How I Use the Consultation and Communication Template with Customers in Pilla
Consultation is the policy most businesses think they're already doing well. I've sat in hundreds of management reviews where the answer to "how do you consult with staff on health and safety?" is "we talk to them." That's not consultation. That's telling people what to do and hoping they listen.
The difference matters. Two-way consultation means employees have a genuine route to raise concerns, challenge decisions, and contribute to how safety is managed. When it works, you catch hazards faster because the people doing the work spot things management misses. When it doesn't, you get a workforce that stays quiet until something goes wrong. I'll walk you through what the law requires, give you a template you can edit for your operation, and flag the gaps I see most often when reviewing these policies.
Key Takeaways
- What is consultation and communication in health and safety? Consultation means involving your employees in decisions that affect their health and safety, not just telling them what to do. It covers how you communicate risks, invite feedback, handle reported concerns, and bring new starters up to speed
- Why do you need a consultation and communication policy? The Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977 and the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996 require employers to consult with their workforce. An HSE inspector will want to see evidence that this is actually happening, not just written down
- How do you set it up in Pilla? Use the knowledge hub template below, edit it to match your operation, and share it with your team through the app so everyone has access and you can track who's read it
- How do you automate the follow-up? Set up Poppi to chase staff who haven't acknowledged the policy and flag when it's due for review
Article Content
Understanding What's Required of You
Consultation is a legal duty, not a nice-to-have. Two pieces of legislation cover it. The Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977 apply where employees are represented by trade union safety reps. The Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996 cover everyone else. Between the two, there's no gap. You must consult with your workforce on matters that affect their health and safety.
What counts as consultation? Introducing new measures that affect health and safety. Bringing in new equipment or technology. Appointing competent persons. Planning health and safety training. The health and safety consequences of any workplace change. If it touches on how safely your people can do their jobs, they should have a say before the decision is final, not after.
The mistake I see most often is businesses treating consultation as information delivery. Pinning a notice on the board, sending an email, ticking a box. That's communication, not consultation. Consultation means giving employees the chance to raise concerns, ask questions, and influence the outcome. The distinction is the difference between telling someone the fire exit has moved and asking them whether the new route actually works for their end of the building.
I worked with a warehouse operation in Leeds where the manager had changed the racking layout without consulting the pickers. On paper, the new layout was more efficient. In practice, it created blind spots where forklift trucks and pedestrians met at the end of aisles. One of the pickers had raised it with a supervisor the week before I visited, but nobody recorded it and nothing changed. That's exactly the situation an HSE inspector will ask about: did you consult, did you listen, and did you act on what you heard?
The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 underpins all of this. Section 2 places a general duty on employers to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of employees so far as is reasonably practicable. Genuine consultation is one of the ways you demonstrate you're meeting that duty.
Setting It Up as a Knowledge Hub Entry
I've built a consultation and communication template in Pilla covering your duty of care, communication methods, meeting inclusion, record keeping, active participation, two-way channels, hazard reporting, new starter induction, and monitoring arrangements. It gives you a structured starting point, but you need to make it yours.
In the knowledge hub, create a new entry and tag it with "Health and Safety System". Use the same tag across all of your health and safety policies so they are grouped together and Poppi can track them as a set. Assign the entry to all teams so that everyone in the business can access it.
The template is designed to be edited, not just filed. Read through every section and replace the generic parts with what actually happens in your business. If you use toolbox talks every Monday morning, say so. If your main communication channel is a WhatsApp group rather than a notice board, write that in. An HSE inspector wants to see that your policy reflects your operation.
11. Consultation and Communication
The Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996
Company Name owe a duty of care to our workforce, and we have arrangements to fulfil this duty. However, we need to include all staff as part of our arrangements and communicate on a regular basis, issues which affect their health & safety.
We aim to do this by
Responsible persons to identify the best means to communicate with staff on a regular basis.
Include health & safety as a subject, during team meetings when there is a pertinent issue to discuss.
Record any communication when health & safety matters have been discussed.
Encourage the active participation of all employees in promoting good health and safety practice.
Use will be made of all means of two- way communication to ensure that health and safety issues are brought to the attention of all staff – notice boards, circulars, site meetings, "One to One" group discussions, training, toolbox talk etc.
Encourage all staff to report instances they feel affect their health & safety, to Responsible Persons so they can be investigated and addressed. The outcome of reported instances will be communicated to all staff.
As part of the onboarding process of new starters, all staff will receive induction training in line with health & safety arrangements and employment law requirements. This process will be recorded. Employees will be given the opportunity to comment and raise awareness of hazards they encounter whilst undertaking their daily activities.
Arrangements to be monitored and reviewed to ensure they remain suitable sufficient for management of health & safety in the workplace.
*Responsible persons identified on the House Responsibility Chart
This is a preview of the template. In Pilla, you can edit this to match your business.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
The section on two-way communication channels is the most important part. I'd want to see that you've listed every method you actually use, not a generic list copied from a template. Notice boards, team meetings, one-to-ones, group discussions, toolbox talks, digital platforms. Each one should be a genuine route for staff to communicate back, not just a way to push information out.
The hazard reporting section needs to be specific about what happens after someone raises a concern. Who investigates, how quickly, and how the outcome gets communicated back. If an employee reports a trip hazard on a Tuesday and hears nothing by Friday, they stop reporting. That feedback loop is what makes the whole system work.
The induction section should cover what new starters are told, when they're told it, and how you record that it happened. I'd also want to see that new employees are specifically invited to raise hazards they notice. Fresh eyes are one of your best assets. Someone who's been in the building for six months stops seeing the cable that runs across the doorway. The person who started yesterday notices it immediately.
Common mistakes I see:
The biggest one is missing records. The template asks you to record communications when health and safety matters have been discussed. Most businesses I review do the talking but don't write anything down. When an HSE inspector asks "show me evidence of consultation," you need dates, topics, who was involved, and what actions came out of it. A verbal conversation with no record is hard to prove happened.
The second is treating consultation as a standing agenda item rather than a genuine discussion. I've sat through team meetings where "health and safety" is item seven on the agenda, it gets two minutes, nobody asks questions, and the manager moves on. That's not consultation. If you're including health and safety in meetings, the template says "when there is a pertinent issue to discuss." If there's nothing pertinent, skip it. But when there is something, give it proper time.
The monitoring section is usually the weakest part. The template says arrangements should be monitored and reviewed to ensure they remain suitable and sufficient. Most businesses write this and then do nothing about it. Set a date, review whether your methods are actually reaching people, and change what isn't working.
Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi
Writing the policy is one thing. Making sure your team has actually read it is another. Poppi can handle the chasing so you don't have to.
If you mark the knowledge hub entry as mandatory, Poppi will track who's read it and who hasn't. You can set up automations to chase staff who are behind, notify managers when someone completes the policy, and get a regular report showing where the gaps are.
Here are three automations I'd set up for any knowledge hub policy:
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Overdue training reminders
Automatically chase team members who have mandatory policies they haven't read yet. Poppi sends the reminder so you don't have to.
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Video completion alerts
Get notified when a team member finishes reading or watching a policy, so you can track progress without chasing.
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.
Training gap analysis
Get a regular AI report showing which team members are behind on mandatory policies and where the gaps are across your team.
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.