, part-time working)
Offsite, remote or mobile workers.
Questions you will need to ask yourself include:

Do we consult individuals or representatives?
How do we consult them?
How can we organise inspections and investigations?
How can we co-ordinate between committees?
For example:

A high-risk workplace with a large unionised workforce spread over multiple sites may have trade union representatives from different sites as members of a site-based health and safety committee that meets regularly, and feeds into a corporate health and safety committee.

A non-unionised smaller workplace located on one small, low-risk site, is more likely to consult directly with employees on a day-to-day basis.

Case study: BSkyB
BSkyB created a single forum for the whole business bringing together separate structures that had previously engaged with staff at their cross UK workplaces. They established an effective two-way communication channels that “plugged in” employees from all over the UK and created a partnership between management and employees...