Topic Overview: Safety Committee

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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.