Does anyone have any ideas for improving staff engagement with the H&S Committee?

We hold one every 3-4 months, and it is pretty well attended (except by senior management - probably one of the issues!).

Most of the time it just consists of me running through the agenda items (accident info, training, RAs, fire safety, compliance visits etc.), with noone reporting any issues or AOB.

We ask attendees to speak with their teams so they can raise any departmental issues at the meeting, but this very rarely happens.

I would like to encourage input and engagement, and am wondering how other people have done this successfully?

Thanks

I've had successes by:

1. Getting the right people to the meeting who had a contribution to make.  In one case this happened to be shift supervisors.  They were already invited by email but never went because they were too busy (they were genuinely busy), so I showed them how much their involvement would be appreciated by going to see them the day before the meeting and asking them very nicely, and then again on the day of the meeting.  It didn't work every time, but it worked enough to make a difference.

2. Having a topic for the meeting and running a workshop style activity to get input on that topic.  I started off with the topic of what the committee was for and how it should work.  You can have any topic that people at the meeting are likely to have opinions about.  Deciding the topic in advance of the meeting where you discuss it  gives the reps time to ask their teams about it so that they have a more specific question to put (such as "do you do any lone working and what do you think of the arrangements for it?") than "any H&S issues?"  As a more specific question, it's more likely to get people thinking.

3. Having a senior manager chair the meeting.  But only if they are willing to do this properly and have some chairing skills.  I had one whose idea of chairing the meeting was "Welcome to the meeting, now I'll hand over to Kate to go through the agenda".  So you need to explain to them exactly what you are wanting them to do as well as why.

4. Getting someone else to take the minutes so that you are not distracted by this task and are free to listen properly to what people are saying.

5. Sending out an email with the reports for the meeting in advance.  This is all the informational stuff you mention about accidents, risk assessments etc, in a concise form.  This gives people a chance to decide if they have any opinions or questions about the contents in advance, and you can just ask at the meeting if there is anything to discuss on these instead of going through them.  (Of course, there might be something you do want to discuss rather than just present, and then you can raise this.)

6. Starting the meeting with AOB (renamed as something more snazzy) instead of ending with it.  This shows that you value this input and on a practical level means you don't run out of time for it.

All this can take a lot of time and effort, but it's very satisfying when you get there.

I typically start H&S commitee meetings by asking representatives to provide a quick update on the areas they are representing. This helps them engage in the conversation rather than just listen.

I prompt them with questions such as : Have there been any incidents or safety opportunities? Are there any safety concerns? Do you have any ideas for improvement? etc.

After that, I go through the standard agenda.

Thanks for the replies so far!

Definitely some ideas to take away and try and implement, particulalry about having department heads/managers etc. contributing - I feel at the moment as if they're just happy to hear me run through the agenda and not say anything. I think this would be a good way of increasing engagement.

I also like Kate's idea of re-naming the AOB and having it at the start of the meeting - have never come across this before, sounds like something that would definitely be useful.

I changed the name as I always thought it sounded very old fashioned and are now called Continious Improvment Meetings

I reduced the agenda and stated that anything urgent should not wait until the meeting and we have other avenues for reporting things like lights being out or a hole in the yard.

We meet quaterly and cover of the usual things like accidents, incidents etc (discussing any findings), risk assessments, audits etc but the main focus is on what do we want to change, what do we want to improve and that becomes the Topic with a plan and actions. By deciding in advance we can invite different people to the meeting much like a project meeting.

Working ok so far

In a previous employment when I took over from the previous H&S manager the H&S committee had fallen apart as far as it could have. I was tasked to get it working. The problem was that the employees felt it was a waste of time as the Managers didn’t do anything about issues. The managers thought it was a waste of time because the employee representatives just sat there and didn’t communicate. Sound familiar?

One of the key requirements as noted by others is senior management involvement, So I made sure that the MD was always there, but when he couldn’t another director would be there as well as other senior managers.

We had to press gang the employees to take part as they didn’t want to. However, to help show our commitment we sent them on training as if they were in a union (they were not).

I made sure that any issues brought up by them, I followed up on and got back to them outside of the meeting. This took some time, but they started to appreciate the work I was putting in on their behalf and they could see things being done. Managers started to feel there was engagement.

To get their engagement we involved them in some H&S trials of things and asked for their feedback in the meeting (good or bad).  We progressed to get them to not only look at their own area but actively gave them time out to go to another area in the factory and just look at what was going on. We asked them to report back on not just anything bad but also all the good things they noted. Anything not so good was then discussed with the group as a whole if anything could be done, with no blame.

I decided to do a survey of how good /bad we were (this was some time ago and I based it on an old British standard, but it doesn’t really matter that much). We got them to go to their teams and ask the questions score 1 to 5 I think, all anonymous and they fed back to me. I collated the info and then gathered them together to discuss any areas we seemed to score low and discussed (I made them Tea / Coffee and provided the biscuits). We had an open discussion just me and them about what we may do. That was then about the point in time it all went from them and us, to just us.

After that I had these people coming up to me as I went around, with them having done research on different things in their own time at home.

I was made redundant shortly afterwards, on my very last day one of the group in his lunch time found me, shook my hand and thanked me for all I had done for them. A very nice feeling.

Sorry it is so long and hope there is something of interest in it. Next month I will tell the story of the poor little sparrow.

Chris