Partnership approach to reduce stress

International Stress Management Conference, 5 July 2001

Why partnership in health and safety?

John Monks - TUC General Secretary

Check against delivery

I’m not going to talk about the problems stress causes, who’s to blame or who should pay the bill.

Instead I’m going to talk about solutions. I’ll be using words like cooperation, consideration, respect, commitment, understanding.

I am going to talk about what all of us can do in our working lives to reduce those circumstances which create a stressful workplace and all the illness and absenteeism symptomatic of the stressed-out work force.

I am going to talk about partnership - because trade unions want to be part of the solution where stress is concerned, not part of the problem.

Partnerships for prevention

Partnership at work is about employers, unions and employees working together and creating long-term positive relationships which focus on the future of business and improving working life for employees.

All across the world, people are finding that by working together in effective workplace health and safety partnerships, they are making a real difference.

It is now widely accepted that health and safety is a vital component of business success, and that effective employee involvement is an essential part of successful health and safety management.

But until recently the benefits of workplace health and safety partnerships between employers and trade unions have not been widely reported or recognised.

Partnership in health and safety means employers and trade unions joining forces to achieve common goals such as higher safety standards, better working conditions and reductions in accidents and ill-health.

The results of partnership are clear - fewer accidents, better working relationships, and improved productivity. It's a really significant step forward for all concerned - a recipe for success and a recipe for reducing stress.

Benefits for trade union members

Trade unions have always been committed to protecting their members’ lives as well as their livelihoods. Partnership working helps to do this because it ensures that union members and their representatives can have a real influence over the decision-making that affects people's working lives from an early stage.

And you have heard today, and will again tomorrow, how it is the lack of influence over the demands imposed by work which is one of the major causes of stress related ill-health.

Effective employee involvement in health and safety, through partnerships between unions and employers, makes work safer and ensures that union members have more say in the issues affecting them and their work - all of which makes working life less stressful:

· individual members gain because they have more input into decisions affecting their work and working conditions, their knowledge of their work and any problems they experience can be taken into account at an early stage

· safety reps can be more effective because their role is recognised in the partnership and they are supported and valued in the partnership

· working relationships are better because people are working together in a more open, flexible and co-operative way

· things get done better (and quicker) because there is agreement on shared objectives and commitment to achieving them, resulting in practical improvements and less work-related health and safety risks for union members

Because safety reps can help to get things done, more people are willing to become safety reps, so union members get better representation.

So what's in it for employers?

As the Government and Health and Safety Commission’s Revitalising health and safety strategy emphasises, involving employees is an essential part of successful health and safety management.

Research has shown that employee consultation and involvement of union safety reps in decision making affecting health and safety can cut accident and injury rates by up to 60%, improving productivity, competitiveness and morale.

Less accidents and ill-health means less costs to the business, a healthier workforce and better business performance.

By involving employees and their representatives in workplace health and safety, by working together with unions to solve individual and collective health and safety problems, employers gain a better understanding of the health and safety issues faced in the workplace so they are in a better position to improve health and safety performance. There are a number of reasons for this.

· working together with unions helps employers to identify and investigate problems, plan and implement action, and monitor and review health and safety performance because they share information and communications are better.

· employers can draw on the expertise of union safety representatives gained from their training and their members' knowledge of the work and any health and safety issues involved. This leads to everyone being better informed, it increases health and safety awareness at all levels and means employers are better able to protect their workforce and their business interests

· where union reps and employees are seen to be having an effective role in workplace health and safety developments, the decisions and measures taken have more credibility in the eyes of the workforce

· where managers and safety reps can communicate freely and exchange information, ideas and experiences without fear of the traditional "blame culture", there is greater "buy-in" from all sides, making working relationships more productive

· partnership working helps employers to meet their legal duties to co-operate, communicate and consult with unions and employee representatives in good time.

Accident and ill-health statistics compared

Workplaces where union safety reps are consulted, and where a joint management-union safety committee is working, have major injury rates less than half the rate of workplaces without consultation arrangements.

The 1977 Safety Representatives and Safety Committee Regulations require full consultation with union safety reps and the effective operation of joint management-union safety committees.

Those measures have saved thousands of lives. They have prevented more than 250,000 serious injuries and illnesses.

But where there is no consultation with union safety reps and no functioning joint safety committee, serious injury rates are more than twice as high as in workplaces with both.

