Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

18.4.2 The involvement of stakeholders
There are a number of internal and external stakeholders 
of the organization, who will have an interest and infl u-
ence on the introduction and development of the occu-
pational health and safety management system.
The internal stakeholders include:
➤
Directors and trustees of the organization
– 
Following several reports on corporate governance 
in recent years culminating in the Combined Code 
of Corporate Governance 2003, the measurement of 
occupational health and safety performance and the 
attainment of health and safety targets has been rec-
ognized as being as important as other measures of 
business performance and targets. A report on health 
and safety performance should be presented at each 
board meeting and be a periodic agenda item for 
sub-committees of the board such as audit and risk 
management.
➤
The workforce
– Without the full cooperation of 
the workforce, including contractors and temporary 
employees, the management of health and safety 
will not be successful. The workforce is best quali-
fi ed to ensure and provide evidence that health and 
safety procedures and arrangements are actually 
being implemented at the workplace. So often this 
is not the case even though the occupational health 
and safety managements system is well designed 
and documented. Worker representatives can pro-
vide useful evidence on the effectiveness of the man-
agement system at shop fl oor level and they can also 
provide a useful channel of communication between 
the senior management and the workforce. One use-
ful measure of the health and safety culture is the 
enthusiasm with which workers volunteer to become 
and continue to be representatives. For a representa-
tive to be really effective, some training is essential. 
Organizations which have a recognized trade union 
structure will have fewer problems with fi nding and 
training worker representatives. More information 
on the duties of worker representatives is given in 
Chapter 3.
➤