Meeting Records

Legal Requirements for keeping Meeting Records

Most health and safety legislation requires employers to give reasonable opportunities to employees to be consulted on health and safety matters at their workplace. Typically, laws require the election of employee health and safety representatives and a joint management forum quite often called a safety committee. Records of meetings with employees provide tangible evidence that employers are providing opportunities for consultation on health and safety.

Using a fixed agenda is evidence that you are providing opportunities for discussion on a full range of issues, and helps with health and safety audits, because there is evidence of a process

Procedure for keeping Meeting Records

Ensure that all areas and functions (within what is reasonable), are included in discussions. In larger operations, it may be appropriate to have a senior level "steering committee", also including senior employee representatives and managers

Where possible, ensure employee representatives are elected or at least endorsed by their peers. Try to have roughly equal numbers of employees/managers. Keep brief minutes and allocate tasks to a range of people with a completion date. Publish minutes.

How to create Meeting Records

Open a Meeting Records file under the Safety Meetings heading. SafetyBase provides an agenda for discussion and asks for actions to be recorded. These can be created as Tasks.

If you have advanced versions of SafetyBase, it will prompt you to consider wider and more strategic planning activities in consultation with employees.

Using Tasks while keeping Meeting Records

Tasks can be notifications, instructions, alerts or corrective actions associated with a particular file. You can add Tasks as you go during data entry, using the inline New Task button in your screen. You can also use the Toolbar at the bottom of your screen during data input, or the Tasks tab after you submit the file

As you create a file, SafetyBase may automatically set suggested Tasks, depending on some of your droplist selections. Watch for inline informational messages, which are there to alert you if a droplist might create an automatic Task

Please note that although these automatic Tasks may be created as helpful prompts, they do have generic wording, so you have the choice of creating Tasks yourself. This is advisable if you prefer the wording to be specific or personal. If appropriate, you can select the "Recurring" button, which lets you create a repeating schedule, (say, an inspection, review or check-up interval)

When any Task is set in the system, it will display in the form you created, a summary tab in the file and in the Task List of the person it is allocated to (Recurring Tasks don't show until they are due). Tasks are also e-mailed to the allocated person on the required number of days prior to the Due Date

A small number of tasks have been set as mandatory (example, reporting serious injuries to the statutory authority). These cannot be deleted

SafetyBase Tips and Tricks for keeping Meeting Records

• If the file status is left as "Under action", the file will show on the Dashboard Open Files list. This is important, as a means of ensuring visibility to all affected parties

• Consider associating an electronic document (example, an existing image, pdf, spreadsheet, document, video etc), using the "Attach Documents" tab, or inline toolbar at the bottom of your screen while entering data. Record the document's details by completing the appropriate data fields, then click Attach Document. The document will upload and be available for viewing. Many file types will display as a thumbnail

• You can associate a SafetyBase file using the "Link Files" inline button on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen while entering data, or afterwards, using the Tasks tab (example, Hazard, Fault Report, Accident Investigation or similar file that has direct relevance): Record the file's details by completing the appropriate data fields, then click ADD. Use the progressive filtering of the drop lists and ADD the file you want. The file will be linked. If you follow the link, the linked file will automatically have a link back to the file you came from

• Remember to link People with this file type, using the "Associate People" inline button on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen while entering data, or afterwards, using the Associate People tab. Doing this will build an automatic safety history for each person, which you can view by clicking on the person's name anywhere in the account

• Check file history in the "Status Log" tab. This automatically records status changes to the file. If you would like to monitor the file, click the "Watch" button at the top of the file summary. This will place the file on your Watchlist and e-mail you whenever the file status changes