2 safestart.com

Toolbox talks. Safety startups. Tailgate meetings. Whatever you call them, short discussions with workers are a great way to:

• promote safe working practices

• fi ght complacency

• solidify and sustain lessons from training

• increase employee engagement

• provide opportunities for feedback

Want to deliver more captivating and effective toolbox talks? Then this guide’s for you.

From topic tips to keeping your audience engaged, you’ll learn to take your toolbox talks from bland to grand.

With these 15 tips your safety meetings will be more effective than ever.

15 Tips to Improve Your Toolbox Talks

3www.safestart.com

#1 Set a Goal ............................................................... 5#2 Know Your Audience ............................................... 6#3 Anticipate Problems ................................................ 7#4 Practice and Then Practice More ............................. 8#5 Change Your Approach ............................................ 9#6 Combine Statistics with Engaging Stories .............. 10#7 Be SMART in Your Message ................................. 11#8 Turn It Over to the Audience .................................. 12#9 Look Beyond the Workplace .................................. 13

#10 Be Positive ........................................................... 15#11 Cover Everything—Not Just Compliance ............... 17#12 Tie It to Your Overall Safety Program ..................... 19#13 Testing 1, 2, 3 ...................................................... 20#14 Invest in Toolbox Talks .......................................... 21#15 Create Your Own Talks ........................................... 22

Summary.............................................................. 23

Table of Contents

4 safestart.com

Once you’ve read this guide, the best way to improve your ability to deliver toolbox talks is to focus on a single tip at a time. Select one that feels manageable to you and then work on it for a month or two. Once you’ve mastered it then pick another one.

You may find that you’re already following some of these tips. Others might not suit your needs. Pick tips that are relevant for you and ignore the rest.

This guide contains plenty of useful advice and there’s sure to be a few helpful ideas you can use right away—so let’s get started.

How to Use This Guide

5www.safestart.com

If you only have 5 minutes to prepare for a toolbox talk, spend it asking yourself one question: what do you hope to accomplish with the talk?

Identifying a single clear goal will make for a more direct safety meeting. And goal-setting has been proven to boost the effectiveness of almost any activity.

Are you trying to ensure compliance? Address a recurring issue? Raise awareness? Pick one and then build a safety meeting that zeroes in on your biggest need.

A good rule is that you should be able to describe in a single sentence what you want the talk to accomplish. If you can’t then you’ve still got work to do.

Set a Goal#1

6 safestart.com

You also need to know your audience and how the topic of a toolbox talk relates to them.

Take your corporate agenda items and reposition them in a way that will have meaning and benefi ts to your audience. Don’t tell workers they need to comply with rules to avoid OSHA fi nes—they won’t really care about that.

Try giving them an example they can relate to. You could tell a story about how someone took a shortcut because they were in a rush and it cost them dearly—and that’s why it’s important to follow the rules all the time. Help them draw the connection between the topic at hand and their own personal safety.

Ask, Don’t AssumeDon’t assume you know what matters to your employees. Ask questions—one-on-one questions or as a group where they can put up their hands. Find out what motivates them to come to work. Is it to provide for their family? Or the satisfaction of a job well done? Knowing what they care about will help you engage them directly with safety.

Know Your Audience#2

7www.safestart.com

Lay the groundwork for how you’ll deal with possible issues that may arise. Think about:

• What questions will people likely have?

• How will you answer them and what is your plan B if the toolbox talk gets derailed?

• Is there a diffi cult person that could try to circumvent your message during or after the talk?

Sometimes letting workers know that you can discuss their question personally after the session will be enough to let you continue with your discussion with the group.

Look at your audience as you’re delivering the talk. Are they engaged? Have they gone cold or did you get their attention with anything you said?

Pay attention to these cues and adjust your sessions accordingly. If you can’t react on the spot then keep them in mind when planning your next safety talk.

Anticipate Problems#3

8 safestart.com

Most advice on improving toolbox talks is to develop better material, leverage management support or spend more money. But what if you don’t have more money or support?

You focus on what you can control: yourself.

When it’s time to present a toolbox talk or other critical communication, a lack of presentation skills could seriously hinder effectiveness and results.

Skilled speakers become great through preparation and practice—neither of which require money or support. Deliver better toolbox talks by trying the following:

• read the talk ahead of time to familiarize yourself with the material

• practice reading out loud to increase your comfort level and identify any possible trouble spots

• record yourself reading to ensure you’re speaking in a confi dent and natural tone

• change the words you use so that the toolbox talk doesn’t sound dry or clinical

• prepare a personal story or anecdote to make the talk more authentic and relatable

Practice and Then Practice More

Research shows that being prepared for a presentation improves the odds of success.

Practice is only one aspect of preparation. Setting goals, anticipating issues and planning the session will make your presentation much stronger.

#4

9www.safestart.com

What’s worse than listening to someone read a toolbox talk from a sheet of paper? Not much, actually. Even if you’ve prepared an otherwise great talk, your audience will quickly tune out if you sound like you’re lecturing or droning on.

Focus on engaging workers, not on talking at them. Because it doesn’t matter how good your safety talk is if no one’s paying attention.

