Journal of Research & Scholarly Output 2006 - Grimsby Institute of ...

WISHful Thinking?
By Rob Cooling - Head of Health and Safety Training and Consultancy
Services at East Coast Occupational Safety and Health (ECOSH), a
commercial subsidiary of the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher
Education.
As the current legal framework fails to
support effective worker involvement, this
paper questions whether organisations
should consider adopting a systems
approach to managing Worker Involvement
in Safety and Health (WISH).
In February 2004 the Health and Safety
Commission (HSC) published a visionary
strategy for workplace health and safety in
Great Britain to 2010 and beyond. In this
strategy the HSC described its mission is to
“gain the recognition of health and safety as
a cornerstone of civilised society and with
that achieve a record of workplace health
and safety that leads the world”. Worker
involvement was presented as a
fundamental success factor in striving
towards this vision.
The rhetoric on worker involvement is
nothing new, the phrase that health and
safety should be ‘everybody’s business’ has
been around a long time, yet the idealistic
shouts of ‘empowerment’ and ‘selfmanagement’
remain heady aspirations.
Even though we live in a society which
outwardly promotes industrial democracy,
very few organisations have taken the steps
necessary to embrace worker involvement
in safety and health (WISH). Most
organisations continue to artificially
subscribe to the weakest forms of worker
involvement, often to meet legal
requirements, with the underlying proviso
that these changes do not markedly shift the
balance of power within the organisation.
Yet why is this the case? Why is it only the
most enlightened organisations that have
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