How much value do you put on staff meetings?

hen employed as a dept head I would attend monthly management meetings with all of the other heads of dept. I also had to manage my meetings with my team each week. In past jobs, I attended staff meetings myself but it wasn’t until attending my team meetings that I understood the value of the time we spent together.

All too often business owners will be busy running a business, fair enough, staff meetings fall by the wayside and then the monthly meeting becomes a quarterly one instead. I’m all about Health and Safety so I won’t be talking about what you should be highlighting marketing strategy, customer service or increasing your sales, but I want to make the case why Health and Safety should always be on your agenda.

Typically I had a lull in most of our days at 10.30-11 am so that’s when I conducted our team briefs (huddle?). The weekly team brief was usually held twice a week because I couldn’t always get all the staff to attend all at once. Remember, it’s a legal requirement to communicate Health and Safety to your workforce so remember to include anyone who failed to attend. It seems to me conducting team briefs is the ideal way to fulfil your legal requirements.

Benefits of regular team briefs

Chance to communicate Health and Safety
Timely reminders to staff of their responsibilities
Opportunities for staff to feel included in their own Health and Safety
Provides improved company due diligence
Recognise if there are any issues within your team
Your chance to show you care and ensure you respond positively to any issues they are facing (e.g. shortage of PPE). Surely this can only improve their well-being as a whole.

Communicate Health and Safety

Generally, your staff will have had any training as required e.g. Food Handlers completing Food Safety training or Tradesmen completing Work at Height etc. Unfortunately, I hear business owners telling me they have had the training as if that’s it (which could have been 2-3 years ago) !! You should be asking yourself is it possible that a human being can forget some aspects of their training? The simple answer is YES!!

This is where your team briefs come in. Remind them of their safe systems of work. Some examples of what I would be chatting about if I ran the team briefly.

Using a ladder – Visual checks before using, maintain 3 pts of contact at all times, come back down after 15-20 mins to reduce muscle fatigue etc.
Manual Handling – Use the aids I have bought for you, ask your colleagues for help etc
Waiting for staff – ask customers about any potential allergies they may have, keep up your hand washing etc.

Note: The number of topics will be dictated by the hazards people on site are faced with and by any current issues that crop up.

Provide opportunities for staff to feel included in their Health and Safety.

If your meeting is conducted correctly then you will be encouraging the team to feel included – embed in open questions, bring along items to look at and conduct it in different places (e.g. if you want to talk about a recent accident then go to that spot where it happened). But how could it look?

Let me give you some suggestions……

Bring out the Material Safety Data Sheets for several of your hazardous products and hand them out to everyone – make sure they have different ones. Ask each person to read out aspects of the safety data such as how to store correctly, whether you should be wearing PPE etc. Then ask the team if you think we need to make any improvements.
Using ladders – Bring various ladders and ask the team their thoughts on whether they do the job, feel safe, have time to buy new ones etc.
Fire Wardens – Ask the Wardens how the venue’s overall housekeeping is, whether have they spotted any issues such as propped open fire doors, are given the time to complete this important job etc.
First Aiders – ask them to bring along the venue’s First Aid kits and look through them now. They can tell you if anything needs to be replaced.
Or it could be as simple as bringing along the accident book to look through and checking that everyone knows where it is, reminding them it is their legal responsibility to record any accidents.

Provides company diligence

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 you are legally obliged to communicate Health and Safety to your staff and as mentioned earlier I think a team brief is a great way to do this. So you’ll need to capture the meetings data and keep it on record.

What to capture?

Keep it simple, You will have your training records, your inspection logs or cleaning schedules etc so the briefing sheet needs to only be a summary !! What it’s showing is that you regularly remind staff about what they already know to improve your safety record and no one gets hurt. I could go into the whole “reasonably practicable” argument (although there’s no argument in my opinion, as a duty holder or responsible person you do have time to conduct staff meetings). Can you imagine arguing that you didn’t have time to conduct staff meetings after a terrible accident occurred?

The date, time and venue name the meeting took place
Who attended with all staff signing clarifying they understand their responsibilities (even better if the names are printed clearly)
Brief outline of what was discussed e.g. Ladder inspections, 3 pts of contact. A bulleted list would suffice.
Issues to take forward e.g. buying improved PPE, increasing the Manager’s inspections of equipment (if during the meeting it is noted staff aren’t completing these), replenishing First Aid kits.

Chance to show you care

I typically put some drinks on the table which I would make myself (or my managers if I was short of time) and maybe some hot food too. Quality time with your team to highlight how great they have been so tell them by giving examples of what you have seen personally or your Supervisors have mentioned. If during the meeting you gave opportunities for staff to tell you what is going wrong e.g. PPE doesn’t fit, a ladder is wonky etc you should be looking for suggestions for improvements during the meeting and if you need permission highlight the fact that you will speak to your Manager. Tell everyone when you will do this by – being accountable – whilst they will likely hold you to account for it, you are showing that you take their safety seriously.

Sometimes you will need to speak to individuals about any issues they are facing and this should now be done as a 1:1 meeting. Perhaps only 1 person needs different PPE or there is an issue with 1 of your Fire wardens not doing their weekly checks. You will still need to capture this to shore up your company diligence but hopefully, you will get good outcomes with your support.

I hope your meeting will be at least 20 minutes long, ideally 30 mins. This will give you time to allow Q&A between your team and explore any issues they are currently facing. 1 issue that may well arise, however, is that 1 or 2 staff members may use this time to chat about other issues (complain about holidays). That’s a different meeting and you will need to be polite but firm – 1:1 meeting for that one?

I do hope I have given some of you business owners something to think about if you are not completing regular staff meetings – weekly or monthly but please do them. Think about the consequences you are already facing now or in the future once someone on site has had the accident.

Make this quality time part of your culture and when you look back, you will wonder why you didn’t do this earlier.

Keep safe!!