An engagement-fi rst approach will boost results. A study from Bucknell University on active learning found that it “leads to better student attitudes” and that “discussion, one form of active learning, surpasses traditional lectures for retention of material, motivating students for further study and developing thinking skills.”1

1 Prince (2004). “Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research” from the Journal of Engineering Education.

• make eye contact and avoid seeming like you’re reading

• use people’s names

• use site-specific examples

• solicit responses directly from the audience

Change Your Approach#5

10 safestart.com

The goal of most toolbox talks is to help workers keep safety in mind throughout the day. A statistic is rarely compelling enough to do that on its own. See for yourself in the examples below.

Imagine gathering your employees at the start of their shift—which scenario do you think is more memorable?

Scenario AYou tell workers the company’s data shows that 75% of hand injuries are caused by taking eyes and mind off task. Because hand injuries are a big problem in the workplace and it is statistically the most likely way they will get injured on the job, they should stay focused on what they’re doing.

Scenario B

You tell workers about Jerry, an employee at another site who always said he could do his job in his sleep—even though he knew 75% of hand injuries at the company were caused by eyes and mind not on task. One day Jerry was using a grinder and let his mind wander because the task was so routine. The grinder drifted a bit and hit a bump. It kicked up and cut through his glove and tendons. Jerry lost the use of his hand.

Most folks think Scenario B would be more likely to resonate with workers—especially if you follow it up by asking what can be learned from Jerry’s story.

Combine Statistics with Engaging Stories#6

11www.safestart.com

Goal-setting gurus recommend setting SMART goals. (The acronym stands for Specifi c, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related.) It’s good advice but isn’t usually applicable to folks who are responsible for safety on a day-to-day basis.

But when it comes to toolbox talks, supervisors have their own SMART guidelines to make safety meetings effi cient and effective.

Before you deliver your next toolbox talk, make sure you’re being SMART.

Message: only a single message

Short: keep it short and simple

A void new info:

Reinforce:

Takeaway:

don’t teach something new; the talk should be a refresher on something they already know

find different ways of conveying the same message, like telling a personal story and also sharing an example specific to your workplace

the message should have a specific takeaway or action to complete—remember goal-setting from tip #1

Be SMART in Your Message#7

12 safestart.com

If you encourage discussions in safety meetings you may have already discovered that workers can deliver part of your toolbox talk for you—and if you’re not doing so then you’re missing out on a powerful engagement tool.

Ask someone to share a story about an incident or near-miss that occurred to them, what hazards others should look out for, and how injry could have been prevented.

In doing so you’ll achieve three goals:

1. Demonstrate that you care about their opinions and experience.

2. Improve knowledge retention because people learn best when they have to recite information.

3. Build engagement and teamwork through peer-to-peer involvement.

Note that if you’re going to ask someone to speak in front of a group, it’s always a good idea to check with them ahead of time and give them an outline of what you’re asking them to do.

Turn It Over to the Audience

Stay on topic Don’t solicit feedback on absolutely everything. You want to make sure the toolbox talk stays on subject so try using phrases like “Do you have a time when you had to deal with ________?” or “If your kid was hired for this job, what sort of advice would you give them when it comes to ______?”

#8

13www.safestart.com

If you deliver safety talks regularly then you’ve probably run into a ‘staleness’ issue—how do you keep talks fresh and interesting if you have to discuss the same problems over and over again?

The most direct solution is to expand the scope of your toolbox talks to include off-the-job stories. Almost every issue that affects workers is caused or made worse by human factors like rushing, frustration, fatigue and complacency that cause people to take their eyes and mind off task.

These same issues plague people at home and on the road too.

Look Beyond the Workplace

The National Safety Council says that workers are nearly 3 times more likely to get injured and 14 times more likely to die from unintentional injuries off the job.

The goal of toolbox talks is to make employees safer so address where they’re getting hurt most often—at home and on the road. You can still focus on workplace hazards but mix in at-home examples to expand your message and stay relevant to employees.

#9

UNINTENTIONAL FATALITIES AND INJURIES

© NATIONAL SAFETY COUNCIL® INJURY FACTS® 2014 EDITION

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

94%

74%

6%

26%

14 safestart.com

Discussing safety at home and on the road may seem like a bit of a sideways approach to workplace safety but it’s effective.

It gets employees thinking about safe behavior in a broader context, which will keep safety at the top of their mind. You’ll have more examples to draw on, which keep things fresh. And you’ll deal with a major area of risk too.

Give it a try. Include a relevant story about a time you or someone you know was hurt at home. Or ask how a safety practice like wearing PPE might apply when doing work around the house.

You could even outline a few safe driving tips that you gave to your teenager when they fi rst got behind the wheel—mentioning good driving behavior in any context will raise awareness among your workers.

Motivation Starts at HomeEvery adult thinks they’re safe enough already. But ask them about their family, their kids in particular, and they’ll say there’s no such thing as “safe enough”.

Workers will participate more if they understand that safety skills can be taught to their kids… once the workers learn them first.

