Today the HSE published an evaluation of Worker Involvement training and it is available at:

www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr964.pdf

As anticipated it shows that health, safety and business performance improves when safety representatives (non-union) and joint manager/safety representative training is implemented. The HSE funded the courses with over £2 million. The evaluation was undertaken by the Institute for Employment Studies and they followed up the training after a year to find out the impact in the different companies taking part.

The evaluation highlights that supporting worker involvement through training has a major potential to improve health, safety and business performance. With the HSE estimating that 60% of employees in Great Britain are not even consulted over health and safety issues that they should be - this is illegal, of course - there is great scope for improvement. As the HSE have made the training materials freely available on their 'Do Your Bit' campaign site, improving worker involvement has never been so obvious a measure to improve health, safety and business performance.

Cheers.

Nigel