Worker involvement: evaluating HSE health and safety representative training

IES was commissioned by the Health and Safety Executive to evaluate its training initiatives for employee health and safety representatives, which aimed to increase the number of representatives.

In the first instance, we evaluated two pilot initiatives, in the manufacturing and construction sectors. We then carried out an evaluation of the main initiative in 2011, which involved 12 case studies of organisations, interviews with course facilitators, three waves of telephone interviews with course participants and their managers, and two waves of a survey, carried out by MORI. We found evidence of behavioural shifts  in organisations, embeddedness of health and safety practices and, in some cases, real cultural change.