Participation, involvement & workforce attitudes to health and safety
Developing participation, involvement and workforce attitudes at different levels of cultural maturity is likely to focus on the following:
- Start with local involvement (via projects, committees, etc.) – progressively build greater amounts of cross-functional working (via common projects; secondments; sharing and learning good practices; peer group meetings, etc.);
- Initial involvement tends to be “passive”/following, i.e. just being a member of an improvement project or committee that is led by management;
- As participation increases need to develop the quality of involvement – i.e. by degree of empowerment, decision making, responsibility takeny participants;
- Generally active involvement in health and safety is limited to small numbers of people – need to progressively increase this; often will need managing/inducing by introducing initiatives that require involvement of more people e.g. behavioural safety schemes;
- At Levels 4 & 5 employees should become actively involved in planning their own work and taking responsibility for ensuring the health and safety aspects are fully addressed.