Consultation with employees

Such consultation involves employers giving information about health and safety to employees and also listening to and taking account of what employees say before they make any health and safety decisions. On the face of it the regulations seem complicated and bureaucratic but in practice they work well. Health and Safety is not generally a contentious issue within the workplace and the active involvement of employee representatives can bring real advantage.

Safety Representatives

If an employer recognises a trade union then that trade union may appoint Safety Representatives.

The role of appointed Safety Representatives is to:

Act as the employee representative in any consultation on health and safety with the employer
investigate potential hazards, accidents, complaints and dangerous occurrences
carry out regular inspections of the workplace.

Where no recognised trade union exists then employees must be consulted by their employers. The employer can choose to consult them directly or through elected representatives.

Most small employers without trade unions would choose to consult employees direct but larger employers may decide to have elected representatives. In either case our experience is that if individual employees seem interested in the subject it is useful to encourage them by arranging for some training. ROSPA and BSC are the largest national providers (see index opposite).

In theory non-trade union employee representatives have a more limited role confined to consultation rather than workplace inspection. In practice most employers welcome the safety representative role and allow non trade union representatives to fulfill the full role as set out above.

Safety Committees

Trade union safety representatives can request that a safety committee be set up. The role of the Committee is to:

Examine safety audit reports
study of accident and notifiable diseases statistics and trends
report to management on unsafe and unhealthy conditions and practices, and make recommendations for corrective action.

The existence of a Safety Committee can seem unnecessary to many employers. Iin practice in most low risk employers such committees seem to settle down to meeting only two or three times per year and play a useful role raising issues on an important subject.

Again most employers without recognised trade union will instigate safety committees if there is sufficient employee interest.

Useful further information is available from an HSE booklet Consulting Employees on Health and Safety.