Why Safety and Health

Committees?

By Winstone G.O. Audi

Occupational Safety and Health
Practitioner
 Purpose of committee

• Create and maintain active interest in

safety and health and to reduce incidents.

• Discuss and recommend effective actions

to prevent workplace incidents.
• Promote an awareness of safety and
health issues and an atmosphere of
cooperation between management and
workers.

• Help in identifying problems, formulating

policy and procedures, monitoring and
improving workplace safety and health.
• The authority for action, and hence the
accountability for non-compliance, stays
with the employer.

• Establishing a committee does not lessen

the employer's accountability or
responsibility for safety and health.
• In general, these committees are set up to:

 Promote health and safety through

cooperation between employer and workers
(non adversarial approach)

 Provide a channel through which workers can

participate in health and safety organization of
the workplaces.
The committee meeting
 Round Table Meeting
• A roundtable committee meeting holds
all participants on equal footing
• Such sessions will be more open,
therefore providing a more in depth
knowledge-sharing.
• It provides audience members the
opportunity to present their opinions of the
topic of discussion.
 How does the committee
measure its effectiveness?
• In order to improve its efforts, a health and
safety committee will want to have some
measure of its past performance. In this
way, weak areas can be strengthened and
strong areas maintained.
Questions that should be asked
• Do the workers know who members of
the committee are?
• Are the duties and authority of
members known to the workers?
• Is the committee seen by workers as
being useful in providing leadership in
safety?
• Is the committee perceived by
management as correctly meeting its
responsibilities and authority?
 Questions that should be asked…………………,.

• Do line supervisors see members as a

barrier to worker/supervisor
communication in safety?
• Do employees perceive the committee as
reducing management's responsibility for
maintaining a safe workplace?
• Are members perceived as enforcers or
advisors?
• Do workers make suggestions to
committee members?
Questions (Cont’d)

• Does management representation on the

committee reflect its strong commitment to
safety?
• Does management fully support
committee activities by providing
comprehensive information, time, facilities,
and training?
Questions cont………..

• What proportion of members' time during

paid work hours is spent on health and
safety activities?
• How many committee recommendations
have been implemented?
• When a recommendation is not
implemented are the full reasons given to
the committee?
Questions cont………

• Is the full record of committee

recommendations, their implementation,
and reasons for non-implementation
available to all workers?