This article appears on the Rant's home page. Written by Roger Neal, Marketing Manager, Emergency Services Insurance Program
Effective safety committees are a cornerstone of a
pro-active risk management system.
How effective is your safety committee? Does the committee meet only after an accident? Do you keep and distribute the minutes from the safety committee meeting? How do you solicit ideas and suggestions for the committee? Does your committee even meet? Do you have records of every committee meeting?
The goals of your safety committee should be:
- Evaluate potential hazards and offer corrective solutions
- Reduce employee/member injuries
- Save precious financial resources
- Be a “champion for safety” throughout your organization
Safety committees should have equal representation from line first responders (the worker bees) and management (the queen bees). It is our people that get hurt, make certain they are involved in developing the prevention solutions.
Too often, the safety committee turns into a gripe session, or they meet only to say, “Well, we haven’t had any accidents, so we have nothing to talk about.” How do you energize your safety committee? Active safety committees don’t get bored and are always looking for new ideas. Don’t quickly dismiss those “crazy ideas,” they are often very effective.
Here are some ideas you might want to consider. Every organization is unique, so come up with some ideas that will work for your folks.
- Pizza for the crew that comes up with the best safety idea
- Coupons for coffee, ice cream, movies for catching a member doing a task safely
- Department belt buckle, shirt, etc. for meeting a specific goal (no time loss, or one year without an accident, etc,)
- Highlight safety ideas in your internal communications
- Start every officer’s meeting with a safety topic
- Make every day, shift, drill, etc. a safety training day.
- Put a safety message on your computer network so that every member sees a reminder every time they log on.
For more information regarding this or other
FD insurance related topics, contact George Kern at Hometown Firefighter Services, 631.589.2929.
Safety Committees
Linear Mode
