Safety representatives effective in promoting health and safety messages

E033:07 24 August 2007

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in partnership with Unite published a research report that evaluates the effectiveness of involving safety representatives in delivering health and safety initiatives in the workplace.

Geoffery Podger, Chief Executive of HSE welcomed the findings, "This is an effective way to raise health and safety management in the workplace. Training and exposing safety representatives to new ideas on how to manage various health and safety issues is a valuable way of enabling the workforce to take action and educate those around them."

Rob Miguel, Unite Health and Safety Officer commented, "Unite believe Safety Reps are an essential component to ensuring safe and healthy working conditions, we want them to receive the best training and be aware of, and involved in current initiatives. Our vision to encourage reps to be proactive, has proved through this work, to be a very effective way to raise health and safety awareness, leading to a more meaningful partnership between all the workforce."

According to the report focusing on HSE's recent Better Backs campaign, safety representatives' involvement has resulted in real improvements in the workplace. Unite trained and supported safety representatives by providing them with appropriate tools and literature that safety representatives could take back and promote in their work places. Results in the report suggest:

• Since receiving the training, 59% of safety representatives increased the frequency with which they raised back safety issues with their colleagues, and 29% increased the number of times they raised back safety issues with senior management.
• Three months after the training course, of the 24% of representatives who put forward buying new handling aids to their safety committee or senior management, all of them had seen new handling aids bought, and of the 29% who put forward new or updated training programmes on manual handling techniques, 93% had seen this implemented.

This research provides strong evidence that safety representatives are valuable partners in addressing important health and safety issues affecting those whom they represent and given the right training and support, all employee representatives could be equally effective in their workplaces.

Notes to editors

1. The research report is the first independent evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of safety representatives in securing better health and safety outcomes. It is available at hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr581.htm
2. The research was conducted to analyse whether promoting HSE campaigns at safety representatives training courses is an effective way of encouraging them to take action in the workplace
3. HSE worked with Unite on the Backs! campaign (on musculoskeletal disorders) to provide support and training to safety representatives. All relevant literature was provided and all participating representatives were then encouraged to take action in their workplaces and promote safety risk assessments
4. This year's European Week for Health and Safety at Work campaign 'Lighten the Load' is dedicated to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and the TUC will be running a short training course for health and safety representatives on the subject

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