Tips for Safety Meeting Management

safety meeting managementWhen leading any safety meeting it’s extremely important for purposes of engagement to stay front and center of your audience.  It’s fairly common in a toolbox or tailgate meeting setting for some of the attendees of that meeting to sit or stand in places to the side or even behind the meeting leader.  [content_protector password=”meeting-management-1″ identifier=”meeting-management-1″]

And it’s awfully difficult to engage someone you can’t see.  So be sure that if you’re gathering them in a circle that you do it in a way that ensures you can make eye contact with every member of that meeting.

Now, if it’s a larger meeting that includes several work crews you’ll want to take some additional measures.  A large meeting that includes everyone who’s working on the job site accomplishes the goal of ensuring everyone hears the same message.

The problem is, people who might otherwise contribute to that meeting can easily become too intimidated in a larger meeting to speak their mind.  It’s also more difficult to engage a larger audience than it is a smaller one.

One way to handle this is to go ahead and hold the larger meeting first, but then break it out into smaller groups, assign a group lead to each one, and have them hold interactive discussions among their groups on how they plan to work safely that day.

That’s it for this edition of Recordable INSIGHTS. Until next time be sure all your safety talks are built in, not bolted on.

~ES

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About the Author

Eric Svendsen
Eric Svendsen, Ph.D., is Principal and lead change agent for safetyBUILT-IN, a safety-leadership learning and development organization. He has over 20 years experience in creating and executing outcomes-based leadership development and culture change initiatives aligned to organizational goals, and he personally led the safety-culture initiatives of a number of client organizations that resulted in “best ever safety performance” years for those companies.