Safety Meetings

Remember the safety instructions you were given on your joining day?

No? This is probably how everyone feels too.

And this is exactly why you need periodic safety meetings.

When workplace safety is paramount for the smooth functioning of your organization, you need to stress on it — to imprint the same in everyone.

And safety meetings are the best way to do it.

What is a Safety Meeting?

First of all, we need to understand that safety meetings are critical to any workplace, irrespective of what the business is.

When there are many hazards involved in a workplace, the stake in safety meetings is all the more higher.

Generally, a safety meeting is to educate everyone in the workplace about the risks around them and advise them on the best way to conduct themselves safely. In this meeting, we go over the preventive and proactive measures to keep ourselves and everyone around us safe. It can either be a planned meeting or a quick impromptu meeting before a particular task.

There’s no defined procedure or duration to conduct a safety meeting. It totally depends on the workplace, the knowledge of the employees and the hazards at hand.

Why Should You Conduct Regular Safety Meetings?

Whenever a new hire joins a company, the person is completely briefed about the safety principles, the hazards and the risks. But for someone completely new to the workplace, it can be tough to remember all the precautions and protocols at once. This is when conducting regular safety meetings helps a lot.

Create a Routine Behavior

Even when someone isn’t aware of the risks and safety precautions, going over them in a safety meeting at periodic intervals will remind them to follow the safety protocols. You’ll be creating awareness among everyone to uphold safe practices and ensure that they remember them. The more you keep repeating the same safety instructions, the more the employees will absorb and work accordingly.

Create a Safe Working Place

Regular safety meetings can improve the overall safety quotient of the workplace. Sometimes, when you’re handling a particularly new and challenging task, you can conduct a safety meeting prior to outlining the safety protocols and maybe a live training session.

Evaluate Employee Understanding

A safety meeting should be a two-way conversation. While you'll teach the safety protocols, you should also know how much the employees are grasping it. By conversing with the team, you can test the employee’s understanding and retention ability and help them correct the wrongs.

Also read: Our blog post on construction safety meeting

When Should You Conduct Safety Meetings?

Typically, every employee should go over all of the safety protocols at least once a year.

That said, a safety meeting can be as spontaneous as a few minutes before a task or scheduled months prior. It’s best to have safety meetings:

• During the beginning of a shift
• During the end of a shift
• Before starting a new task
• After transferring to a new department

Every company should hold safety meetings at least once a month. You can choose the safety meeting topics based on the current activities and common hazards. Many companies have a ‘Safety Topic of the Month’ program to regularly create awareness on multiple safety meeting topics.

Apart from the monthly safety meetings, you can advise the department heads or the managers to conduct safety meetings based on the relevancy of current operations.

For example, if there’s any overhauling activity in a particular unit, those employees can go for specific safety meetings and training based on their individual responsibilities. Or when a group of workers is assigned to perform a task that doesn’t come under their usual responsibilities, you can conduct a spontaneous safety meeting to quickly outline the precautions to take and hazards to watch out for.

There’s no such thing as being too careful when it comes to safety. And so, you can conduct safety meetings as often as needed.

How Does a Typical Safety Meeting Look Like?

While the nature of safety meetings are the same across industries, the manner in which they’re conducted differs based on the company’s choices. Usually, spontaneous or unscheduled safety meetings happen on or near the shop floor. A scheduled meeting may occur in the office area or in the control room at a specific time.

In a safety meeting, the safety officer, the manager, or any other person in charge explains the safety protocols while a group of people listens. The person in charge may use visual aids and physical actions to enumerate.

After explaining, the person usually opens up the floor for anyone to ask questions. The person in charge may not always have to answer questions and can promote discussion among peers.

Towards the end of the meeting, the person in charge will take attendance and instruct the employees about the following action — visiting the shop floor, beginning any activity, performing any safety sweep, or going back to their previous job.

5 Tips to Make Safety Meetings Effective & Engaging

While safety are essential, the employees may not always devote their 100% focus to it. So, if you want your message to stick, then safety meetings have to be made engaging. Here are a few tips on how to do that.meetings

1. Keep your safety meetings short: When the employee leaves some task at hand to attend the safety meeting, they may not always focus for a long while. So make your safety meetings short and to the point so that the employees take away the message you intend.
2. Use visual support as much as possible: Just talking about safety protocols isn’t enough. When you use visual aids like real equipment or physical movements, everyone can quickly grasp the information.
3. Narrate real experiences: If you have an employee who has successfully managed a safety hazard, ask them to narrate the experience. Such interactions will help to retain the interest.
4. Recognize those who performed well: When someone did a great job at tackling a safety issue, recognize them during the safety meeting. This will motivate them to follow the safety protocols even more.
5. Obtain feedback: Don’t you want to know how your safety meeting went? And if there’s anything you can do better? Ask for open feedback or use any short, anonymous surveys to get suggestions.

A Few Examples of Safety Meeting Topics

There are hundreds of safety meeting topics based on the industry you’re from. Here are a few important ones that are common across most businesses.

Carbon Monoxide Safety

Since carbon monoxide is an odourless, colourless gas, it’s one of the top hazards in the manufacturing industry. This gas is generated during the incomplete burning of fuels like coal, wood and natural gas, commonly used in many plants. The employees need to be aware of the preventive measures of carbon monoxide poisoning, its symptoms and immediate steps to follow.

Burn Prevention

Injuries due to burns are pretty common on the shop floor. There are several types of burn injuries — thermal, physical or chemical — most of them caused due to human negligence.

As a part of the safety meetings, employees who are frequently involved in high-temperature locations should be educated to wear the necessary PPEs and take precautions to prevent burns. Even when the uneventful happens, the employees must take immediate steps to lessen the intensity of the burn.

Heat Stroke Safety

Employees working in a hot environment, like near boilers and furnaces, and exposed to prolonged heat are prone to heat stroke. It can damage the internal organs, brain or even lead to death.

Employees need to be advised about hydrating themselves regularly, taking breaks from being in the heat zone and immediate treatment for heat stroke.

Slips, Trips & Falls

According to OSHA, slips, trips and falls constitute 15% of accidental deaths. Employees need to be conscious of their surroundings and wear the required PPE when working in tricky areas to prevent such accidents.

Apart from these safety meeting topics, there are a few more that needs to be visited often:

• Handling of hazardous chemicals
• Hazards due to distractions in the workplace
• Hand tools safety
• Asbestos hazards
• Pressure washing
• Mechanical crashes
• Forklift dangers
• Eye injuries
• Fire hazards
• Electrical safety
• Motor vehicle safety
• Housekeeping incidents

Also read: Our detailed guide on toolbox talks