All employees should be encouraged to report workplace situations that are approaching or becoming hazards such as slippery conditions in winter weather, health concerns such as mold in the break room, and SMS program shortcomings such as an area of the workplace that does not get scrutiny such as employee restrooms or breakrooms. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) (2016) explains that workers are the best people to report such things because they may see situations about which management is unaware (OSHA, 2016). Other types of information that should be reported include unsafe conditions, close calls, near misses, and actual incidents.
Types of information that should be included on a suggestion form are the time, date, and location of an incident, who is involved in the incident, and the type of incident such as whether it is a potential hazard, a health hazard or an unreported accident. Forms should be collected on a regular basis such as weekly. Daily may be too frequent unless the organization is very large, but weekly seems like a reasonable interval so that the information is still recent.
Other ways to generate safety suggestions besides installing a suggestion box also exist. For instance, according to Heathfield (2019) of The Balance Careers, each department can have regularly scheduled brainstorming sessions about how to improve safety and health in the workplace. Ideas can also be brought up during weekly staff meetings. The organization can schedule monthly lunch meetings where each employee must submit one idea to improve the organization’s safety and health standard, and managers can bring employee ideas to managers’ meetings (Heathfield, 2019). Suggestion boxes are good, but not all employees feel inclined to participate on that level. These other suggestions may benefit an organization too.
The SMS manager should be responsible for collecting and reviewing safety suggestions or reports. However, a team should be established to review the safety suggestions too. This team should be made up of employees from each department and at all levels of the organization. If it consists of only managers, then it will appear that it is out of touch or trying to prevent the suggestions being carried out, so it must be inclusive of all department and all types of employees (Heathfield, 2019). One reason to include all types of employees is so that perspectives that managers may not see can be included in the SMS. For instance, an employee from the accounting department knows how much the last accident or injury cost the company in employee time lost, insurance costs, and potential fines.
Some things to keep in mind about a safety suggestion review team are the frequency of the meetings. If they are too frequent, they become too much of a burden on employees’ time. If they are not frequent enough, incidents pass and are not addressed. Members of the safety suggestion review team should be rotated on a regular basis too (Heathfield, 2019). Beyond that, the team must be given authority to implement the suggestions.
The SMS should already have a safety team in place. It is they who should make the decisions about which suggestions to follow or follow up. In other words, some suggestions may not be feasible or relative. Others may be excellent suggestions but need management or director approval. Those may take some time to implement and may be rejected by those who ultimately have the responsibility and authority for implementing change in the workplace. The type of suggestion and the elements involved in it will determine the amount of time that implementing suggestions will take.
Columbia Southern University. (n.d.). Unit 4 Study Guide: Fostering Employee Involvement and Training. 1-5. Columbia Southern University.
Heathfield, S. M. (2019, August 17). Harness the Power of an Employee Suggestion Program. Retrieved from The Balance Careers: https://www.thebalancecareers....
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