Unions and partnership

Some trade unionists might confuse partnership with "corporatism", in which the role of independent trade unions is lost. The opposite is the case. Genuine partnership in health and safety:

· recognises the respective interests of the partners concerned - unions and employers - as well as areas of common or shared interests

· strengthens their positive contribution and role in the workplace

· recognises the legitimate role of union safety reps and makes their contribution more visible

· supports and builds on independent unions' existing rights to represent their members on all relevant health and safety matters

· helps TU members/safety reps to get action taken in the interests of all

At the same time, partnership working helps employers improve health and safety and business performance through greater co-operation, better communications and constructive approaches to problem solving at all levels including sectoral and national strategies.

Partnership means a shared commitment to working together in agreeing and setting objectives.

It starts with the early planning and design stages and it needs to continue through to implementation, monitoring and review so that managing and working safely are shared activities and are an integral part of the workplace and business agenda.

Can there be partnership without unions?

Some employers still claim to be able to consult and develop "partnership" with their employees on health and safety matters, such as stress, without involving a trade union. In practice the evidence suggests that this is not the case.

There are a number of important reasons for this:

· unions work collectively and independently and are accountable to their members - their job is to listen to what their members say, represent their members' views and experiences, both individually and collectively. They are able to draw on the honest views of the workforce about hazards at work and how they can best be controlled.

· Unions can also draw on other union sources - they cover many different workplaces, sometimes in the same sector, sometimes across many different sectors. They gain extensive information from members and their representatives about workplace developments and health and safety, and about the causes of accidents and ill health - information which is often unavailable from any other source. Unions can "bridge the reality gap" between managers and workers by representing the practical day-to-day work experiences of their members.

· Unions are competent in their role in health and safety and risk management. They provide high quality, high volume accredited training for union safety representatives. The training and the information they provide for their safety reps and members is based on the experiences and lessons learned in many different workplaces, and about how these risks can be managed and controlled. They also conduct valuable research, brief their members and safety reps, and contribute to "early warning systems", identifying problems or changes in incident rates resulting from new issues affecting their members work.

· The TUC and unions provide safety reps with essential information and "tools" to help them carry out their role. There are relatively few sources of practical information specifically for safety reps outside the TUC and unions.

· The TUC and the unions help to ensure consistency of approach and access to a wide range of safety reps' publications and other resources, through a variety of formats and media, including the internet.

All these things are possible because of the collective nature of trade union membership and organisation. Individuals working without this wider framework of shared collective resources and expertise cannot access the same knowledge base, and will not have the same level of support available to them as employee representatives.

But union safety reps, and the safety services that support them, can help to provide real backing for individual employees and representatives, and can therefore help inform employers as well as individual employees about workplace health and safety issues.

The importance of the trade union role

The importance of the trade union role therefore cannot be overestimated. It provides the organisational basis for:

· collective representation and overview

· broadly based experience of workforce / members' skills and knowledge of how the job is actually done and what the health and safety issues, problems and effects are on different sections of the workforce as well as individuals or specific sites or occupational groups

· training safety reps - and increasingly extending that trade union training to managers through joint training activities

· complying with legal requirements for employee consultation and representation on joint safety committees

Trade union organisation is a valuable resource in partnerships at work, benefiting employers as well as union members. Effective partnerships recognise and support this.

"Partnership in health and safety" - our definition

Health and safety partnerships in the workplace are effective working relationships between unions and managers.

They go beyond compliance with health and safety laws, increasing union involvement in decision-making about corporate health and safety risk management, and increasing individuals' involvement in decisions about how the risks of their work are managed.

Health and safety partnerships improve health, safety and welfare, improve workplace performance, enhance the quality of working life for employees and strengthen union organisation in the workplace.

Partnership working around health and safety can significantly contribute to the process of managing change, for example, by identifying, preventing and controlling any potential adverse health effects or risks involved. This is possible as a result of open communication and open access to information and joint approaches to problem solving.

It is also reflected in the way that unions and employers develop their partnerships at work.

Where health and safety is a priority, the impact of decisions on health and safety are considered and discussed at an early stage. This helps both to inform the decision-making process, promote co-operation, and prevent adverse health effects.

In addressing the issues, government and both sides of industry have recognised that everyone concerned benefits from a shared commitment to improving health and safety performance along with business performance. The two go hand in hand in today’s industrial environment.

