Work together with other members to build a strong workplace culture that can tackle health and safety issues.
Solutions to most health and safety problems require more than just sharing information and expertise.
A strong CSP profile, through high member support in the workplace, is often a key factor that encourages an employer to engage with us.
Your role to recruit all appropriate staff who can belong within your department or service to join the CSP is therefore important to our success. When members also actively participate, we know much more can be achieve to improve their health, safety and wellbeing.
Your communication with members
To improve members' health and safety, you need to ensure they understand and support your aims. If managers know that members are genuinely concerned or angry about a health and safety issue, they are likely to be more responsive to you in your role as their staff's representative.
Organising is essentially about you and members working together effectively as a team to solve the problems you identified at your workplace
Communication is a two way process: it's not just about talking to members, it's also important to find ways of identifying what members think and feel on any given issue. Listening is therefore a vital skill for any safety rep.
At the same time though it's essential that regular information – relating to local, relevant issues – is fed back to them: this helps build a strong CSP culture among members.
See examples below where safety reps have worked well with other members and achieved good results as a local team:
When it gets too hot – organise!
After many years of lobbying his employer to do something about the excessive high temperatures in his workplace – and getting nowhere – CSP safety rep Richard decided an organising campaign was needed. The campaign would help get the message across to his employer that air conditioning should be installed in his department.
Richard and other members worked diligently together to record temperature readings in the department to submit as evidence of the problem to the employer. Members ensured that incident forms were completed and regularly submitted. They also encouraged patients to write in to complain.
It took a few months but through everybody's concerted efforts the employer agreed to invest in an air conditioning system. Richard also ensured there was proper consultation with him throughout the purchasing and instalment process. The CSP campaign was a big success and members were pleased with the results.
Richard and his members' experience also assisted the CSP on how to advise other reps on what to do when temperature becomes an issue in their workplace - see Temperature control in the workplace - advice for safety representatives.
Pinpoint the pressure: appointment times
The CSP's Pinpoint the Pressure campaign organises members to take back control of their workloads. Through it, Bridgewater NHS Foundation Trust management in South West England agreed to increase the time for first, post-operative appointments. This followed feedback indentified in a CSP stress survey that showed the current 30 minute limit was insufficient for Band 5 and 6 physios.
CSP reps conducted the survey and fed back their findings to the physiotherapy staff team and management: they suggested increasing these appointment times to 45 minutes, benefitting both patients and members alike.
See www.csp.org.uk/pressure for more information about the campaign
.Find out more
For more information about how you can organise on health and safety, read the TUC guide Health and Safety and Organising: a guide for reps.