Safety Knights

Unfortunately, our safety committees have not really been as effective as I would like. Being smaller facilities, they tend to be very informal meetings. However, one of the things we did early this year was a taste and learn. I had found a different electrolyte product called Shield and so the vendor and manufacturer sent us samples for each of our committees to try out and listen in on a web meeting about how the product was developed and learn about it. The committee then made the decision as to whether they felt (being representatives of the rest of the employees) we should switch to the product versus what we had been using. I've also had loss control representatives from our insurance companies provide training and conduct talks to our committees over the years to try and provide additional education to the members.

I feel the committee has to be employee led. The philosophy is that it is THEIR plant. My role is simply to keep us on the rails, but I rarely give input unless it is to get us back on track. We have a union/ non-union site, so our committee is a mix of administrative employees and union personnel (as per contract). Our committee does an OSHA 10 so they have basic safety knowledge. Also quarterly we do trainings like spot what's wrong in this picture to help keep their skills up. This aids in monthly walk downs as well where the safety committee contributes if they have time.

Our committee looks over our observation program and chooses two winners every month based on the best-looking observations (detail, work requests made, etc.) for parking spots. This is very well received throughout the plant. And gets many eyes on the observations being turned in.

They are also our test group when looking at new PPE when applicable. taking it to their work crews and seeing what works and what doesn't.

You could be a BILLIONAIRE if you found the secret to an effective Safety Team! Easily!

I have been dealing with Safety Teams for 50 years!!! I have had great ones and very very bad ones! There are few things more boring than being in a poorly run Safety Meeting!!!!! There are few things I hate more than boredom!!!!!

First Auston is RIGHT ON! But I would go much father! I always had bad Safety Teams till I opened my mind and shifted a lot of paradigms! I only was successful when I embraced what my entire organization was going through a management philosophy called LEAN!!!!!! In short I had a TIR rate of 20!! One of the worst in my huge organization. My TIR was 5X my NACIS code. My WC costs were 10X the Corporate goal! I had 500 employees and 800 dangerous machines! I was up to my eyeballs! Then we had a corporate webinar and was told we would start practicing ZERO- Injury Philosophy just like ZERO Defects in Quality! I thought to myself, "WOW!!! No Way!" Oh did I mention I was 50% HR Manager too? But then I opened my mind and just started to imagine! Lean let's you do that! I needed help! I could not hire anyone! But I kept coming back to this ineffective one Safety Team I had! Use it! So I came up with this idea to not have one Safety Team, but TEN!!!!!! I would have 9 dedicated subject matter Safety Teams, each one run by Hourly Employees. One over all Team was the Steering Team (the Mgmt Staff and each Team Captain). I would have teams like Lockout, Machine Guarding, Haz Com and Mat, Slips, Trips & Falls, PITs, Ergo, Wellness, and on and on.
I sold it and sat off. It was a huge job and I had a lot of training to do. I was given a blank check to get training assistance like Ergo! Three years later I had cut drastically cut all my metrics! % years later we had 000000 ZERO ZERO injuries for 2 years (from +80 annually)! It was amazing!

I would somewhat agree with what Tom Johnston mentioned, "...really not been effective."

When I started with the City, the Safety Committee seemed super excited to have a new Safety Manager (me) and see where they would lead the Safety Committee in the future. For our first few years, they were highly energized and everyone seemed to be contributing.

But COVID...

After we went through the year of COVID-19 (even though we were only off work for a few months), it really drained so many people. The members who were energized and very engaging before COVID were now routinely missing meetings and if they did show up (and on time) they didn't have much to offer.

I saw the decline and I wanted to recharge the committee. It wasn't like I wanted it to fail but it was fastly slipping into a black hole. The HR Director at the time even wanted to disband the Safety Committee. However, I quickly reminded him that one of our 10% Workers' Compensation discounts could only be earned if we DID have a Safety Committee.

After COVID-19 in 2021, I asked the Safety Committee if we should hold a safety training day to coincide with the City partnering with NSC to make June the National Safety Month. The more I talked about just a few ideas I had, all of the members were on board. We dedicated much of our monthly meeting times to developing our June Safety Training day agenda.

This was the one thing that single-handedly revitalized our Safety Committee. They were once again contributing and being engaged in this project. The project was so well received that we have made it our annual event. Last summer we even were able to bring in a motivational speaker to address all of the attendees.

For the largest project to date, the Safety Committee has been tasked with writing a backing incident prevention policy. I loved involving the members to show them what all goes into a project like this and they all willingly participated.