A number of questions should be asked before committing to any new safety initiative. Cost is a common concern, as are training timelines and other nuts and bolts issues. But one consideration on the tip of virtually every safety professional’s tongue is a bit more complex than others: sustainability.
Sustainability is one of the primary goals of any safety training, but no EHS initiative is entirely self-sustaining after it’s rolled out. Wise safety managers have learned to ask in advance how much time, energy and resources they’ll have to commit in order to maintain the initial training outcomes.
When safety folks prioritize sustainability from the outset, they gravitate to vendors who know how to integrate their initiative into the broader safety culture. The end result tends to be more bang for their buck, with newly learned safety skills lasting for years on relatively little effort from the safety department. And the importance of sustainability isn’t limited to safety training initiatives. It’s just as important for safety steering committees.
Safety steering committees can play a critical role in the ongoing success of all sorts of safety issues. When the committee is thriving, you often see more—and better executed—safety happenings around the workplace. On the flip side, if the group runs out of steam, so do all sorts of safety initiatives. Even worse is when there’s no safety steering committee at all, leaving everything up to the safety department, whose plates are already full and who may have a challenging time replicating the representational benefits of a committee drawn from different employee groups.
Fortunately, there are a few secrets to keeping your workplace safety committee eagerly heading in the right direction.
Secret #1: Overlapping roles and responsibilities
An effective safety steering committee will include several roles, such as a chairperson, communications coordinator and members at large from a variety of departments. These roles ensure that there’s no ambiguity as to who is responsible for what, and make sure that everyone is in the best position to contribute their specific set of skills to the committee.
Having well-defined roles will also offer an opportunity to deal with one of the biggest problems that plague safety committees. Burnout can have a serious effect on these groups, especially when the same members have served on the committee for years. Thankfully, there’s no rule that says a role has to be filled by only one person. It’s completely reasonable to assign two people to a single role, or to have a member-at-large temporarily step in to assist when there’s a substantial workload.
So if your communication coordinator is feeling run down by their responsibilities, consider assigning a second person to the role. They can share the duties, or one person can serve as a deputy coordinator—many permutations are possible based on each person’s specific skillset and schedule. Doing so can lighten the load for everyone and ensure that tasks are more evenly distributed.
Secret #2: Succession and knowledge transition
Doubling up the number of people serving in steering committee roles does more than tamp down safety burnout—it can also be a big help in succession. No one can serve on the steering committee forever. And nor should they! Adding new members to the committee, and allowing long-serving members to step back, is a great way to inject new energy and fresh perspectives into a safety committee. At the same time, it’s a shame to lose hard-won experience when members leave the committee.
Fortunately, having two people serve in one role makes succession-related transitions much easier, as it provides a long runway for tenured members to share information with newer colleagues. This is especially true for bigger roles such as the committee chair, where a year or two of overlap can be crucial.
If you time it properly, you can also plan committee successions so that there is a slow but steady stream of turnover, with one or two new members joining the committee every year, and one or two longstanding members leaving the committee as their understudies take over their roles. Otherwise, you risk the alternative: getting hit with a tsunami of departures as everyone on the steering committee becomes burnt out at the same time.
Secret #3: Celebrate safety teams
Steering committees do vital work—and employers should make sure the committee members are recognized for their invaluable contributions. A recent study by Gallup found that recognizing employees is a low-cost way to motivate folks within an organization and offer a sense of accomplishment. Not only does it encourage the employee to keep up the good work, but it can also inspire others to join the steering committee in the future.
Employee recognition can come from all sorts of places, but it’s often most meaningful if it comes from company leadership (such as the CEO or plant manager) or from a senior safety person. There’s one other benefit to recognizing the steering committee: taking the time to celebrate the safety committee’s achievements at the next company-wide meeting will communicate to everyone that safety is a core value at your company. And as research has shown, this is one of the first steps in building a stronger, more resilient safety culture.
Steering in the right direction
Safety professionals have a number of strategies that they can deploy to make things easier on hard-working safety steering committee members. How roles are structured and the timing of when people join and depart the committee can dramatically affect burnout. And providing public recognition can give a shot in the arm to team members while also fostering a company-wide belief that serving on the safety committee is a worthwhile endeavor.
Depending on the existing state of your safety steering committee, it can take a bit of work to implement some or all of these ideas. But the long-term benefits of gaining a sustainable safety committee is well worth the effort, as a high-functioning team can have notable effects on organizational EHS outcomes.