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Shadmeister
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Meetings

Post by Shadmeister »

Hi, just wondering how frequently other companies hold general health and safety/first aid/fire marshal meetings?

.........well, not only wondering that but also what the agenda's/minutes of these meetings include?
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Re: Meetings

Post by stephen1974 »

LOL, pick a number, divide it by the number of birds you see out the window, times it by the square root of sausage and add the atomic number of a noise in the wind.

Joking aside...

It depends on your business needs. If you work in a high risk environment you will want them to be frequent. At least monthly, and perhaps with weekly or even daily bulletin points / briefings for employees.
In a low risk environment, it will be less frequent.

You could also break it down in to what you are looking at.
Working for some fairly large companies with multiple sites i've seen schedules similar to the following.
- Quarterly meetings with the regional health & safety manager, external consultant, general managers and health and safety officers from all sites in the region.
- Quartetly audits from the regional health & safety manager with follow up discussions (normally over two days) and normally held a month before the above meeting so general trends or significant concerns can be discussed.
- Monthly department meetings where health & safety is on the agenda
- Weekly briefings for department heads on any health & safety issues.
- Daily notice board announcments or staff briefs.

For smaller companies its generaly
- Once a month with area, site, department managers.
- As and when announcements.

For training, again you have to look at your needs.
Do office workers need monthly 1st aid training? Life guards have to do that, and they have been prosecuted and imprisoned if they dont and something goes wrong. However, in ice rinks, which have a LOT of accidents, it's just the 3 year FAW. Trampoline parks are another one with high rates of accidents, but no training beyond the 3 year FAW. Do they need more regular training? well, if they are always doing first aid for real, probably not. So maybe its the office workers who need to be doing more in case they forget how to do it 2 years down the line.

Fire Marshal training. Well, you are supposed to do fire drills at least once a year. I would suggest at least twice a year, and if you have a high rate of staff turn over, even more frequent. I'm currently looking at quarterly training. If you have a complicated or high risk buildng, you might want to do it more often. Of course, wanting to do something and being able to do something - good luck with that one.

As an agenda? again, dependent on what the business is, however I would suggest as a minimum;

Review Previous meeting: Whats been done, anything still outstanding.
Health and Safety Example Story: Always a good way to get peoples interest. Has there been some kind of prosecution that can be related to what you do and can serve as an example? ie Company fined for bad ladder practices or Lifeuard asleep in his chair.
Accidents & Incidents: To include the number of accidents, the type of injuries, where/how they happened, any riddors.
Audit results: Have people been doing all their paper work? no, why not?
Upcoming Issues: Ie, contractors on site, schedules of maintenance and inspection (ie fire alarm testing)
Training issues: Anyones training expired, anyone doing a job they've still not been trained for yet.
Maintenance and PPE Issues: Everything working ok, everyone got what they need?
Staff suggestions: Always good to have a staff suggestion scheme or annoymous 'whistleblowing' scheme where staff can raise their concerns and you can discuss those concerns at the meeting.
Public compliants: If you have public in your building and they've raised concerns.
Any other business:

Others can probably suggest more.
Shadmeister
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Re: Meetings

Post by Shadmeister »

stephen1974 wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:18 pm LOL, pick a number, divide it by the number of birds you see out the window, times it by the square root of sausage and add the atomic number of a noise in the wind.

Joking aside...

It depends on your business needs. If you work in a high risk environment you will want them to be frequent. At least monthly, and perhaps with weekly or even daily bulletin points / briefings for employees.
In a low risk environment, it will be less frequent.

You could also break it down in to what you are looking at.
Working for some fairly large companies with multiple sites i've seen schedules similar to the following.
- Quarterly meetings with the regional health & safety manager, external consultant, general managers and health and safety officers from all sites in the region.
- Quartetly audits from the regional health & safety manager with follow up discussions (normally over two days) and normally held a month before the above meeting so general trends or significant concerns can be discussed.
- Monthly department meetings where health & safety is on the agenda
- Weekly briefings for department heads on any health & safety issues.
- Daily notice board announcments or staff briefs.

For smaller companies its generaly
- Once a month with area, site, department managers.
- As and when announcements.

