Safety Stand-Down Meetings
Safety Stand-Down Meetings, Mass Safety Meetings, Site-Safety Focus lunches. Regardless of what we might choose to call them, they are all designed to do the same thing: to reinforce the need to think about safety on our sites every day, with every task. Sure, we talk about safety in morning huddle; in pre-activity meeting; in weekly foremans meetings, and with every chance we get while walking through the job site multiple times a day. These often don’t reach everybody on the site with the same message, and these laser-focused interactions are often very specific, and in-the-moment driven by urgency and necessity. There are certainly times in the life of every jobsite where everybody needs to stop, focus, and hear the same message at the same time from the same source.

Topics for these meetings come from a variety of places. They may be directives or pipeline ideas from OSHA or the National Safety Council/Nebraska Safety Council. They may come from recent experiences on other job sites, even from other general contractors, that we can all learn a lesson from the easy way, rather than re-living them the hard way. They may come from specific trends and patterns we see on that specific jobsite, good or bad, that need to be validated and celebrated, or impactful changes made. They may come from the pull-plan we use to forecast work scheduling and completion targets, so that we are all aware of what is just about to impact the rythym of the jobsite workflow. They may come from outside-sourced industry studies, highlighting trends, problems, changes, challenges or victories in the safety culture of the industry as a whole. These meetings are not designed to be lectures and interaction is expected and encouraged. We recognize that dozens of construction professionals all together at the same time, talking about relevant topics, presents the greatest learning and growth opportunities we can provide. Every person on the site that day may have a different perspective on the topic being discussed, and if we can facilitate open conversation, the combined experiences of all those perspectives become part of the shared, tribal knowledge that makes us all better, and safer, at what we do.

Yep, it is true that some of those in attendance couldn’t care less about what we discuss. They tune it out, focusing on lunch or the fact that they are typically in a cool place (or warm place, based on the season) and not working, but getting paid to be there. It is also true, though, that there are always a couple of attendees who become very engaged, share their thoughts as part of the conversation, and often want more once the meeting is over. Apathy can be contagious, but so can enthusiasm. Passion: The difference between it being a job they must get through day-by-day, and a career they can safely grow in and be proud of.
Our goal? Simple. Make safety awareness part of that growth and development opportunity.