National Safety Day: Why it is important to form an organisation’s safety committee?
Safety committee— a group of employees who are dedicated to improving safety at your organization. And an effective safety committee inspires and encourages a safety culture at all level of the organization as well as increasing the overall commitment to the safety of every employee of the company.
Several states may require safety committees to be established for all kinds of business, while some only require it for the higher risk industries such as the mining industry.
How Can It Help your Business?
- Protection from safety penalties and violations
- Increase best practices awareness
- Fewer accidents and injuries
- Increase best practices awareness
- Improved employee morale and satisfaction
- Increase best practices awareness
- Lower employees’ comp premiums
- Offer a safe forum for employees to talk about issues
- Improved management-labor cooperation
- Employees being responsible for workplace safety
5 Tips When Forming Safety Committee
1. A Leader They Can Follow
One of the first things you need to do when establishing an organization safety committee is to find reliable and proper leadership.
A leader who they will follow, help drive engagement, clear communication, and effective collaborations within the committee.
If possible, the committee leader needs to be an employee who’s currently in the leadership position and knows how to effectively lead others towards a common goal or purpose which is the creation of a safety culture in the company.
2. Diversity is the Key
In most recent years, diversity at work has been a hot topic. Studies provide quantitative statistics with 85 per cent of companies agreeing on how workplace diversity can encourage innovative ideas and adding value to any company.
Now, a safety committee can benefit from such diversity, creating an innovative environment where ideas and thoughts can be shared freely and openly. This, in turn, can help significantly improve health and safety programs throughout the company.
3. Resources Should Be Given
If the safety committee identifies a safety issue within the company, the management will have to give them whatever they need in order to solve it.
For instance, if the committee received reports of bullying or sexual abuse from the women of the company and want to prepare and host an educational women safety conference India, then the management needs to give them the budget and resources to do so.
The point is if the committee does not have the resources and power, the company is just paying lip service to safety. The members will eventually lose their motivation and distrust in the management will increase.
Read more: 5 Soft Skills for every woman to succeed at Work: Expert Tip by Renu Mehra
4. Make It Fun
Safety committees are highly notorious for being boring and drying after a few months. So, what can you do to maintain motivation and keep things interesting? Here are some general ideas:
- Have engaging speakers
- Create an employee incentive program
- Assign a member to give a meeting presentation
- Do creative team-building exercises
- Go on a field trip
- Reward best employees
- Write a script then record a video
- Schedule meetings at nearby cafes or restaurants
5. Member or Role Rotation
In order to ensure fairness and having an effective committee, you also need to rotate membership in and out of the group as well as the roles within it.
By doing so, you increase the probability of consistent and more innovative member investment, ideas and energy.
Just make sure to consider the size of the company and the committee when creating the best rotation schematic. For most big companies, experts suggest that you have a rotation of 3 years on 2 years off.
Although you need to stay flexible. If there’s a star performer in a certain role than no one else likes, then let them own it.
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