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Health and Safety Meeting Records

The new Health and Safety at Work legislation includes a lot of information about the involvement of employees. This is described under the new legislation, part 3 as, "Worker engagement, participation, and representation", and there are 36 clauses to describe this responsibility.

The new Act is very specific about the involvement of employees in all aspects of H&S management and in the future it would be foolhardy for any business not to involve their employees in health and safety matters in the future.

Section 58 Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 - Duty to engage with workers

  1. A PCBU must, so far as is reasonably practicable, engage with workers—
    1. who carry out work for the business or undertaking; and
    2. who are, or are likely to be, directly affected by a matter relating to work health or safety.
  2. If the PCBU and the workers have agreed to procedures for engagement, the engagement must be in accordance with those procedures.
  3. The agreed procedures must not be inconsistent with section 59.
  4. A person who contravenes this section commits an offence and is liable on conviction,—
    1. for an individual, to a fine not exceeding $20,000:
    2. for any other person, to a fine not exceeding $100,000.

To achieve this, many businesses have specific Health and Safety meetings that involve a cross section of management and employee representatives, and these meetings are called many things, dependant on the industry involved:

How often do I have to have H&S meetings?

This is a question I am often asked and the key wording is "in a timely manner" and this will depend on the nature of the industry or work. E.g. for a forestry company, this could be every day prior to starting work or on a weekly basis.

Section 59 Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 - Nature of engagement

  1. Engagement with workers under this subpart requires—
    1. That relevant information about the matter be shared with workers in a timely manner; and
    2. That workers be given a reasonable opportunity—
      1. to express their views and to raise work health or safety issues in relation to the matter; and
      2. to contribute to the decision-making process relating to the matter; and
    3. that the views of workers be taken into account by the PCBU; and
    4. that the workers be advised of the outcome of the engagement in a timely manner.

Meeting Records

Although there is no mention of recording and maintaining your H&S meeting records, it certainly makes sense to do so for internal auditing by the company, Worksafe NZ, or future ACC for proof of employee involvement in H&S matters.

The next question that arises is how complex do the meeting records have to be? There is no stipulation and don't be led into thinking that you have to have certain amount of topics or items, it's your decision how you manage this.

My recommendation is to create a simple agenda with key headings and an area to note who attended. It's important that you train your employees about the use of the meeting agenda, the meeting process and the time frames for the meeting. Another idea is to rotate the chairman of the meeting as this helps to get the buy-in from your H&S group members. Have spare copies of the meeting agenda available for the members to access so that can also write down items for discussion prior to the meeting.

Delegation of Responsibility

A key factor in the success of your meeting records is the recording and the delegation of members to carry out a function - who is going to do what by what time.

Signatures and Confirmation

On most H&S meeting records the names of those who attend are recorded. A practice that is happening in a number of industries is the signing off of the meeting record by the attendees. This has a number of benefits, especially for future auditing purposes and if an attendee has a future event that involves any previously made H&S decisions. It's a practical and simple verification process of who was there.

Typing of the Meeting Record

There's nothing cast in stone if this has to be typed or hand written. It's up to the business how this is presented. The key here is that they must be legible and easy to read and to reference.

Posting of the Meeting Record

It's important that this is done as soon as possible after the meeting to inform all other employees what decisions or actions have been made or taken that may affect them. Copy all those who attended and all senior managers. They need to be in the know if any of the decisions from the meeting include possible capital expenditure.

Storage of the Meeting Records

There is no description of how or where these records will be stored. What must be remembered is they should be stored in such a manner that they can be controlled, Identified and retrieved quickly for in the case of an accident investigation, an ACC investigation or audit.

Scanning and Storage

Most businesses use a paper based storage system and this is acceptable but here is another method that will bring your record storage system into the 21st century. If you have a H&S folder in your company's computer system, complete the following

The devil lies in the detail and your H&S committee records are but one way to show that you are involving your employees as well as effectively managing your health and safety responsibilities.