While the focus is firmly on prevention, moving away from the reactive blame culture attached to a compensation-led approach to health and safety, there are still big gaps in our understanding of the processes involved in working together for this common goal.

Centralised systems undoubtedly had an impact in improving health and safety.

But while they have involved managers and safety reps in joint arrangements such as safety committees and inspections, traditional systems have not always reached out much further than the formal structures and dialogue.

They have sometimes 'missed out' on involving or training middle managers or developing innovatory change or team-based work. They have sometimes relegated safety reps and supervisors roles to 'policing' each other.

Nor have they always been integrated into the general business plans and strategies of the organisations concerned.

And they have sometimes resulted in safety committees working stolidly through shopping lists of complaints rather than overseeing a strategic approach, involving the active participation of the workforce in shaping the decisions affecting their health and safety and their working lives.

As a result, the approach for some has remained reactive or static, and the potential for gaining real practical additional benefits and added value from working together on a partnership basis have been lost to the organisation and to the workforce as a whole.

The six principles of partnership in health and safety

To reach out beyond the static, reactive way of working together, the TUC has identified six key principles that underpin effective health and safety partnerships.

· Principle 1: commitment to building a better business environment alongside a better working environment

· Principle 2: recognising and respecting legitimate interests - developing tripartite co-operation at national and workplace level

· Principle 3: commitment to security in employment - encompassing prevention of harm, retention and rehabilitation

· Principle 4: focus on the quality of the working environment - covering welfare, occupational and public health, job design and job satisfaction, and workplace safety: ensuring workers are "happy, healthy and here"

· Principle 5: openness and transparency - genuine consultation in good time

· Principle 6: adding value and realising goals - determining national, sectoral and workplace visions and targets, and realising them together - including the reduced costs achieved through good health and safety.

Partnership principles can be applied to health and safety and risk management systems very creatively, and I will give some examples in a minute.

Others are given in the latest TUC report on partners in prevention, published today. The report also goes further into the principles and implementation of prevention partnership. The case studies in the report demonstrate how partnership can create the kind of conditions and working relationships which mean that people can manage safely and work constructively together, by:

· dealing with issues proactively not just reactively (to prevent accidents and ill health and solve problems, rather than just finding someone to blame when things go wrong, or only taking action after something has already gone wrong)

· developing better ways of identifying issues and solving problems

· learning from experiences, good and bad, by sharing information, perspectives, and recognising different types of experience and expertise - including expertise gained "on the job"

· integrating health and safety partnership working into general strategies including general partnership arrangements, communications and decision-making processes - and vice versa

· consulting the workforce and union safety reps in good time so that they can have real input into decisions affecting their working lives and health and safety

Let me give you a couple of case studies, examples of how these principles have been applied in the real world.

The first is Scottish Power plc which covers a wide range of business activities in diverse locations. Its five major operating units each have their own Managing Director. The individual businesses work within a corporate safety strategy but within this the approach varies from one company to the next.

One of those operating companies - Generation Business - has gone a long way down the partnership road. Whilst the corporate arrangements are moving towards greater employee involvement in corporate policy and planning, the main lead on partnership has come from within the Generation Business. This Business has had a formal partnership agreement between the company and all four recognised unions since 1995.

The agreement with the unions reflects the shared understandings and values reached about what partnership involves, as well as about its scope and substance.

It makes specific references to health safety and the environment as priority issues - shared goals include care for the environment, safety, training and development.

The Agreement also includes, amongst other things, a formally agreed policy on the sharing of information. This policy was developed when the partnership agreement was drawn up between the unions and the company.

The agreement states that 'A fundamental principle of effective operation of the Partnership Agreement is the sharing of relevant information amongst all the partners in an open and frank way. Only in this way can a basis be established for greater trust.'

The agreement itself was built through partnership working and was the brainchild of the Business and the full time union officers. Now those officers have taken a back seat and the local representative and shop stewards have been more heavily involved .

Communication and learning have played a major role in building trust and delivering changes in working relationships and safety culture.

Working together to create the Partnership Agreement in the first place was at times a difficult process but one which helped forge constructive working relationships and establish common goals at a difficult time.

Trust was also built through action and delivery of improvements. Corporate action on health promotion for example is visible through commitment to staff health, welfare and wellbeing at the group headquarters in Glasgow in the form of good leisure facilities and a well-qualified Occupational Health Team and an in-house Health Centre. This is actively involving employees in developing healthy lifestyle and working style.

