Improving the efficacy of a health and safety committee
Most businesses are familiar with the typical workings of a health and safety committee. All too often, such a committee is created because of mandates emanating from government agencies or industry groups.The health and safety committee is charged with responsibility for identifying areas of improvement and recommending needed changes in policies, procedures, and sometimes, even the organisation of personnel.
All too often, however, health and safety committees quickly degenerate into mere paper versions of what they could be. There are many reasons why this happens. There may be a lack of buy-in on the part of committee members, who may regard their new duties as ones that distract them from more mission-critical activities. There may be a perception from the start that the committee serves no real function and is merely a consequence of regulation alone. Whatever the reasons for a business to have a non-functioning health and safety committee, there are steps that can be taken that will help to improve the situation.
Ways to assist a health and safety committee
Instead of having a generic “committee of the whole” for all functions, businesses should consider delineating specific responsibilities and assigning them to individual committee members. This aids in accountability and transparency, while helping to make sure that all workers can know to whom they should direct a particular question or concern.
Hand-in-hand with individual responsibility, however, must be adequate provision of time and resources for committee members to perform their assigned tasks. One of the most salient needs in this regard may be proper training. It does little good, after all, to appoint someone to head up safety compliance for manual handling when that person is not an expert in the subject. Winter & Company offers extensive training in several diverse areas of health and safety, including courses targeted toward managers and workers who need to understand their responsibilities as regards manual handling issues.
