Top 5 Safety Meeting Tips for Your Workplace
Does the thought of another meeting in the workplace make you cringe?
Many meetings are planned around quarterly agendas and upcoming events or changes. Meeting topics usually cover processes, deadlines, and company updates. Does that sound familiar? But what about the most important topic to tackle – safety?
Worker safety should be the number one priority all the time, even during regular meetings. Whether time is set aside to conduct a safety meeting or you decide to add the topic of safety to your strategic meeting, keeping safety top of mind is crucial. These safety meeting tips will help you introduce – or enhance – the topic of safety in your next meeting.
Popular safety themes include what to do during an emergency, proper use of personal protective equipment (PPE), how to avoid a near miss, basic first aid, lockout tagout, safe lifting, fire safety and distracted driving.
But, do I need safety meetings in my workplace?
Safety meetings or toolbox talks are invaluable in the workplace. They help build a strong safety culture while also reinforcing your company’s commitment to protecting your workers from near misses.
Every workplace, regardless of how small, benefits from conducting safety meetings to help keep safety top-of-mind – and create a culture of safety.
Prevent workers from making unsafe choices in your workplace – and motivate more safe working days by kick-starting a safety meeting program with these safety meeting tips.
Five safety meeting tips from safety speaker and management consultant Kevin Burns.
1)Â Â Â Have a theme. A planned out safety meeting keeps you on task and prevents you from going off on unrelated tangents. Try to engage with your employees and make them aware of the theme and excited about it.
2)Â Â Â Stay positive. Old school drill sergeants will use the fear tactic all day to scare the heck out of others but this method should never exist in the workplace. Burns believes fear is only a short-term motivator. Motivate safety in your workplace with encouraging words.
3)   Keep it visual. Safety meeting themed posters, handouts, and photographs are ideal visual solutions for keeping your employees engaged in the message. By nature we’re visual creatures – show them what you’ll tell them and the information will resonate better.
4)   Keep it brief. You probably wish your 8th-grade science teacher got this ‘short and sweet’ memo when he was teaching you biology. The truth is safety meetings don’t have to be too long. Don’t try to cram everything into one meeting. If you need to break it up that’s fine. Otherwise, try to keep each topic under an hour.
5)   Hand out safety meeting outlines. A safety meeting outline keeps your discussion on task and provides your employees with notes they can follow along with. Always make sure there’s space provided for notes, as well.
It’s always a good idea to include relevant safety moments at the beginning of your meeting – something top-of-mind that’s introduced in a timely, casual way.
Safety meetings establish the perfect time to talk about new safety policies and procedures that you are implementing. Not to mention the fact that investing in the well-being of your workers creates a more loyal and engaged employee.