What Can Not Sleeping Enough Lead to

November 29, 2021

How to Lead a Work Safety Meeting

Leading a safety meeting is one of the most successful ways of ensuring your team is receiving new and innovative ideas. You'll also be reinforcing safe working habits during these safety meetings. Here are some tips on how for leading a work safety meeting that's engaging with effective topics.

Prepare for the Safety Meeting

Under most circumstances, the site supervisor, safety director, human resources manager or business owner will lead the safety meeting. The attendees won't take the meeting seriously if preparation isn't made ahead of time. Use a variety of methods for inviting attendees including a poster on the bulletin board, text messages, calendar invites and email notifications. The day before the safety meeting, send out a reminder and ask the foreman or shift supervisor to remind teams when this mandatory safety meeting is occurring. When the invitations are sent out, make sure the objective is clear and that the meeting should take approximately 20 minutes or less. Therefore, you'll need to draft short safety meeting topics ahead of time. If the meeting is longer than that, attendees will lose focus.

The Safety Meeting's Timing

After you've settled on the safety topics for work meetings you're going to discuss, think about what the employees are experiencing. They're feeling fatigue after working a long day and will likely have difficulty paying attention during a safety meeting. Under most circumstances, retaining that information is going to be challenging. You're going to need to be strategic regarding the length of the meeting, its location and when it occurs depending on shift schedules, the location of employees and their working environment. In doing so, you can ensure your staff is most engaged during the meeting. You'll find that when shifts start or at the beginning of the working day is an excellent time to hold a safety meeting. That way, crews begin their workday with the correct mindset.

How You Deliver Information During the Safety Meeting

If you keep the safety meeting form and delivery conversational, positive and informal, you'll find that employees will engage and retain information better. Be sure you're making eye contact with as many staff members as possible. Avoid reading from a piece of paper or sounding like you're lecturing a crowd for a length of time. Your employees will feel like they're being "talked at" and quickly lose interest in the message you're attempting to deliver. Instead, encourage employees to participate in the safety meeting to keep is interactive. You can accomplish this goal by asking questions that are open-ended and making sure these questions are asked at the beginning of the meeting while everyone is still paying attention. It's possible to encourage further discussion by smiling and nodding in acknowledgment.

Be Sure to Follow-Up

One of the most significant ways of ensuring your staff retains information is following up with them. Reinforce the message by asking the employees for suggestions they believe would improve these free safety meetings or make a request for future topics. Follow-up examples include an email listing what the meeting initially covered, a reminder of the next meeting and an invitation to comment about ideas or suggestions for what topics should be included.

Consider Regularly Scheduled Meetings

If you believe your staff needs to cover safety topics regularly, consider hosting either a biweekly or weekly safety meeting. A monthly safety meeting might not be enough for them to retain the topics you're covering. It's also a good idea to consider asking a foreman or shift supervisor from each division of your company to rotate and speak during these meetings. Their insight will not only prove valuable, but the team will develop an appreciation for them as a safety leader while the speaker is simultaneously reinforcing their leadership skills.

Cheong Cheok Hong Trandaste