The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 has a strong foundation of worker engagement and participation. Engagement, generally, takes place whenever health and safety are discussed, modified or actioned. It is an ongoing process. Participation is slightly more formal and allows workers to participate effectively in improving health and safety.

Having a safety committee is a simple forum for complying with the law, offering workers a chance to participate and improving the management of health and safety in an organisation. But how does this work when your organisation depends on having drivers on the road? Drivers are often the most at risk in an organisation, and are often the workers with the least representation.

There are a couple of things to consider:

1. What type of participation do your workers want? Engage the workers by asking them.

2. Worker representation; how big is your organisation, how many sites, how many workers and how many departments?

It is all about the workers

Workers should be involved in the type of forum that allows them to participate. (I would strongly recommend there be a forum, even if the workers don’t have an opinion about this.)

In a small organisation, a toolbox meeting may suffice. A toolbox or departmental/site safety meeting might be more appropriate in organisations with more than one department or site. In this case, I’d recommend an organisational safety committee meeting should be held with a representative from each department or site in attendance.

Worker representation is also likely to be different between small and large organisations. Small organisations may have all workers attend. Larger organisations will have representation. This should be one representative for each work area or workgroup (department) and for every 19 workers. The workers should elect the representative.

Drivers and other remote workers can participate in the smaller toolbox or safety meetings. Driver representatives can be rostered to be available for the safety committee meetings or join remotely.

Consider the time of day the meetings are held. An early meeting may make it easier to hold a driver back for an hour to attend the meeting.

Obviously, work hours still need to be considered so that the driver is legally compliant.