To keep an eye on how involvement with your employees is working, you should:
- check how supportive management are by asking employees and their representatives if they have been encouraged to get involved and been given time to participate
- check employees know who their representatives are and whether they have been asked for their views about health and safety matters
- look into organisational arrangements for involving the workforce in health and safety and whether they have changed to allow employees greater opportunity to be involved in consultation. For example, have training arrangements improved, or do representatives have their roles noted on their performance appraisals?
- collect information on health and safety issues and ideas for addressing them that have been raised as a result of employee involvement to see if there have been improvements in managing them
- think about other measures beyond health and safety – involving your workforce in health and safety could result in additional benefits, for example in productivity, as things improve
Questions to ask
When you monitor performance, ask yourself:
- Is this acceptable or do I need to do something more?
- Do I need to address a matter further?
- How do I engage with employees?
- What do my employees think?
- Are there are any lessons to learn?
Review progress
The review checklist for involving employees can help you assess how close you are to moving towards full employee involvement and joint problem solving.