You may not be talking about it, but you have to. On this episode, get your people engaged in safety by talking about four things at your safety meeting.
Safety meetings started out as a legal requirement. You had to have them, they had to be recorded and the subject matter had to satisfy the Code. But nowhere does it state that you can’t add items to the safety meeting or that you can’t have fun and to speak-up in the meetings.
The problem is, safety meetings traditionally focus on meeting the legal requirement of the code. That's it. No more. So, to make sure they meet the bare minimum of the code, companies buy templates for their safety meetings that are white-bread and innocuous checklists because they’ve been dumbed-down to appeal to as many industries as possible.
Employees don’t buy-in to the safety program because it is presented as a set of rules and policies. Employees resist anyone who appears to want to force them to comply. And it's tough for employees to warm up to someone who incessantly talks about procedures, processes, inspections, and incidents.
To change the perception of safety, you must change the conversations. Here are 4 things you should be talking about in safety meetings.
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Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author of "PeopleWork: The Human Touch in Workplace Safety." He is an expert in how to engage people in safety and believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs.