Essential Safety Meeting Topics for Manufacturing
Essential Safety Meeting Topics for Manufacturing
Safety Meetings are essential to the workplace, no matter what type of business is involved. They are the key to keeping your employees and customers safe and risk-free, especially if you’re working around dangerous equipment or chemicals. When in the workplace, people need to be informed about any risks and the steps to take to avoid any illness, workplace injuries or death. The reasons to hold safety talks/meetings are vast and here at PSbyM we provide support based around our 9 principals of safety ownership that support the development of an effective manufacturing safety meeting agenda.
Commit to sacred time and space is one of the 9 principles. Regular planned safety meetings are part of the commitment that leadership has to demonstrate and is their chance to involve employees, distribute information and answer any questions that people may have.
What is Manufacturing Safety?
Safety in the manufacturing process is important to minimise risk and eliminate severe workplace injuries. Employee morale and efficiency improves with an effective and engaging safety process.
Manufacturing safety is taking care of your most valuable resource – your people.
Manufacturing safety is important because it protects employees, customers and companies.
Manufacturing safety is a competitive advantage in the fight for talent. It is a critical factor in employee engagement and productivity.
To prevent industrial accidents, injuries, illnesses, and improve wellbeing, every manufacturer needs to create a safe workplace for employees, starting with dedicated safety training and safety briefings.
HSE Figures show that 135 people were killed in the UK last Year (2023) plus 68 members of the public were killed in work related incidents. These figures are slightly up on the previous year and show the constant focus needed upon the safety process in our organisations.
What Manufacturing Safety Topics Should be Discussed in a Safety Meeting
Every workplace is different. Buildings and infrastructure, products and processes, people and legislation vary based on the business activity. Each organisation must assess their safety risks and prioritise their safety activities accordingly.
To improve the safety process, it is essential to address specific and relevant issues during the Safety talk, these can include:
- Lifting heavy Objects – Make everyone is aware of the importance of lifting objects correctly to reduce strain on the body. Teach employees how to recognise and minimise ergonomic risk. For example, ensuring people don’t lift objects that are too heavy for them.
- Slips Trips and Falls – one of the most common risks in every organisation. Making employees aware of the potential slips, trips and falls by ensuring everyone is aware of the potential severity of the outcome. We should encourage people to be situationally aware of their surroundings especially in high-risk areas such as steps/stairs and wet floors. Simple safe behaviours like always using the handrail should be practiced by everyone.
- Lockout, Tag out, Try Out (LOTOTO) – Discussing the use of LOTOTO during safety meetings helps to keep the importance of this procedure high in every one's mind when carrying out maintenance or cleaning procedures. Employees audit each other and recognise their colleagues who ‘work safe’.
- Use of Equipment - Training employees to use company equipment properly with personal protective equipment (PPE) can ensure work continues uninterrupted. Ensuring the equipment training is thorough can minimize risks and improve employees' skills. This type of briefing can include common troubleshooting tips for equipment in the workplace.
Using safety meetings to reinforce positive actions and to highlight/improve deviations, we help to demonstrate the importance of good safety culture[BL1] .
How to Ensure Safety Outside of a Manufacturing Safety Talk/Meeting
At PSbyM we work with our clients to build a rigorous safety process based upon setting goals and delivering results. This is based around 9 key principals to build a safety culture:
- Clear leadership and vision – Leaders define an aspiration goal clear to everyone
- Design ownership into everyday life – Change is not optional, everyone must participate, backed by clear communication
- Commit to sacred time and space- Create the time and place for safety meetings
- Measure the right things – To help employees see, feel and own the process
- Give feedback – Communicate and Coach, bottom up, peer to peer and top down
- Constant focus on safety activities – Highlight the importance of learning by doing
- Highly touchable – The safety process is easy to see and relevant to everyone
- Safety education for everyone – Investing in safety through education and safety training
- Define the care management system – Be clear how we look after people
By following our 9 Key principals our clients have seen a 126% improvement in employee engagement and a 67% improvement in recordable incident rate
Work with PS by Milliken Manufacturing Safety Consultants to Improve Workplace Safety
Meet with our safety consulting experts to discuss how we can help you develop and deliver better Safety talks and meetings using key principals that support improving workplace safety.