‘Be Responsible And Keep Everyone Safe’ Meetings can improve your Safety Culture

Setting up BRAKES (Be Responsible And Keep Everyone Safe) meetings, generally on an annual basis, is an ideal opportunity to bring working groups together, providing an opportunity for all employees to speak out about Health & Safety in the workplace.

These meetings, or team get-togethers, are an ideal opportunity for employees to feedback on their experiences in the workplace and offer ideas for improvement.

We recommend that each group is made up of no more than eight employees, this provides a less intimidating environment and allows opportunity for everyone to have chance to be heard.

It’s an ideal time to refresh company health and safety information given at induction and to discuss the health and safety performance over the year. This might include flagging up any incidents or positive changes that have prevented potential negative outcomes.

Choose the right person to ‘chair’ the group, someone who is an effective communicator and gets on well with people without being outspoken or domineering.

One way of focusing the discussions is to set a series of questions relating to good practice and get feedback on these from the group; comments such as whether they agree or disagree with the statement, their understanding around the topic and how they might deal with it.  This can flag up information that may not otherwise come to light.

In order to put Health & Safety performance into perspective, the meeting host can use a version of the Bradley Curve.

The Bradley Curve was created by DuPont in 1995 to try and benchmark ideas of culture and performance in relation to safety.  It helps guide companies towards world-class safety standards by focusing on company values, employee mindset and behaviours, and, most importantly, company culture.

A scoring system can be developed so that year on year improvement can be developed. A reward system could also be put in place to support this.

BRAKES meetings are also a good time to discuss First Aid and Mental Health in the workplace, looking to recruit staff who may want to become a First Aider or MHFA and outlining what this might involve.

Providing the right company culture is essential for a positive health and safety environment.  If employees from all levels and departments are on board, have a good understanding of the issues, then it’s much easier for H&S standards to be woven into the everyday working life, keeping standards high and everyone safe.

Contact us today for support to improve the Safety Culture in your business.