By Bill Koepnick, President, Professional Training Services

In order to maintain a progressive safety and health process it is essential to foster employee engagement programs.

Flavor of the day” programs, such as employee empowerment are stand-alone systems, and do not seem to sustain for a long period of time. In the past many employees felt that it was the responsibility of the company to take care of them at work. This attitude has changed over the years and it is apparent that in successful organizations employees want and often demand input into the safety and health process.

One means to accomplish this is creating a safety and health committee. Unfortunately, without direction, these groups can easily turn into a list generator for a maintenance department. The safety team can and should be the conduit to get safety processes to the next level. They need to develop action strategies to where they want the safety process to be two or even three years from now.

To maximize employee engagement programs, a company could create focus teams such as:

• Fire and emergency
• Accident analysis
• Inspections and audits
• Training and education
• Job safety analysis
• Rules and procedures
• Rewards and recognition
• Ergonomics and office safety

These focus teams could be made up of five to seven employees and the chairperson of each team would be on a safety and health leadership committee along with other key individuals. The purpose of the leadership committee would be to guide and support the focus teams.  In order for the teams to be successful team members would need to be trained in their respective assignments.

If a company utilized this approach, there would be approximately 40 employees directly involved. This could lead to a positive culture change if given the support and attention it deserves.

No longer do employees want to be watching from the sidelines. They want to be the players who score the touchdowns.

Bryan Roessler is MRA’s Director of Safety Services. He can be reached at 262.696.3465 or bryan.roessler@safetyillinois.org.