Safety Committee Involvement & Participation
Hey all. I am a Director of EHS for a small (350 EE) multi-location company in the U.S. I have been in that s role for about 8 months and am the only EHS employee in the company. In the plant that I am stationed in (the most productive and organized plant in the company) I have had good luck getting participation and some excitement in our safety committee meetings. In the least productive, least organized, and highest fatality risk plant, I have struggled to get participation and involvement in these meetings. The Plant Manager does not seem to care about safety and I get minimal support from my boss (CEO) on this issue. The site human resources department also doesn't seem to want to be involved and take on additional duties. The company has never had a safety professional (100 + years) so everything I do is building foundational programs. I travel to this plant at least every 2 months, but these meetings are held virtually on a weekly basis. For additional background the meetings consist of reviewing any incidents, issues and concerns over that week, and going through the list of ever increasing "action items." I try setting deadlines, asking if they need additional resources, weeding out the non-actors, and nothing gets done. There are a few good players at this plant, but they have all reached their limit and probably lost some desire to help out in safety.
Obviously there are larger organizational factors that are at play here. However, I would really appreciate any suggestions on how to make this process better. I am hoping to hire somebody at this facility in the next month, but I'm not sure this is going to help the situation as there will probably be more involvement needed at that point I'm stuck and would appreciate any suggestions on how we can make progress.
Comments (13)
In my experience, it's all about talking in their language. What's important to a safety professional is different than a plant manager, which is different from HR, and is different from operations. For HR, you may discuss how it helps with worker's comp. expenses, EMR, time off, etc. For operations, explain how some things may truly cause a delay, but many things don't take a lot of time with proper training and enforcement. Simply telling them "we need to do XYZ because OSHA says so" usually never works well. Just find out what's important to them and adjust the perspective. Will what you're trying to implement improve quality? Reduce downtime? etc.
As much as possible, involve your employees in the policy-making process so they can feel involved and contribute since they know the jobs better than anyone else. If they know they helped and you truly valued their input, they're more likely to want to comply, as well as report any non-conformances that need to be fixed. Even if you don't fix something right away, follow up with them and let them know the status of it.
Drew is right! But I would recommend what I call "extreme employee involvement. " I should write a book on this, but once I had an injury rate of 20.4 per 100 employees! Our WC costs were out of this world, 4 times the Corporate goal! I had a so so Safety Team and we were average on our best days. The Safety Meetings were mundane and useless! We had 400 employees. Machining operation. In a Corp EHS seminar we were told we had to get to "Zero-Injuries" and do lots of H&S related topics. I was not even full-time H&S, I was a HR Manager too!
A day or so later I was sitting in my office feeling sorry for myself, wondering if I should quit. Then I remembered I had to get ready for a worthless Safety Meeting. Then I thought, "Who was responsible for that?" I did not like the answer, then I remembered a saying I had learned in a recent Lean Seminar by Edward Demmings (the father of modern manufacturing SPC), "If nothing changes, NOTHING CHANGES!" So I let my mind wonder on change What I came up with took some real selling but once I did had great outcomes!
I love what Drew said. You have to speak their language (or do your best to attempt to).
Sometimes asking questions first will help you get the information you need to deliver your message, and it doesn't necessarily have to be safety related.
An example would be to ask the managers what is most important to them with their position. What motivates them? Where do they want to be in 5 years?
If their goal is money-driven, maybe see if there's a way that the company can reward for safety support. Because Lord knows that those fines are going to cost more than a small bonus or incentive. And those don't even have the cost the company much.