Posted By Dean Stevens If your serious about taking this position you should not be asking for extra money in my eyes, especially at the beginning. Surely the incentives are the training that you will recieve, looks good on your CV. Our safety reps all attended the IOSH managing safely course, a great course for your standard Rep to take. To be honest we do not pay our safety reps any extra than the people around them, they were aware of this at the beginning when they were elected and to be honest with you from a companies point of view we would rather have someone in the position with some passion for the job, not someone whose first question is "how much am i going to get paid for this?", i'm not saying this is your attitude but this is how it can be percieved. As far as i am aware there are no regulations or laws that state safety reps should get paid more etc, so i'm afraid the proof your after is not there. However should you not receive any additional money please do not give up on this position. One of the biggest incentives to do with safety is when you go home at night knowing that you have helped contribute to the safety and welfare of your employees. Good luck in the future.

Posted By Kate Graham One incentive is that they will be doing an important and interesting, and not too onerous job, and the other is that volunteering for such things is good for anyone's career prospects (not necessarily in future H&S roles but just in the fact that they are known as someone who is enthusiastic). Kate

Posted By Berg Julia A company may seek to give incentives but a Rep must not be management run function because they are meant to be elected or nominated by the workforce. The functions of the Safety Rep should not be in addition to normal duties. Reps are entitled to facility time within their contracted shift time to undertake their duties, e.g. consultation being the primary role in order to represent the interests of the workforce at meetings with management and then meetings with the workforce in order consult views, feedback etc. All at the normal rate of pay for that shift. As already stated any training or time away from normal duties in raltion to the Reps role should be paid. Check out the Safety Reps page on the HSE Website.

Posted By Berg Nice 1 Julia I got started in SQE thru being a TU Safety Rep am currently involved in our safety committee arrangements. Drop me an email if you want advice in future. Well done for taking it on and good luck.

Posted By Julia Monelle Thanks - I work in Operations which means that I already have very full and strong networking throughout the company at every level. This means that I'm the perfect person for the job, but it will mean being stretched beyond capacity and working extra hours... why does nobody on this forum think that I should be paid for that?

Posted By Julia Monelle We don't have a union. This wasn't in my job description, it's a new initiative becuase our Health & Safety advisor is too stretched to cover four different locations on a daily basis. I want to do the role because I love working here and I love having a service role within the company, looking after my colleagues. I guess it's an unusual situation to be in. I thought it would be more common.

Posted By Julia Monelle There's nothing within my exisiting job remit. I'm an executive PA. And we don't have any kind of union representation - working in the arts is not like working in industry! Does this change things?

Posted By Dean Stevens Julia I wouldn't describe this as a new initiative myself, more like filling a legal loophole. All employers have an obligation to communicate with employees in regards to health and safety, as we all know 99% of this is done through the health and safety "commitees , forums etc". From the sounds of it your company has just grasped this and is now in the process of forming this committe/forum. As a safety rep you will as you have already stated act as the eyes and ears for the group health and safety manager, any problems from the shop floor that employees have should be communicated to yourself who will then in turn take these issues to the committee / forum. You should however bear in mind that committees / forums should not be used to bring "shopping lists" but should be used to discuss genuine health and safety issues within the work place. I cannot really see how taking this role on will add pressure to your existing workload, as you have stated you will not be responsible for risk assessments , inspections etc. You will be solely responsible for collecting these issues and presenting them to the forum, you may also have to distribute minutes etc to the workforce and maybe included in daily checks ie: fire exits etc. Management should ensure that all safety reps have enough adequate time within their own workload to act as a health and safety rep, if this is not the case in your scenario then i would maybe suggest that you portray your negative feelings to your management team. As for payment, i'm afraid you are now sounding more like the person who is more interested in money rather than the prospects and benefits of the health and safety rep role. You say you need to employ 3 more reps from other parts of the buisness and that you cannot see this happening without any incentives involved. Can i now ask what the health and safety culture is like within your company?, my presumption is pretty bad if it is going to take incentives to elect safety reps. Perhaps your company needs to start concentrating on improving this culture if that is the case. Please keep us updated on what happens within your company and in regards to whether you take the role or not. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Posted By Julia Monelle Thank you - all good advice. There are no other people in the company doing a similar role as yet, so noone to ask, but I will when they are appointed. As for whistle blowing, there's nothing to report! We already have full H&S functionality with advisor and committee covering our H&S responsibilites and more. My new role is much lesser than I think has come across in this discussion.