Focus on Safety

Late last year, Washington State Labor & Industries selected PIM Savvy to provide small business outreach across the state. We are dedicated to helping small business owners increase knowledge of and compliance with employment-related laws and other laws administered by L&I.

If you are a business owner in Washington state, do you know if you are required to have a safety committee or hold safety meetings? According to Washington Administrative Code 296-800-130, businesses that employ 11 or more employees on the same shift at the same location are required to create a safety committee that is composed of members selected by the employer and others elected by the employees. In addition, the number of members selected by the employees must be equal or greater than the number of members selected by the employer.

You might wonder, how often does the Safety Committee need to meet? Believe it or not, Washington State does not have a requirement for how frequently the committee needs to meet. But the committee is required to define how often, where, and when the meetings will occur.

Third, what does the Safety Committee do? The committee meets regularly and reviews a number of topics including safety and health inspection reports, accident investigations, accident and illness prevention programs. In addition, official minutes must be taken and kept on file for one year.

Finally, what are you required to do if you don’t need to create a Safety Committee? Well, in this case, you probably need to have monthly safety meetings. Safety Committees are generally more effective for large companies and safety meetings are generally more effective for small businesses. The topic of safety meetings deserves its own breakout and will be the focus of a future post.

PIM Savvy is ready to help Washington small businesses with these and other topics individually over the phone, via online meetings, or in person at one of our workshops. Our next workshop is on 6/21. We have safety and labor expertise to share with you. Not only that, these services are free.

Questions? Please DM or contact us at [email protected]. We can also be reached at 206-565-2961. We look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers!

PIM Savvy Inc.