Improve - good practice tips

Seek help

• If you have no union: Ask your workforce if they would like to be consulted directly, through representatives, or a combination of the two. If it is not practical to consult directly or employees would like representatives, arrange for them to be elected.
• Consult regularly: Ask your employers how often they would like to be consulted.
• Hold back: Employee consultation is about taking on board the views of your employees, so you should not decide who should represent them.
• Reflect diversity: Encourage everyone who is eligible to stand as a candidate, so that employees have the choice to elect or endorse a candidate who reflects the group or constituency.
• Train your representatives: You must work with and train the representatives that your employees have elected so that they can fulfil their role.
• Take your time: If you and your employee representatives allow time to get used to working together, and listening to each other, your relationship has the best possible chance of reaching your shared goal of staying safe and healthy at work.
• Save time: Where you have both union-appointed and employee-elected health and representatives, consult them at the same time about the same issues if you can. Joint involvement leads to joint problem solving.
• Think laterally: Do not limit the scope of consultation to a pre-set list - sometimes you will need to involve employees about issues that are not on the list.
• Tackle health issues: Health problems - such as stress in the workplace or musculoskeletal disorders - are areas where your employees can add value in helping you to address them together.