We’re getting feedback from auditors, that a lot of their clients don’t understand the difference between effective consultation and participation.
In this blog, I’m going to go through 5 key points to help you understand about effective consultation and participation.
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1. Two-way communication
Consultation and participation is a form of two-way communication.
What do I mean two-way? It’s not me standing here lecturing you.
If I was doing consultation and participation in this blog, I would be taking feed-back from you via comments, and then responding to that.
2. Choose an appropriate location
To do effective consultation and participation, you have to be sitting down with a group of people, or one-on-one depending on the appropriateness of the location.
For example, if I was doing a tool-box talk, we’d be doing it where the action’s happening, because we want to be able to observe any risks. You may need to ask yourself "has anything changed on site in the last 24 hours?" to ensure that you're at the correct location.
3. Forum
Is it a structured meeting? Is there an agenda?
An example could be tool-box talks, normally there’s about 5 key points, one of the key points in that forum is, have there been any changes?
It’s similar if we’re doing a training session, just make sure that there are some topics that you want information on.
4. Keep Records
Make sure we’ve got records of these meetings.
An example would be, the tool-box talk that we’ve held,
Ensure it is dated
Identify the location
Ensure all staff that have participated in that meeting have signed off
5. Further Communication
Moving on from the records, we need to ask “is there anybody that’s missed out on this consultation and participation?”
And make sure that they’re communicated too, through this process.
If you have any questions or feedback regarding this topic, feel free to get in contact.
You may also want to check out my other blogs for various compliance topics.