Employee participation is crucial to safe and secure workplace environments. Health and safety regulation or voluntary agreements form two different approaches to this. In Denmark, a legislative change facilitates combining the two approaches. The new flexibility of approach enables the organization of health and safety to be tailored to the needs of the workplace based on a local agreement negotiated between management and local union representatives. This new approach is explored in this article. The study finds that the system has a positive impact on employee participation, improves collaborative relations, strengthens local commitment and there is a perceived increase in organizational efficiency and flexibility; all factors that have been shown to increase safety performance.
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