Topic Overview: Safety Committee

Why Your Business Needs a Safety Committee

You’ve got a safety manager, written safety programs and sufficient policies to keep your workers healthy – why implement a safety committee? Safety committees are excellent drivers of safety culture and can turn safety ideas into successful actions.

Safety committees can help your workplace to:

• Empower employees to identify problems and recommend solutions through conversations with workers about their health and safety concerns.
• Advise management and employees on safety matters pertaining to the organization’s overall operations.
• Help management identify, assess and control hazards and develop and monitor policies, plans and programs.
• Improve communication with management about safety concerns and operational issues.
• Reinforce management’s commitment to employee safety.
• Reduce inefficiencies and decrease number of injuries by implementing better work practices.
• Increase employee safety awareness and knowledge.
• Promote positive safety culture.

Safety committee responsibilities include:

• Providing a forum for labor and management to discuss health and safety issues and collaborate on solutions.
• Reviewing safety inspections/incident investigations and carrying forward new issues brought up from a variety of sources (new laws, new processes, injury trends, etc.).
• Developing safe work practices and written safety programs.
• Reviewing safety rules and procedures annually and after any operational changes.
• Leading safety training and education for employees, supervisors and members.
• Completing job hazard evaluations, visual safety inspections and behavioral safety observations to evaluate new processes/employees, following up on accident investigations, identifying unsafe conditions or areas that need improvement and following up on past recommendations.
• Promoting employees’ interests in health and safety issues and receiving employee suggestions/ideas for controlling hazards and improving safety.
• Promoting the importance of injury reporting.
• Creating an injury/loss review committee to determine injury causes in a group setting with the injured employee and supervisor.
• Reviewing incidents, near misses, accident investigation reports, claim summaries and loss analyses to determine corrective actions that will prevent future losses.
• Identifying modified duty jobs and establish procedures for their use.

Safety committee member qualities:

• Interested in workplace safety and health issues
• Respected individual with leadership skills
• Familiar with company operations, policies and procedures
• Interested in finding solutions that meet the needs of the entire workforce

 Resource Library