There is clear corporate commitment to training and development with an in-house Training Centre and a wide range of training resources.

Scottish Power has committed itself to becoming a learning organisation, and this also helps support partnership working.

It invests heavily in training and developing its workforce as well as training managers, safety reps and members of the Partnership Councils.

It is also an important part of both the Group’s health and safety culture and its corporate philosophy.

These facilities do not change things overnight, but they do enable managers and unions to work together more effectively towards improvements in both business and health and safety performance.

In the case of the Generation Business, the clear understandings, values and policy built into the partnership agreement itself provided a firm foundation for future development. Health and safety arrangements and plans were integrated into the general partnership strategy in order that it is not dealt with in isolation.

Health and safety was made a central concern of the partnership, not a competing one.

One major test of partnerships comes when external pressures affect the situation. The Generation partners have to be able to deal with changes they cannot directly control, as well as changes within their control. Developing broader understanding of the issues and sharing information and concerns about how different interests will be affected was all-important here.

My other example is the Post Office Group of the Royal Mail, perhaps demonstrating that partnerships over health and safety don’t require everything to be sweetness and light in industrial relations!

The risks facing postal workers around the country are many and varied. Issues such as manual handling risks and musculo-skeletal disorders are coupled with physical hazards on the road (and on the bicycle), and risks of violence and attacks by people and animals.

Stress has been a major problem in the Post Office arising primarily from the uncertainties of change and problems with staffing levels.

Senior management wanted assurance that health and safety management across The Post Office was in line with current best practice and appropriate for the changing commercial environment.

The appointment (in February 2000) of the Head of Health and Safety Management, Malcolm Davison, who was given a Post Office wide brief on this issue, provided the catalyst for a partnership approach to health and safety. He recognised the need for a clear strategic approach in an organisation as large as the Post Office and that changing the safety culture also meant changing the way people worked together on health and safety, starting at the very top.

So did the Chair of the CWU’s National Executive Health Safety and Environment Committee David Joyce.

Joint health and safety committees had been working around issues but the blame culture still prevailed. The different parts of the Post Office needed to work together on health and safety if things were going to change. Historically this had not always been the case. Change was needed and partnership would play an important part.

The foundations first had to be laid for a strategic approach to health and safety as well as for partnership. The two things went together.

There was no recent history of managers getting together to consider health and safety issues across the different groups and business units in the Post Office. This was the first barrier to overcome. The starting point was the Executive Board.

The new Health and Safety Manager saw each Group Managing Director and Business Unit Managing Director and took up an invitation from the unions to meet at an early stage to share views on the subject. This all took time as each team had to be seen separately. The report back to the Executive Board included a set of six key recommendations for addressing the problems identified.

A ‘Revitalising Health and Safety’ strategy was established. This wasa work programme for integrating health and safety into the Post Office management system and a Communications plan. The ‘Revitalising’ strategy comprised:

• setting inspirational and challenging health and safety policy and targets;

• emphasising personal responsibility and accountability;

• instilling a sense of pride in good practice and behaviour;

• stressing measurement as the means of managing performance; and

• establishing partnership in a ‘learning organisation’.

Getting senior managers on board was only part of this process of building foundations for future improvement, unions needed to be on board too, or the strategy would not work. Talks with the unions at national level and with groups of safety representatives in free and frank exchanges produced an agreement at all levels that they needed to find new ways of working together.

All were convinced of the value of a partnership approach as part of the ‘Revitalising’ strategy.

Unions at the Post Office are also having to address some challenging issues such as how to ensure that they are also 'joined up' themselves when they are reaching decisions at different levels. Consultation and communications are issues for the unions as well as for relations between the unions and the employers.

A revised Post Office Health and Safety Policy Statement has been endorsed by The Post Office Board. The Policy is a framework document setting out general policy, responsibilities and arrangements for managing health and safety. This is a living document, not set in stone, and further developments are envisaged in the form of the Codes Of Practice on specific matters.

Meanwhile health and safety professionals across the Post office are also working together in a different way, preparing a work plan on developing the partnership approach. With everyone on board, the aim is to get an agreed structure that integrates partnership and health and safety management, and find the best ways of integrating health and safety into business management.

Outcomes so far? Well these are early days in the process of building a new health and safety partnership in the Post Office.

