Regular and effective safety meetings are essential to enabling teams to align on current workplace issues, priorities, and risks. OSHA expects organizations to conduct safety meetings on a regular basis, which adds to the list of requirements to track. Many teams satisfy safety meeting requirements with a short, daily “tailgate” or “toolbox” meeting. These meetings usually include small teams assigned to a specific job or job location.

The agenda typically includes topics like:

• Activities to be performed.
• PPE required.
• Chemical hazards the team may encounter.
• Physical hazards the team may encounter.
• Noise hazards.
• Hazards to others, such as the general public.
• Emergency procedures and locations of the nearest hospitals or clinics.
• Plus, a general safety topic.

The general safety topics may include subjects such as: 

Ladder safety  Preventing electrocution  Confined space entry  Hazard communication  Lockout/Tagout  Vehicular safety  Machine guards  Securing worksites  Incident reporting  Fire extinguisher use  Office safety  Wildfire prevention

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)  Working from heights  Fire safety  First aid  Heat stress and heat stroke  Heavy equipment  New equipment  Lyme Disease  Securing a site  Protecting the public  Forklift safety  Face and eye protection.

By combining the focused (“what do we expect today”) with a more general topic, the safety meeting can remain both relevant and interesting to all workers. Many companies also incorporate a safety moment or safety story into the mix to help focus workers’ minds on safety as they begin their workday or week.

Tracking and confirming attendance

One important but often overlooked aspect of safety meetings is tracking and confirming attendance. Tracking attendees allows organizations to document worker participation in the program, to confirm that workers have been given access to safety and health information, and to demonstrate that employee input has been solicited and that workers have been encouraged to respect safety and health concerns.

Locus Technologies’ full-service safety software module allows for full tracking of safety activities and incidents, including safety meetings. The safety meetings screen within Locus (figure 1) allows tracking of the meeting, topics, the key safety areas discussed, and attendees.
Locus safety software offers two easy methods to track worker attendance during safety meetings:

1. Locus QR-code attendance leverages Locus’s configurable workflow and QR capabilities to make it easy for workers to scan and note their attendance. (figure 2).
2. Locus “selfie” photo feature (figure 3) makes it even simpler to document attendance: simply take a selfie that documents all who were in attendance during the meeting.

Locus’s highly configurable safety application enables users to tune the screen to meet the company’s needs and fully document topics and attendance at safety meetings.