Safety+Health Magazine – A daily, pre-task safety meeting is an essential feature at every job site. They help inform workers of the project’s schedule, the work hazards and the daily goal. Orienting your team before work begins will help prevent confusion and disorder on the project, helping maintain schedules and deadlines. While practical in a business sense, daily safety meetings have a greater potential. Supervisors, managers and team leaders can use these meetings to:
- Empower workers
- Cultivate leadership and responsibility
- Identify, discuss, and correct work-place hazards through job safety analyses
- Discuss safety and health procedures
However, employee distrust, lack of leadership, too much or too little structure, and poor training can derail the meetings. To improve your meetings you should limit your meeting time to 30 minutes. Coming into the meeting with a brief agenda will help keep you on track and make sure you discuss all of the key points for the day. Being prepared will show leadership and responsibility to your team, and it will cut back on lost time searching for the next discussion topic. Make sure your team knows their involvement and input is encouraged and appreciated. By making safety meetings a discussion rather than a lecture, you help foster team bonds and a healthy environment of collaboration and participation. Safety is everyone’s responsibility, and direct engagement with employees encourages focus and highlights the importance of these topics. Lastly, always allow enough time at the end of the meeting for employees to provide feedback and ask questions. As a team, listening to one another is crucial, especially in safety sensitive positions.
For consultation on safety meetings, feel free to contact The Integrated Group at 425-822-8500 or info@theintegratedgroup.com
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