Health and safety committee meetings must be held in the workplace to discuss health and safety issues affecting employees in the workplace. If one wants to be compliant to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the importance of health and safety committee meetings must not be overlooked.
Health and Safety Committee Meetings
Health and safety committees are made up of persons nominated by an employers and at least one health and safety representative. A health and safety committee is a requirement as soon as the number of health and safety representatives exceeds one. However, the persons nominated by the employer to join the committee must not exceed the number of health and safety representatives.
Certain regulations govern health and safety committee meetings. Companies can add more policies to govern their meetings. However, to be compliant they must comply with the below mentioned health and safety meetings procedures that are stipulated in the Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1993.
- Health and safety committees may hold meeting as often as may be necessary
- They should at least hold a meeting once every three months
health and safety committee meetings - The place and time of the meeting is to be solely determined by the committee
- Inspectors Department of Labour have the power to designate, by notice in writing, a place and time where health and safety committee meetings must be held.
- The above can only be done if more than 10 per cent of the employees at a specific workplace have handed a written request to the employer.
- The procedure at meeting of a health and safety committee shall be determined by the committee.
- During meetings, the committee may choose one or more persons to act as their advisory based on their knowledge and experience in health and safety matters.
- Decisions in meetings are accomplished by voting and the designated advisory is not allowed to vote in the meetings
Health and safety committee meetings must be guided by an agenda. The following are one of the most common items in agendas of health and safety committee meetings:
- Statistics for near-misses, accident records, ill health, sickness absence
- emergency procedures and their effectiveness
- accident investigations and control measures
- risk assessments
- any changes in the workplace affecting health, safety and welfare of employees.
- Workplace inspections
- health and safety training e.g. fire drills
After the occurrence of any incident or near miss, a health and safety committee should meet to ensure they deal with the causes of the incident so that the workplace remains complaint with the regulations of the Act. Furthermore, the committee must come up with appropriate actions and control measures to be implemented. These measures must be reviewed after a certain period of time to determine their effectiveness.
It is essential for employers to ensure that all activities conducted in their workplace are conducted according to the legal standards required to remain compliant. Something someone may consider minor such as health and safety meetings also had legal standards governing it.
MAKROSAFE has been helping companies achieve compliance in all aspects of health and safety. We can help your company to determine how many health and safety committees it needs. We will go on to set it up for you. We can also educate and train your committee members on such procedures and how they can effectively conduct health and safety meetings. Moreover, health and safety committee meetings are meant to deal with health and safety issues, MAKROSAFE has all the expertise in the field. We can offer assistance and consultation to your health and safety committees to help them deliberate effectively in their meetings.
Contact us today if you have any queries about health and safety meetings procedures and anything else in health and safety. We are just a telephone call away.
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