Safety Consultation in the Workplace

Safety Consultation

Employees have a right to make representations to and consult their employer on matters relating to their safety, health, and welfare at work.

Consultation with employees involves listening to their views and taking them into account as part of the decision-making process. Consultation means both (1) providing your workers with information, and (2) obtaining feedback and input before making decisions affecting worker health and safety.

Representation is the action of speaking or acting on behalf of employees to their employer and/or management.

Consultation in the workplace helps to increase overall occupational safety and health compliance. It enables issues to be resolved rather than escalated. Where there is consultation, staff feel that they are listened to and valued. Employees are often the best people to understand the risks in their workplace. Where there is good consultation, employees can influence occupational health and safety through their own actions.

Consultation and the Law

Employers are legally required to consult employees on workplace safety, health, and welfare (Section 26 of the 2005 Act).

Employees can elect a Safety Representative to represent them. If a Safety Committee exists in the workplace, it can facilitate this process. Not all companies will have a Safety Committee or a Safety Representative(s). However, employers still need to establish mechanisms for consulting with workers on safety matters.

Employees involved in the safety consultation arrangements (for example, Safety Committee members or Safety Representatives) are entitled to time off for training, without loss of earnings, so that they can acquire the knowledge to discharge their functions.

Section 27 (SHWW Act 2005) prohibits an employer from penalizing or threatening to penalize an employee when they are making a complaint or a representation about an issue related to safety, health or welfare at work.

Safety Committee

A Safety Committee is a group within an organization that is tasked with promoting, maintaining, and improving workplace health and safety.  Overall, the Safety Committee collaborates to identify, assess, and address workplace health and safety concerns.

Typically, the Safety Committee involves representatives from both management and employees. This ensures a collaborative approach to identifying and addressing workplace hazards, enhancing safety policies, and fostering a strong safety culture.

While employees are entitled to select a Safety Representative, the establishment of a Safety Committee is a matter for agreement between employers and employees. Where agreement has been reached, and a Safety Committee has been established, employees are entitled to select and appoint members from among their colleagues.

Where there are Safety Representatives in a workplace, at least one must be selected and appointed to the Safety Committee by the employees.

Safety Representatives

A Safety Representative is an employee elected by their fellow employees, whose main role is to represent them to management on all health and safety issues. Employees have the right to decide on, select and appoint a Safety Representative or, by agreement with their employer, more than one Safety Representative, to represent them in consultations with the employer on matters of safety, health and welfare at the place of work. Workers may choose not to appoint a Safety Representative. However, there are specific arrangements for the appointment of Safety Representatives in the construction sector. On construction sites where more than twenty persons are employed at any one time on a construction site, the Project Supervisor for the Construction Stage (PSCS) must facilitate the appointment of a Safety Representative.

The number of Safety Representatives should be proportionate to the size of the workplace, and should ensure, diverse work activities, departments or specialised occupations are represented.

The Safety Representative is a responsible role (but it does not come with responsibilities/duties under the Act). In law the Safety Representative is described as having a function. The overall aim of the Safety Representative is to help achieve and influence safe and healthy workplaces to protect workers health and safety. Employers are required to consider representations made by Safety Representatives and act upon them if necessary.

The Safety Representative is not a Safety Officer or Safety Advisor. This does not prevent a Safety Representative from giving an opinion about safety, health, and welfare matters.

A Safety Representative who accepts a management proposal to deal with a safety or health issue could not be held legally accountable for putting that proposal into effect and is protected against penalisation.