By Evolution Safety Resources | Posted on: May 16, 2022
Safety in the workplace is important – it helps businesses prevent injury, saves lives, and even saves money. For these reasons and many more, many companies have started implementing safety meetings into their normal routine. These meetings are a great tool to keep employees safe and boost a company’s safety culture.
But who should attend these meetings?
An online poll conducted by Safety+Health magazine found that 61 percent, nearly two-thirds of those polled, felt that it was a harder sell to get management on board with a workplace’s safety culture than the workers themselves. Dozens of comments about the article explained the reasons why.
“Competing agendas, goals, and budgets often drive management to pursue other priorities under the intent to ‘get-the-job-done’ and deliver on their goals,” wrote one commenter in the poll. “This tends to dilute the importance of safety as a task and hazard-specific goal, tied more directly to the worker.”
Another commenter blamed it solely on dollars and cents: “After 35 plus years it is definitely more difficult to convince management to embrace a corrective or preventive action for a health and safety issue.” The commenter went on: “Workers see the corrective action for what it is, an improvement to make something safer and environmentally friendly. Management sees it as more cost, more time, more inspections, etc. which will potentially cause delays.”
How Can Managers Be More Involved?
The opinions above reflect the belief that while management might support general safety meetings, they might not support, with their company’s dollars, the recommendations of a company’s safety protocols.
One way to show management the true benefits of safety protocols and to help them understand where resources need to be applied to make the workplace safe is to simply have them attend safety meetings.
Most companies have their supervisors and employees attend and present safety meetings. The meetings can be held in the morning before shifts begin, or maybe after lunch to prepare crews for the remainder of the day.
Why is it So Important For Management to Take Part in Safety Meetings?
When members of upper management attend safety meetings, they are showing all levels of the company that safety is a priority to them. The safety of employees should be #1 on the company’s priority list. When management attends safety meetings, this will show employees that the company truly means what they put in writing.
Another great idea for companies to implement into their normal safety meeting routines is to have members of management actually present the safety meetings. There is nothing more important than hearing from leaders of the company, and when management members take the time to put together meetings and present them to all levels of employees, this can really be appreciated.
Safety meetings are another great time for employees to bring up their own safety concerns. If members of management are there, they will be able to hear their employee’s thoughts, concerns, and questions, and then be able to make plans of action to correct any of these thoughts that are brought up. The employees at safety meetings are the ones who are doing the work and they can have great ideas that the company can implement.
When all members of the company are present at a safety meeting this will boost company morale and can be great for continuously improving the safety culture of the company. Having upper management attend safety meetings is key to the success of any safety program. Members of upper management attending safety meetings can be a vital key to the safety culture of your company.
If you need assistance creating a safety-first workplace culture for your company, let’s get the conversation started today. Our experts at ESR are ready and available to help. We offer free consultations and will develop complimentary improvement plans.