Safety Meetings are an essential element of any workplace safety program. Having the right information accessible to the right people is crucial, and Safety Meetings is a great place to house it!
There are three facets of Safety Meetings to review: Admin, Facilitator, and Worker. The Admin role is to create a Safety Meeting Type. The Facilitator role is to create a meeting instance and host that meeting. The Worker role is to attend and acknowledge meetings. Let's go through the Admin and Facilitator elements in this article!
Creating a Safety Meeting Type
The Admin role in the Safety Meeting component is the creation of Safety Meeting Types. You can think of these Safety Meeting Types as templates for all your held meetings to follow.
To create a new Safety Meeting Type, start on your Admin Dash and click into Safety Meetings. In the top right corner, click the Create Meeting Type button.
In the Meeting Type screen, you can enter a wealth of information. You'll need to give your Meeting Type a Name in the top bar. In the Default Agenda or Notes, you can enter any information you want available for every meeting of that type held. This could be a basic template of information regarding process or topics covered.
In the Meeting Topics panel, you'll see four options you can check off:
Link Procedures
Link Incidents & Hazards
Link Inspections
Link Action Items
Checking these boxes allows a facilitator to link any of those items from within Workhub to a Meeting instance. Toggling Make Required in the bottom right corner for each of those items allows you to make the inclusion of at least one of those items mandatory for a meeting instance.
In the Meeting Settings panel, you will see settings to tailor your Meeting Type.
The Show Meeting Type to All Workers toggle will control the visibility of the Meeting Type for your Workers.
The Auto Approve Submissions toggle will control whether a submitted meeting needs to be approved by an admin or will automatically be approved by the system.
The Who Needs to Acknowledge Meeting setting gives you several options to control who needs to acknowledge each meeting instance:
All Added Workers will include all the Workers who were listed as attendees. They will need to acknowledge the meeting regardless of if they marked themselves as Present or not.
Added Workers who are not present will include Workers who were added as attendees but did not list themselves as Present.
No One will remove the need for acknowledgement for the meeting altogether.
The Worker Review Time setting allows to set a minimum amount of time a Worker needs to review a meeting before they can acknowledge the meeting. The options range from No Review Time to 2 minutes with several intervals between.
The Archive Date allows you to choose how long a meeting will be visible in the Meeting list for Workers to review. After the Archive date passes, the meeting will not be visible nor will it be counted against compliance.
You can add a brief message about the meeting in the Meeting Type Description. This can help facilitators keep the meetings on topic.
Finally, the Possible Facilitators panel will allow to to choose what workers you want to be able to facilitate/host a meeting of this type. There are two options for this panel:
All workers from assigned locations: this will allow any Worker from any of the assigned locations facilitate a meeting of this type. This setting can be chosen after you have saved the meeting type and assigned the Meeting Type to your locations.
Specific Workers: this will allow you to choose particular Workers you want as facilitators for this Meeting Type. If you haven't assigned the Meeting Type to locations before you choose this, be sure the Workers you include as Facilitators are located at the Locations you need the meeting held!
You can save your Meeting Type without selecting Possible Facilitators in order to assign the Meting Type to Locations. This will allow you choose Workers from those Locations as Facilitators. If you do this, make sure you come back and add Workers as Facilitators - if you forget, no one can host a meeting!
Your last step in creating your Meeting Type is to hit the Save Meeting Type button in the top right corner of your screen.
Assigning your Meeting Type
After you have saved your Meeting Type, you can assign it where you need it to occur!
Click into the Assignments & Frequency tab along the top of the page. The page will populate with all the Locations in your account.
You can then choose your assignment and frequency settings for each location:
N/A: Meeting Type will not appear for any Locations
Optional: Meeting Type will appear at any selected Location but will not be mandatory
Required Every: Meeting Type will be mandatory at the selected Location at the frequency you choose
Options include day(s), week(s), month(s), and year(s)
Once you've set those assignments how you like, hit Save Assignments in the top right corner of the page.
Facilitating a Meeting
Now that you have Meeting Types created, you can being creating and facilitating those Meeting instances for your Workers to attend!
Creating the Meeting Instance
Facilitation of a meeting can be done either by a Worker included as a Possible Facilitator or by an Admin with Safety Meeting permissions.
When facilitating a meeting from the Worker dash, a Worker can click into the Safety Meetings component and use the Facilitate tab at the top of the page to create a meeting instance. A Worker will see any Meeting Types they have been listed as a Possible Facilitator for on the page.
