Safety Committee 101:

Roles & Responsibilities

Patti McGuire

Regional Safety & Health Supervisor

Agenda

• Oregon OSHA Requirements

• Best Practices
• Energizing and Engaging

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 OSHA requirement
Employers must establish and administer a
safety committee, or hold safety meetings
to communicate and evaluate safety and
health issues.
Committee or meetings? Based on size,
construction, mobile work sites, traveling to work
sites, office work, and satellite offices.
(OAR 437-001-0765)

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Safety committee purpose

To bring workers and management together
in cooperative, non-adversarial, cooperative
effort to promote safety and health. And to
assist you in making continuous improvement
to your safety and health programs.
(OAR 437-001-0765)

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 Communication

Employees Safety Management

committee

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Safety committee members

20 or fewer employees:
2 committee members
More than 20 employees:
4 committee members
(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: More members get more work

done. Members with positive attitudes and effective
communication skills will greatly improve
committee performance.

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 Safety committee members
Equal numbers of employer-selected and
employee-elected or volunteer members.
(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Have more employee than

employer representatives. Management
representatives who are decision-makers and
maintenance personnel can be key members.

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Members’ roles
Chairperson and All committee
Secretary/recorder
vice chair members
• Prepare agenda • Record minutes • Attend meetings
• Arrange meeting • Distribute • Report unsafe
place minutes conditions and
• Notify members • Distribute practices
of meeting minutes to staff • Report incidents
• Set meeting • Report status of and accidents
schedule recommendations • Contribute ideas
• Facilitate meeting for improving
safety
• Follow safe work
rules
• Influence others
to work safely

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 Safety committee members
Safety committee members must
• Majority agree on a chairperson

• Serve one-year minimum, when possible

• Paid at regular rate of pay

• Trained in accident and incident investigations

(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Create a rotation schedule and use

turnover to create more safety champions.
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Safety committee members

Safety committee members must
• Have training in hazard identification

• Be provided with meeting minutes

• Represent major activities of your business

Best practice: Provide training at least every other

year for members that do not change.

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 How often to meet
Safety committee must meet
• Quarterly in situations where employees do
mostly office work

• Monthly for other situations (except the

months when quarterly worksite inspections
are performed)
(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Hold 12 meetings and 4 inspections.

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Written records
Written records of committee meetings must
include
• Names of attendees

• Meeting date

• All safety and health issues discussed

(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Have records organized and easily

available in the event of an OSHA inspection.

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 Written records
Written records of meetings must have
• Recommendations for corrective action and
reasonable date for management response

• Person responsible for follow-up

• All reports, evaluations, and recommendations

made by the committee
(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Develop system for tracking and

prioritizing recommendations.
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Inspections
Establish procedures for conducting
workplace safety and health inspections:
Quarterly: primary, fixed locations, office
environments, and satellite or auxiliary locations

When committee deems necessary: mobile

work locations, sites not often visited, sites that
don’t lend themselves to inspection
(OAR 437-001-0765)

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 Inspections
• Persons conducting inspections must be trained
in hazard identification.

• Develop procedures for review of inspection

reports and make recommendations
(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Inspections should include ergonomics and

work procedures if you really want to make improvements.

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Advanced hazard
identification
• Utilize an open-ended approach
• Focus on system and behavioral hazards
• Incorporate injury trends

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 What safety committees do
• Develop incident investigation procedures that
identify and correct hazards

• Evaluate incident investigations and make

recommendations to prevent reoccurrence

• System for employees to report hazards and

safety/health related suggestions
(OAR 437-001-0765)
Best practice: If you’re not getting reports, the safety
committee should review the process and make sure it fits the
culture. Do not rely on only having employees report hazards
to their supervisors.
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What safety committees do

• Make safety meeting minutes available to all
employees
• Evaluate management’s safety/health
accountability system for improvement
(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Conduct review of management’s

accountability system during an annual planning meeting.

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 Centralized safety
committees
If you have multiple locations, you may
choose to have a centralized safety
committee. It must represent the safety and
health concerns of all locations and meet
the requirements for safety committees.
(OAR 437-001-0765)

Best practice: Large locations or departments may

choose to have their own committee; however,
they should still be included on the centralized
safety committee.

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Centralized safety
committees
Centralized safety committees must have a
written policy that
• Represents management’s commitment to the
committee
• Requires and describes effective employee
involvement
• Describes how the company will hold
employees and managers accountable for
safety and health hazards at each location
(OAR 437-001-0765)

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 Centralized safety
committees
Centralized safety committees must have a
written policy that
• Explains specific methods for identifying and
correcting safety and health hazards at each
location
• Includes an annual written comprehensive
review of committee activities to determine
effectiveness
(OAR 437-001-0765)

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Energize your safety

committee
Create a vision statement
• Short
• Simple
• Inspiring Safely home.
Everyone.
Every day.

—Caterpillar

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 Energize your safety
committee
Create a charter
• Define your purpose.
• Outline roles and
responsibilities.

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Energize your safety

committee
Create a plan
• Set a calendar
for safety
activities and
publish it.
• Include required
training,
inspections,
safety events.
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 Energize your safety
committee
• Bring in outside speakers
• Training opportunities:
OSHA, ASSP, OTA
• Meetings

• Conferences

• Classes: online and

and in person

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Participate in meaningful
activities
• Write/review a job hazard analysis
• Assist with incident analysis
• Annual program review/revision
• Safety Orientation

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 Engaging employees in
safety committee
• Energizes the safety committee
• Increases reporting and accountability
• Improves workplace morale

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Helpful resources

Oregon OSHA Safety Committees and Meetings and landing page:

https://osha.oregon.gov/OSHARules/div1/437-001-0765.pdf
https://osha.oregon.gov/Pages/topics/safety-committees-and-
meetings.aspx

SAIF Safety Committee landing page and Resource Guide:

https://www.saif.com/safety-and-health/topics/be-a-leader/safety-
committees-and-meetings.html
https://www.saif.com/safety-and-health/topics/be-a-leader/safety-
committees-and-meetings/safety-committee-resource-guide.html

10 ways to energize your safety committee

https://www.saif.com/Documents/SafetyandHealth/SafetyCommittee/S947_ti
ps_to_energize_your_safety_committee.pdf

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