What Do Employees Think When Managers Don’t Attend Safety Meetings?
Safety in the workplace is important — and can help companies to save both lives and money avoiding jobsite accidents, tragedies, and resulting fines.
For that reason, many companies have begun implementing safety meetings into their normal routine. These meetings are a great tool to keep employees safe and boost a company’s safety culture.
But who should attend these meetings?
An online poll conducted by Safety+Health magazine in 2018 found that 61 percent — nearly two-thirds of those polled — felt that it was a harder sell to get management on board with a workplace’s safety culture than the workers themselves. Dozens of comments on the article explained the reasons why.
“Competing agendas, goals and budgets often drive management to pursue other priorities under the intent to ‘get-the-job-done’ and deliver on their goals,” wrote one commenter, who went by the anonymous name, J. “This tends to dilute the importance of safety as a task and hazard specific goal, tied more directly to the worker.”
Another commenter blamed it squarely on dollars and cents: “After 35 plus years it is definitely more difficult to convince management to embrace a corrective action / preventive action for [a health and safety] issue.” The commenter went on: “Workers see the corrective action for what it is — an improvement to make something safer and environmentally friendly. Management sees it as more cost, more time, more inspections, etc. which will potentially cause delays.”
How Can Managers Be More Involved?
The opinions above reflect the belief that while management might support general safety meetings, they might not support — with their company’s dollars — the recommendations of a company’s safety protocols.
One way to show management the true benefits of safety protocols — and to help them understand where resources need to be applied to make the workplace safe — is to simply have them attend safety meetings.
Most companies have their supervisors and employees attend and present safety meetings. They can sometimes be done in the morning before shifts begin, or maybe after lunch to prepare crews for the remainder of the day. These are great ideas.
Why is it So Important For Management to Take Part in Safety Meetings?
- When members of upper management attend safety meetings, they are showing all levels of the company that safety is a priority to them.
- The safety of employees should be #1 on the company’s priority list. When management attends safety meetings, this will show employees that the company truly means what they put in writing. (Especially when upper management members are present at early morning meetings.)
- Another great idea for companies to implement into their normal safety meeting routines is to have members of management actually present the safety meetings. There is nothing more important than hearing from leaders of the company, and when management members take the time to put together meetings and present them to all levels of employees, this can really be appreciated.
- Safety meetings are another great time for employees to bring up their own safety concerns. If members of management are there, they will be able to hear their employee’s thoughts, concerns, and questions, and then be able to make plans of action to correct any of these thoughts that are brought up. The employees at safety meetings are the ones who are doing the work and they can have great ideas that the company can implement.
- When all members of the company are present at a safety meeting this will boost company morale and can be great for continuously improving the safety culture of the company.
Having upper management attend safety meetings is key to the success of any safety program. Members of upper management attending safety meetings can be a vital key to the safety culture of your company.