But already real changes have taken place: for the first time ever, the Executive Board has sat down with the unions’ health and safety team for open discussions on strategic developments and ways of working together. Managing Directors are doing the same in their business units.

Plans are in hand for communications and consultation but ‘early deliverables’ are also being discussed. A specific joint initiative assessing the benefits of cycle safety helmets is underway for cycle users (a significant concern since there are some 35,000 delivery workers on the road and accidents have resulted in several fatalities). The partnership is still in its early stages but the foundations have been built and commitment has been secured.

Fostering a positive partnership culture is a major contribution to a positive health and safety culture in the workplace.

This way of working does not happen overnight. Nor can it simply be imposed from the top down or from outside. Effective partnership relationships have been developed by the partners themselves to meet the needs of their particular workplaces and industries, in the light of their own experiences and objectives.

Successful health and safety partnerships are built with positive commitment to joint work. They depend on the active involvement, participation and commitment of all concerned. They need leadership.

Positive action is needed to make sure it is a practical reality, not just a paper exercise - and discipline is needed in getting specific things done and done well. It takes continuing effort and ongoing commitment to sustain progress.

But it is well worth the effort, according to those who have built successful health and safety partnerships. They say they would not contemplate working in any other way because of the improvements and benefits it brings to all concerned.

And not just in large companies with well-established relationships and joint safety committees. It can also provide a way forward for small and medium size firms, self-employed and peripatetic workers, contractors and shared workplaces.

The evidence to date shows that effective partnership working can deliver real improvements in health and safety performance and culture within two years.

However, it would be wrong to suggest that partnership is an easy option, or that it is a panacea for all ills, nor is it an automatic solution to every single health and safety problem faced by unions and employers. Like anything else, it takes a sustained effort and commitment to produce sustained results.

A decisive shift towards transparency, shared ownership and joint problem solving is needed. This requires a fresh approach to organisational and safety culture, with flexibility and commitment to change on the part of both unions and employers.

Organisations - employers and unions alike - have great opportunities to learn from each other and develop their own joint approaches in the light of the lessons learned and benefit from experiences gained elsewhere.

Successful partnership working requires different skills and training from the traditional adversarial approach to industrial relations or the "top-down" approach to health and safety management and control.

Joint problem-solving, flexibility and team work is as important in partnership working as the more traditional approaches to collective representation, especially during periods of rapid organisational or technological change.

As representatives' and managers' roles change and develop, the skills they require for successful partnerships in health and safety will also change. This requires changes in the way that representatives are supported and trained, and in the resources they need to access to ensure they can be effective in their union role.

The TUC is therefore reviewing its own provision of safety rep and full-time officer training, and the range, accessibility and content of resources the TUC provides to assist and support these developments. The TUC's Regional and National Education Services are developing course content aimed at helping union representatives and officials to develop partnership initiatives and support a positive partnership and safety culture in the workplace.

Successful health and safety management is essential for successful enterprise and cannot be achieved without effective union involvement in health and safety.

That is why the TUC is committed to working with the CBI, government, the HSE and others to promote both partnerships in general, and partnerships in health and safety in particular.

The TUC has given its full backing for current government and HSC initiatives to revitalise health and safety and promote the health of the nation through effective employee involvement in workplace health and safety.

The TUC is also committed to working alongside employers and their organisations to promote the partnership approach and make the link between the quality of workplace relationships and working life, high quality products and services, and successful business activity.

Genuine partnership in health and safety offers the opportunity to transform workplaces and working conditions and achieve major cuts in the rates of accidents and work-related ill health and no more so than in the causes of workplace stress and related ill-health.

I hinted at the beginning that I did not want to join the 'blame race' over stress at work.

I hope that I have convinced you of three things.

Although it’s not about blame, stress is indeed the result of poor or inappropriate management - even Ruth Lea at the Institute of Directors acknowledges that.

Stress is fundamentally a health and safety issue, not despite the fact that it is a result of bad management, but because, like every other health and safety problem, it is a result of bad management.

And thirdly, if bad management is at the root of stress, then good management is the solution, and good management means working in partnership with unions.

Some people say that stress is the 21^st century’s industrial plague and that we are only just beginning to realise its impact.

I think that the opposite might very well be true. I think that we might be on the brink of consigning stress to the bleak industrial past of the 20^th century.

We certainly don’t have any more excuses. We know what to do.