A meeting instance can be created either by selecting a Meeting Type and Location listing from the list, or by clicking the Schedule Meeting button in the top right corner.
If using the Schedule Meeting button, a pop-up will appear asking the Worker to first choose a Meeting Type, and then a Location:
Facilitators will then be able to populate the Meeting Type template with the specific details for their meeting instance.
Any fields that are required will be shown with a red Required label. The possible links to Procedures, Incidents & Hazards, and Inspections will be grouped together under Topics Discussed if none of them have been chosen as Required in the creation of the Meeting Type.
A Facilitator can set the meeting date and time in the Meeting Details box. They can add any Facilitators for this particular meeting in the Facilitators panel. Having additional Facilitators may be useful in case the Worker is unable to host the scheduled meeting for whatever reason. They can also attach any necessary documents using the Attachments panel!
Hitting Save Meeting in the top right corner will save the details of the meeting instance.
Adding Workers as Attendees
After you've saved your Meeting instance, you can add Workers as attendees of the meeting by clicking into the Workers tab.
Any Workers that you've added as possible Facilitators will already have populated this screen. You will see a list for your Workers divided into Not Present and Attended sections. At this stage, all the Workers you add as attendees will fill the Not Present section.
Click Add Worker at the bottom of that panel. A pop-up will appear to begin the process of choosing your needed Workers. First you'll need to select a Location to choose Workers from, followed by a list of the Workers at that Location. If your Meeting Type has been assigned to multiple Locations, you'll also have the option of choosing All Assigned Locations in case you need to include workers from another location.
Check off the boxes of the workers attending, and hit Add Selected. The Workers you've chosen will now populate the Not Present section of your screen.
You can also add any guests who may not be part of the Workhub account but who were in attendance using the Add Guest button. This can include anyone you need, such folks presenting to your Workers or auditors present for the meeting. They will appear in the list with a Guest bubble next to their name.
To finalize your list of Workers, hit Save Workers in the top right corner.
If you are adding a Meeting instance after a meeting has occurred and you can confirm the attendance of the Workers, you have the option at this stage to mark Workers as Attended by checking off the box in the Attended column for their row.
The Meeting instance is now all set! Workers will be able to mark themselves as Present for a meeting until the meeting has been Submitted. After the meeting has been Submitted, Workers will be able to Acknowledge a meeting instance. Workers can be added to the attendance list after a meeting has been submitted by a Facilitator if needed.
Submitting a Meeting
The meeting has occurred, the notes have been taken, and workers have shared their views. Now it's time to submit your meeting for review and approval by an admin!
Facilitators are responsible for submitting a meeting instance. When a Meeting instance requires submission by a facilitator, it will appear in their Facilitate tab. The Location the meeting is occurring at will have a bubble that says 1 To Do, and clicking into that Location will bring up the list of that meeting type at that Location.
After clicking into the meeting instance, the Facilitator will be able to submit the meeting by clicking the Submit Meeting button.
A Worker will not be able to mark themselves as Present after the meeting has been Submitted. They will only be able to Acknowledge the meeting.
An Admin will be able to mark a Worker as Present when Approving a Submitted Meeting!
After a meeting has been submitted, the final step in the process is for an admin to approve the meeting submission.
Approving a Meeting
Once a Safety Meeting instance has been submitted by a facilitator, an admin needs to take the final step and approve the submission.
An admin can open Safety Meetings from their Admin dash and navigate to the Submitted Meetings tab along the top of the window. That page will populate with a list of meetings that have been held and will show their status. Any meeting that needs approval will have a status of Submitted, listed in gold.
Admins can click into a Submitted meeting to review the details and attendance information for the meeting instance.
In the Workers tab, an admin can see the attendance and acknowledgement of the meeting. Admins can then also mark Workers as having attended a meeting or acknowledge a meeting on behalf of a Worker using the menu icon on the right side of each Worker listing.
After an admin is satisfied with the details and attendance of the meeting, it can be Approved. To approve a meeting, click the Approve button in the top right corner of the Meeting Overview screen. Once a meeting has been approved, no changes can be made to the meeting.
Admins can also download a PDF copy of the meeting details from the Meeting Overview screen. This PDF will contain the meeting details, any topics discussed and their related items, any assigned Action Items, and an attendance list including presence and acknowledgement status.
After Meetings have been submitted, an admin will be able to see a list of them under the Submitted Meetings tab.