For training, again you have to look at your needs.
Do office workers need monthly 1st aid training? Life guards have to do that, and they have been prosecuted and imprisoned if they dont and something goes wrong. However, in ice rinks, which have a LOT of accidents, it's just the 3 year FAW. Trampoline parks are another one with high rates of accidents, but no training beyond the 3 year FAW. Do they need more regular training? well, if they are always doing first aid for real, probably not. So maybe its the office workers who need to be doing more in case they forget how to do it 2 years down the line.

Fire Marshal training. Well, you are supposed to do fire drills at least once a year. I would suggest at least twice a year, and if you have a high rate of staff turn over, even more frequent. I'm currently looking at quarterly training. If you have a complicated or high risk buildng, you might want to do it more often. Of course, wanting to do something and being able to do something - good luck with that one.

As an agenda? again, dependent on what the business is, however I would suggest as a minimum;

Review Previous meeting: Whats been done, anything still outstanding.
Health and Safety Example Story: Always a good way to get peoples interest. Has there been some kind of prosecution that can be related to what you do and can serve as an example? ie Company fined for bad ladder practices or Lifeuard asleep in his chair.
Accidents & Incidents: To include the number of accidents, the type of injuries, where/how they happened, any riddors.
Audit results: Have people been doing all their paper work? no, why not?
Upcoming Issues: Ie, contractors on site, schedules of maintenance and inspection (ie fire alarm testing)
Training issues: Anyones training expired, anyone doing a job they've still not been trained for yet.
Maintenance and PPE Issues: Everything working ok, everyone got what they need?
Staff suggestions: Always good to have a staff suggestion scheme or annoymous 'whistleblowing' scheme where staff can raise their concerns and you can discuss those concerns at the meeting.
Public compliants: If you have public in your building and they've raised concerns.
Any other business:

Others can probably suggest more.
Thanks Stephen, some good points.

Your initial point was partly why I was asking the question, obviously there is no hard and fast rules on these things and people look at such things differently so I was intrigued :thumbup:
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Jack Kane
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Re: Meetings

Post by Jack Kane »

Shadmeister wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 2:40 pm Hi, just wondering how frequently other companies hold general health and safety/first aid/fire marshal meetings?

.........well, not only wondering that but also what the agenda's/minutes of these meetings include?
Stephen has given some great advice and before I add a comment or three, can I ask what size of organisation you have in mind?
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Re: Meetings

Post by Shadmeister »

Jack Kane wrote: Fri Mar 02, 2018 2:20 pm
Shadmeister wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 2:40 pm Hi, just wondering how frequently other companies hold general health and safety/first aid/fire marshal meetings?

.........well, not only wondering that but also what the agenda's/minutes of these meetings include?
Stephen has given some great advice and before I add a comment or three, can I ask what size of organisation you have in mind?
Approx. 120 people.

As I say, just intrigued as to what people include within their meetings, how often, etc. Always open to new ideas/potential improvements :-)
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Jack Kane
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Re: Meetings

Post by Jack Kane »

No probs. Here's our approach which has evolved over the years and from one 'committee' meeting away back when.

We now have about 750 people on site, heavy engineering, manufacturing company for the oil & gas industry.

The end result in a nutshell is that we have about 250 volunteers who participate in 15 HSE related teams, including: First Aid, EVAC Marshals, Mechanical Lifting, Green Team, Energy Team, Risk Assessment Team, Pressure Test Committee, Radiation Management Team, HSE Audit Team, Accessibility 4 ALL and a few more.

Some of the teams are there to help comply with specific legislation, some are there because they are a good idea, some are there because they are quite simply the right thing to do.

All teams are autonomous and are supported by our HSE department, endorsed by senior leadership who fill the role of Facilitator, and the site has objectives to ensure HSE is firmly embedded into employee appraisals and 1 to 1s.

Each team set their own targets and objectives annually on the understanding they achieve at least 50% of their target meetings and 50% attendance from volunteers. Most teams typically meet once per month.

Each month, a member from each team goes along to attend the monthly HSE Forum meeting. The Forum is there to gather all teams together to hear what they have been up to, what challenges they are facing, what their plans are and if they need support for anything at all. The HSE Department attend where we can provide our own updates, new initiatives, changes in law, new policies, corporate directives etc. It all fits nicely together and it's an excellent model for communication and consultation with the wider organisation.

We are really proud of our teams and the volunteers and I think that makes a huge difference. People actually feel like they make a difference with their participation.

I could go on, there's more to it than even that! But, I'll stop :lol:
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