Workplaces where employees are involved in taking decisions about health and safety are safer and healthier. Your employees influence health and safety through their own actions.
They are often the best people to understand the risks in their workplace. Talking, listening and co-operating with each other can help you to:
- identify joint solutions to problems
- develop a positive health and safety culture where risks are managed sensibly
- reduce accidents and ill health, plus their related costs to your business
- bring about improvements in overall efficiency, quality and productivity
- meet customer demands and maintain credibility
- comply with legal requirements
Benefits of worker involvement
People who feel valued and involved in decision making play a big part in a high-performing workplace. Empowering your workforce, giving them the right skills, and getting them involved in making decisions shows them that you take their health, safety and wellbeing seriously. They raise concerns and offer solutions.
Other benefits include:
- lower accident rates
- a more positive health and safety climate
- greater awareness of workplace risks
- better control of workplace risks
Lower accident rates
Accident rates are lower where employees genuinely feel they have a say in health and safety matters, compared with workplaces where they do not get involved.
More positive health and safety climate
Employee involvement in health and safety management relates to a more positive health and safety climate - previous studies have shown employees felt more encouraged to raise concerns. In poor health and safety climates, accident rates are highest among workplaces where employees do not feel they can have a say.
Better control of workplace risks
Stronger employee involvement means better control of common workplace risks such as slips and trips – and this has proven to be more effective where employees felt they were always consulted.
Greater awareness of workplace risks
Employers can learn about the risks through consultation - the risks of stress and slips and trips occur practically everywhere, but awareness of them is higher where there is employee involvement.
Research has also shown that workplaces with health and safety committees, where some members are selected by unions, have significantly lower rates of work-related injury than in workplaces with no co-operative health and safety management. Sources: HSE Fit3 (Fit for Work, Fit for Life, Fit for Tomorrow) employer and employee surveys 2005/06 (provisional results) and Nichols T, Walters D and Tasiran AC (2007) Journal of Industrial Relations; 49: 211-225