Safety Committee Empowerment
Safety committees are a useful tool in any organization that is looking to reduce workplace risks while increasing safety culture acceptance. The main purpose of a safety committee is to mitigate the risk of workplace injuries and illnesses. Its duties may include informing and educating employees about safety issues, setting achievable safety goals for the organization, and fostering a safety culture among the workforces. If the organization structures a safety committee properly, they can have long term positive impacts on the design and success of your safety protocols. I find when I initially consult with many organizations, they make two crucial mistakes when developing their safety committee.
First, I find that safety committee meetings lack formal structure and have evolved into complaint sessions rather than an effective tool. By developing a formal agenda that focuses on policy review, injury & near-miss action plans, safety updates on future programs, facility audits and a brief time slot for final concerns the meetings become effective tools for positive change. These changes include policy and procedures reflective of what actually transpires in the workplace, solutions to near-miss and injuries with action items that can be maintained long term and a cultural awareness of safety issues through group audits. This transformation takes time and buy-in can be slow at first, but once the program gets going you can elevate your safety program to new heights and see true culture changing in your organization.
The second issue I find in many safety committees relates to their members. Companies tend to overload management representatives and/or not rotate membership often enough to keep a fresh prospective. While management involvement is important, having a greater number of frontline workers helps to drive employee ownership of the program. Let’s be honest here, we as leaders can develop great theories about how the work should be done, but the employees are the ones who must make it happen. When the employees have a say in the program and plans, they are more likely to follow-through on the action items instead of developing workaround to our ideas. Lastly, I find rotating 25% of the team every 6 months helps bring new ideas while maintaining the stability brought from experienced members. This means every two years you have a new team that is gaining fresh prospective from different individuals throughout the company.
If you have questions about how to build a successful safety committee or would like a review of your safety committee send me a message and let’s talk.