Encouraging participation in workplace health and safety

Howard Fidderman welcomes HSE and government attempts to increase worker participation.

On this page:
Importance of unions
Training modules
BERR involvement
Box 1: Cavaghan and Gray.

Recent years have seen the HSE become ever more strident about the role that worker participation in general, and union-appointed safety representatives in particular, can play in improving workplace health and safety standards. The HSE is now embarking on an ambitious £4 million two-year project to promote competent worker involvement in health and safety, mainly in smaller and non-unionised workplaces. The plans, which embrace a campaign and funding for training, are set out in an HSE paper approved by the HSE Board at its monthly meeting on 29 April¹.

Keith Wiley, the head of the HSE's worker involvement and inclusion team (until he left the HSE at the end of June) and author of the paper, told HSB that the project is "expected to be one of the major pieces of work the HSE will be taking forward as part of its new strategy" for the health and safety system of Great Britain, which was launched on 3 June. Although work on the participation package began at the end of May, he says that "delivery of the various strands will gain momentum as the year progresses." The initiative will run until 2011.

Importance of unions

The HSE's package is timely, coming after Prime Minister Gordon Brown marked Workers' Memorial Day on 28 April, with an unequivocal endorsement of union safety reps: "The British trade union movement has led the way in protecting the lives of people at work through health and safety representatives. Their dedication has protected countless workers and their families from the consequences of deaths and injuries at work and I pay tribute to their tireless efforts on behalf of us all." Even the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR) (which became the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on 5 June) has come aboard, publishing on 13 May a paean to all types of union representation (see below).

The HSE's paper is similarly enthusiastic, stating that more and better trained, and thereby competent, health and safety representatives should lead to safer and healthier workplaces. The HSE's own survey evidence links high levels of employee consultation with lower levels of injuries, near misses, and stress and musculoskeletal disorders. But although nine in 10 employers state that they involve their employees in the management of health and safety, only four in 10 "achieve what the HSE sees as good practice. In addition, employees perceive that consultation on health and safety has weakened since 2006." Employers, argues the HSE, lack information on, and fail to recognise, the full benefits of health and safety representatives and their training. There has also been "a failure to engender a cooperative and proactive approach between safety representatives and managers".

There is, according to the HSE paper, a need to "promote the fundamental right of worker involvement across the full range of modern GB workplaces whether unionised, non-unionised or 'mixed' workplaces". Although the HSE's use of "health and safety representatives" in the paper encompasses union-appointed safety reps and non-unionised representatives of employee safety, the project is aimed at non-unionised workplaces where there has been no training of reps. While non-unionised and smaller employers are more likely to consult staff directly than through elected representatives, the HSE believes that once organisations have 20-25 workers, it becomes "more difficult to deliver good consultation and involvement without representatives". As such, the main target of the HSE's project will be companies with between 20 and 100 staff.

Training modules

The HSE proposes the development of new training modules that would build upon the existing good practice of safety rep training. These will form part of a four-part package, comprising:

• a £1 million two-year campaign linked to the HSE's wider "leadership" theme to emphasise the place of worker engagement and involvement and the benefits of a cooperative approach. The advertising campaign will be supported by visits from HSE and local authority staff;
• training to provide representatives with "the necessary soft skills and competences of working with managers and workers" to solve problems jointly. The HSE envisages an initial short piece of work with training providers to establish an enhanced course content, which will be followed by "seed-corn funding" to develop the courses (a budget of £250,000);
• a £2 million two-year scheme for part-funding training of representatives, particularly in non-unionised workplaces where there has been no training; and
• piloting joint training of first-line manager and representatives. An independent evaluation will investigate whether a joint programme improves competence and cooperative approaches to managing health and safety (£750,000 over two years). Wiley told HSB that this "would be targeted at both unionised and non-unionised organisations but, to reduce deadweight [which would arise from targeting larger firms], we would seek to support those organisations [that] would not normally undertake such training or have the capability to commission such joint events".

The next few months will also see the HSE fine-tune elements of the package, including whether and how it should target: high-risk industries (for example, construction, waste management and aspects of manufacturing), which might prove particularly cost-effective; small black and ethnic minority businesses; and "hard-to-motivate dutyholders". Amid general support for the paper, HSE Board members raised the issue of additionally targeting larger firms in the small and medium-sized enterprise spectrum. The HSE also remains undecided as to which parts of England, Scotland and Wales will pilot the training. It is currently preparing a cost-benefit analysis, which it will publish in "due course".

BERR involvement

On 13 May, BERR (now BIS) published a compendium of case studies that "aims to highlight to businesses the positive contribution that modern union reps can make to the workplace"². Peter Mandelson, the secretary of state at BERR, said: "Representatives are the face of unions in workplaces up and down the country, but their success stories can go unreported." The publication, which is a joint initiative with the TUC and the CBI, looks at seven "real-life examples" that show how "well-known companies have worked with union representatives to bring about changes that have been in the best interests of the employer and the workforce". Although the case studies are private sector orientated, BERR also announced that the Public Services Forum has agreed to draft a similar publication for the public sector.

One of the case studies - of Cavaghan and Gray - is based on workplace health and safety (see box 1); and a second - Group 4 Securicor - addresses violence at work. Even the other five - which look at the experiences of Boots, British Museum, British Telecom Open Reach, Npower and Tristar Homes - are all tangentially linked to health and safety, tackling issues such as work-life balance, redundancy and redeployment, the environment, and training and learning.

Welcoming the compendium, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "In these tough times, Britain's businesses need as much support as possible. Union reps can be a vital resource not only for unions and their members, but also for the companies and organisations that employ them." Not to be outdone, CBI director-general Richard Lambert added: "This joint publication shows the potential benefits in unionised workplaces of collaborative working between employers and workplace union reps. As the case studies demonstrate, where unions are present, employers and trade unions who work efficiently and constructively can improve workplace performance for the mutual benefit of employer and employee."

1. HSE (2009), "Reinforcing the promotion of worker involvement and improving the competence of the key players" (external website), HSE Board paper no.HSE/09/43.

2. BERR, CBI, TUC (2009), "Reps in action. How workplaces can gain from modern union representation" (external website).

Howard Fidderman is a freelance journalist and editor of HSB.