10 Steps to Health and Safety - 9 Involve staff and others

Involving staff ensures everyone is involved in improving H&S

Involving staff in health and safety matters is both a legal requirement and a good idea for any organisation.

Involving staff increases the ‘buy-in’ to overall health and safety implementation. Staff have key knowledge and experience and can often use this to identify the controls that can be applied to prevent health and safety issues and allow them to work efficiently.

Management forums

Management can host forums to discuss health and safety issues. These do not have to be dedicated just to health and safety but can be part of other meetings e.g. production meetings or quality meetings.

Management must ensure they create an environment that allows those present to raise health and safety issues without fear of reprimand.

Management should be present at these meetings as this helps to demonstrate their commitment to health and safety. Additional resources may be required to address an issue raised and management can authorise this.

Staff feedback

Provide facilities that allow staff to raise health and safety concerns. This should be allowed to be undertaken anonymously but having the contact details is always helpful as the employee can be contacted and involved in rectifying the health and safety issue.

Find out the next step in the 10 steps to Health and Safety success - 10 Make sure you have the right people to help you