Health and Safety Meetings
Every employer must schedule regular monthly meetings with staff to discuss workplace health and safety matters.
Health and safety meetings are crucial for raising awareness and education, reviewing and preventing incidents, and ensuring compliance with regulations. Meetings also encourage open communication between management and staff and a collaborative and proactive approach to promote a culture of health and safety within the clinic. Topics can include clinic inspections, bullying and harassment, violence prevention and health and safety education programs.
Meeting Requirements
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Review Health and Safety Meeting Requirements
Regular meetings between employers and workers to discuss health and safety matters are required in every workplace. Health and safety meetings allow physician employers and their staff to voice, discuss, and resolve health and safety issues collaboratively.
- Health and safety meetings must occur once per month.
- Health and safety meetings must focus on preventing and correcting unsafe conditions and practices while maintaining a cooperative interest in workplace health and safety.
- Employers must maintain records of the meetings and the matters discussed.
Gathering all staff for monthly health and safety meetings can be difficult in large workplaces. Therefore:
- Clinics with 10 to 19 regularly employed workers must have a worker health and safety representative who participates in monthly health and safety meetings to ensure worker participation in health and safety discussions.
- Clinics with 20 or more regularly employed workers must establish a Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee (JOHSC) with at least two worker representatives and two employer representatives. The JOHSC is then required to hold monthly meetings, which will fulfill the employer’s requirement to conduct monthly staff safety meetings.
- In this section, “workers” include only staff directly employed by the clinic.
Meeting Documents
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Review Health and Safety Meeting Agenda
This meeting template could be used to record the details of the monthly health and safety meeting by the employer and employee safety representatives. Health and safety meeting minutes must be kept, and it is recommended that records be retained for at least 2 years.
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Additional Resources
Legal Requirements
OHS Regulation 3.2
Training
Worker Health and Safety Representative Fundamentals|WorkSafeBC’s
Access tip: Click view online and create a learner account for free access. Remember to leave the Affiliated Health and Safety Association blank.
Legal Requirements
Workers Compensation Act – Part 2 – Division 5: 45 Worker health and safety representative
