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The People Closest to the Risk: Why Worker Consultation Is the Control Most Organisations Skip

5 October 2026 · By Peter Kelly

World Mental Health Day falls on Saturday 10 October, and the World Federation for Mental Health has chosen “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change” as its 2026 theme. For employers, the most direct way to hear those voices is worker consultation. In my view it is the control most organisations skip, and it is the one that makes every other control work.

At work, lived experience is not only personal stories of mental ill health. It is the practical knowledge your people hold about the work itself: where the workload piles up, which handovers fall apart, which rota nobody can sustain.

Consultation is not a courtesy. It is a legal duty, it is how the standards expect psychosocial risk to be managed, and it is now showing up in enforcement.

Consultation is a legal duty, not an optional extra

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) puts it simply: “You must consult all your employees on health and safety.” HSE describes consultation as “a two-way process, allowing employees to raise concerns and influence decisions on managing health and safety.”

Two sets of regulations set out how. The Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977 cover consultation through appointed safety representatives. For employees who are not represented in that way, the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996 require the employer to consult them “in good time on matters relating to their health and safety at work”. The matters listed include “the introduction of any measure at the workplace which may substantially affect the health and safety of those employees” and the health and safety consequences of introducing new technologies.

Think about what that means for psychosocial risk. A new shift pattern, a restructure, a new case management system or a change to targets can all substantially affect people’s health. If workers only hear about these once the decision is made, that is information, not consultation.

Why the people doing the work must shape the controls

HSE says: “Your employees are often the best people to understand risks in the workplace.” On risk assessment, it notes that workers “know the risks involved and scope for potentially dangerous shortcuts and problems”, and that employees “are more likely to understand why procedures are put in place to control risks and follow them if they have been involved in developing health and safety practices.”

This matters more for psychosocial hazards than almost anything else. You can see a missing guard on a machine. You cannot see unmanageable demands, unclear roles or a damaging working relationship from an office two floors up. I was part of the team at HSE that developed the Management Standards approach, and it was built on “active discussion and working in partnership with employees and their representatives, to help decide on practical improvements.”

The international guidance points the same way. The World Health Organisation says action on mental health at work “should be done with the meaningful involvement of workers and their representatives, and persons with lived experience of mental health conditions.” ISO 45001, the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems, requires consultation and participation of workers, including non-managerial workers taking part in hazard identification, risk assessment and deciding how risks will be controlled. ISO 45003, the global guidance standard for psychological health and safety at work, carries worker participation through into the management of psychosocial risk.

What happens when consultation is missing

In December 2025, HSE took enforcement action against the University of Birmingham over its management of work-related stress. According to reporting of HSE’s findings, employees “had not been involved in the development of the risk assessment” and workers “had not been involved in developing solutions for reducing workload.” Times Higher Education reported HSE’s conclusion that “the lack of consultation and information gathering means you cannot demonstrate sufficient understanding of the risk”, and that HSE required focus groups representing a range of employees.

Without consultation, an organisation cannot show it understands its own risks. The assessment becomes generic, the controls are chosen by people who do not do the work, and nobody can say whether anything changed. We looked at the cost of that gap in A Psychosocial Risk Assessment You Do Not Act On. More often than not, consultation is the missing link.

Six ways to make worker consultation real

  1. Map your routes. Know which groups are covered by safety representatives and which are consulted directly, and check that shift workers, remote staff and small teams are not falling between the two.
  2. Consult before you decide. Any change that may substantially affect health and safety, from a restructure to a new rota, should reach workers while there is still time to change the plan.
  3. Use conversations, not just surveys. HSE’s Talking Toolkits help managers “identify causes of stress for your workers and identify possible solutions”. Facilitated focus groups by team or role get beneath the survey scores.
  4. Involve workers in designing controls. Ask the people doing the work what would reduce the hazard, test the options with them, and record what was taken forward and why.
  5. Make it safe to speak. Remove the obstacles that shut consultation down, such as ignored suggestions, language barriers and fear of consequences. Tell people what changed because of what they said.
  6. Check with the same people. Go back to the teams you consulted to find out whether the controls worked, and review your stress risk assessment if they did not.

Lived experience belongs in the risk assessment

The World Mental Health Day theme asks us to hear real voices. For an employer, the most practical way to honour that is to treat workers’ knowledge as evidence, and to let it change the work.

If you are not sure whether your consultation arrangements would stand up to scrutiny, an ISO 45003 gap analysis will show you where worker participation is strong, where it is missing and what to do first.

Frequently asked questions

Is a staff wellbeing survey enough to meet the duty to consult?

On its own, rarely. HSE describes consultation as a two-way process that allows employees to raise concerns and influence decisions. A survey can be a useful starting point, but it only becomes consultation when people see the results, discuss what sits behind them and have a genuine say in what happens next. If survey findings are never shared or acted on, workers learn that speaking up changes nothing, and participation falls. Pair any survey with structured conversations and a clear record of the actions that followed.

Who should we consult about psychosocial risks?

Consult the people exposed to the hazard, directly or through their safety representatives. That means frontline staff as well as managers, and it means reaching groups who are easy to miss, such as night shifts, remote workers and people on long-term absence. ISO 45001 places particular weight on the participation of non-managerial workers. World Health Organisation guidance also calls for the involvement of people with lived experience of mental health conditions. Make it voluntary, keep personal information confidential, and never make disclosure a condition of taking part.

Sources

About the author

Peter J Kelly is an occupational psychologist and the founder of Being Real. He spent more than twenty years at the Health and Safety Executive shaping national policy on workplace mental health, sat on the panel that drafted ISO 45003, and was expert convenor for BS 30480. Being Real supports organisations with ISO 45003 gap analysis and certification, BS 30480 implementation, psychosocial risk assessment, strategic advisory and training.

If you or a colleague are struggling, Samaritans are free, confidential and open 24/7 on 116 123.

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