How can you ensure that a committee brings you useful results?

By R. Bruce Wright, CPCU

When visiting systems in our program we often ask about Safety Committees, since most of our clients have one. In our conversations with you, we get a variety of responses to our inquiries on how effective these committees are. So, maybe it is time to take a more basic look at the Safety Committee and think about what we ask it to do, how to choose the members, how to manage the committee’s work, and how to monitor committee effectiveness.

To committee or not to committee, that is the question.

Many of you may be wondering how anyone could even ask this question. Like Mom, baseball, and apple pie, aren’t safety committees All-American? Well, maybe, or maybe not.

There are issues to consider before forming any committee, and a safety committee is no different, starting with “Just what is a committee?” According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary a committee is “A body of persons delegated to consider, investigate, take action on, or report on some matter.”

Committees are normally created for one of two reasons: to provide knowledge or expertise on a specific topic (To bring together experts. ) or to provide representation for groups or departments that together have particular interest in a specific issue. (To bring together representatives on behalf of their constituents. )

Committee tasks or purposes may vary. Examples include:

1. Overview or oversight committees
2. Policy setting committees
3. Information developing committees
4. Administrative or legislative committees

And there are many more possibilities of course.

Let’s bring these ideas together. How does a committee’s task or function fit with either the bringing together of experts or the bringing together of representatives? Take a look at the following chart. It outlines the type of committee membership best suited for different types of committee tasks. One thing that jumps out to me is that representative committees are best suited for non-technical tasks, while technical tasks require experts. So, what types of tasks do you typically ask your safety committee to take on?

If yours is like most systems, your Safety Committee is asked to do such things as review the safety manual, review accident reports and determine what went wrong, make specific suggestions to senior management for safety rule improvements, and other similar tasks. All of which are highly technical it seems to me. And if yours is like most systems your committee is made up of a line worker or two, someone from the meter shop, someone from the office staff, maybe a serviceman, and the Safety Officer. In other words, a representative group. If that describes your committee, you may have a mismatch between the tasks and the membership type. 

But the safety requirements (such as RESAP or others) tell us that we should have a Safety Committee, so what can we do? Well, you do have a way to meet these guidelines and have an effective group. Let’s look at another element of a committee’s description.

The durationof the task or function of the committee is an important consideration too. There are two types of committees by their duration:

• Standing Committee- A permanent committee (even if the actual members change) with on-going tasks/function.
• Ad Hoc Committee- A temporary committee created for a specific task. (Ad Hoc is Latin, meaning “for this.”)

Instead of having a single standing safety committee made up of representatives from different departments, you could choose to appoint a specific group of experts for a specific task. If you need to review an incident in which a pad-mounted transformer failed you can select the 3 or 4 best qualified people and ask them to figure it out. Once they report back, they’re done! A new group can handle the new task, whatever it may be.

A wider range of experts, perhaps a more representative group, would be suited to reviewing the safety manual, for example, and might meet for a longer time before completing their task. You get the idea I am sure. But the final piece of the puzzle is perhaps the most important one. A committee must be “managed” just as a person must.

How can you avoid having a committee meet and flounder? How can you ensure that the committee brings you useful results? Here are some suggestions on things to do to increase the chances of any committee being successful.

1. Describe in writing the committee’s function
2. Describe in writing the knowledge and experience needed to fulfill these duties
3. Make a list of potential candidates for committee membership, those who meet any or all of the knowledge and experience criteria
4. Sort these names until you have managed to cover all of the knowledge/experience criteria with the leastnumber of people.
5. Appoint the suitable candidates to the committee and review the committee’s functional description from Step 1 with each member individually (one at a time.) Be sure to tell each individual what specific knowledge/experience they have that caused you to select them.
6. Communicate the committee’s function, task and responsibility to all key company personnel.
7. Regularly evaluate (in writing) the committee’s performance as measured against the functional description. Note: Evaluation is crucial to success. No business activity continues effectively without constant feedback.
8. Monitor results! If things aren’t working out, make changes.

Too many times ineffective committees are left to their own devices to flounder along long after it is obvious that they aren’t working. No individual employee who fails to perform would be treated this way. Why should a committee?

The concepts discussed in this article are drawn from our seminar Developing Effective Safety Committees – A Radical view! If you would like to have this program presented to your senior leadership group, contact us to arrange it.