Look Beyond the Workplace#9

15www.safestart.com

Too many toolbox talks feel like a chore. At best they can be boring, and at worst they can come across as scolding workers. Who wants to pay attention to that?

It can be hard to stay positive when you’re frustrated by poor safety performance. But avoiding negativity will make a huge difference in how your talks are received. There’s no simple trick or tidbit of advice for this one. Instead, it requires a change in how you perceive injuries and incidents.

Nobody tries to get hurt. Everybody wants to go home healthy and injury-free. But we all have a different level of personal awareness and safety skills. People have different learning abilities too—not everyone is able to internalize and retain a safety lesson in the same way.

Be Positive#10

16 safestart.com

Getting mad at workers won’t change their behavior in the future because they hadn’t set out to get hurt in the fi rst place. You can’t scare or intimidate anyone into being safer.

A positive, encouraging approach to toolbox talks can foster stronger safety skills, better awareness, and more engagement with the company’s safety culture.

There’s no easy road to positivity. It starts one interaction at a time. It can be challenging to achieve and maintain a positive attitude in the face of workplace incidents, but the benefi ts are worth it.

If you don’t look forward to toolbox talks then nobody else will either. Stay as positive and upbeat as possible, and focus on preventing future injuries rather than scolding workers for past incidents. If you care, so will they.

Be Positive#10

17www.safestart.com

Tip #9 discusses the importance of including off-the-job examples in workplace toolbox talks. It’s just as important to bring in a full range of topics too.

Most toolbox talks cover OSHA standards and other compliance issues. But talking about rules isn’t enough—you also need to deal with why people break them. When workers are rushing, frustrated, tired or complacent they’re more likely to overlook, forget or ignore an important safety regulation.

Even if they follow all the rules, human factors can cause people to take their eyes and mind off task, trip over their own feet or wander into the line-of-fi re when they’re not paying attention.

Cover Everything—Not Just Compliance#11

These 4 StatesRushingFrustrationFatigueComplacency

Critical DecisionsCritical Errors

The 4 States that Affect Worker Safety

For example, moving into the line-of-fire or losing your balance when your eyes or mind were not on the task of walking or driving.

For example, changing what you normally do, choosing a shortcut, rationalizing (or miscalculating) risk or relying on memory.

can cause or contribute to

can influenceor affect

18 safestart.com

When someone doesn’t follow a procedure they’re often categorized as “rule-breakers” who are deliberately ignoring rules. But it’s important to remember that nobody is ever trying to get hurt.

When a rule is broken it’s most often the result of a worker’s state of mind that has clouded their judgement, a lack of good habits or reminders, or overall organizational complacency—all of which are good toolbox topics.

If your toolbox talks aren’t dealing with the states of mind that lead to rules violations and a whole lot of injuries and close calls then your safety meetings have a big blind spot.

You don’t need to overhaul your next talk—but you should include human factors in the conversation.

Where to Start with Human Factors?SafeStart provides a great guided tour of safety-related human factors in a monthly webinar. Sign up at safestart.com/webinars to learn about:

• the four biggest mental states that compromise safety

• how to improve culture and engagement by addressing human error

• human factors training to reduce injuries

Cover Everything—Not Just Compliance#11

19www.safestart.com

Toolbox talks are only one piece of the safety puzzle. From JHAs and observations to reporting systems and compliance training, most safety programs have ways to implement, track and support safe behavior.

Safety meetings present a real opportunity to reinforce almost every aspect of your safety program. They’re a great way to remind workers about elements of safety that aren’t always visible or front of mind.

Toolbox talks are also a chance to support ongoing safety initiatives. For example, if you’re implementing a human factors training program like SafeStart, safety talks are a way for workers to discuss and practice new skills, and for supervisors to boost awareness and decrease risk throughout their day.

Ideally, any training program will offer toolbox talks to help refresh its concepts in the workforce. Above all, make sure toolbox talks share the same message as the rest of your safety training.

Tie It to Your Overall Safety Program#12

20 safestart.com

If your toolbox talks aren’t eliciting the response you’d like then shake things up. Try different approaches, formats, topics and locations to see what works best. You can also ask for feedback from workers to fi nd out what’s working and what isn’t.

Take a systematic approach to testing. Only change up one factor at a time—like where you deliver the talks—and keep everything else the same. This will allow you to accurately assess the value of whatever it is that you’re testing. It may help to make a list of the different factors you want to test and then document the results after every toolbox talk.

Testing 1, 2, 3#13

approachesformatstopicslocations

21www.safestart.com

The Internet makes everything seem easy and accessible. A quick Google search reveals dozens and dozens of free toolbox talks, safety discussion topics and other resources. Unfortunately, when it comes to safety talks you often get what you pay for.

Common issues with free toolbox talks include:• a one-size approach that doesn’t fi t your workplace

• poor production quality

• inaccurate facts and bad advice

• too long or too short

• lack of storytelling/audience engagement

You will fi nd some gems, but you can’t rely soley on free safety talks. Th is means you have two options: buy them from a reputable source or create your own.

Many training programs offer toolbox talks that are often well-produced and effective. If your training provider offers safety talks then take advantage of them. Otherwise, you’re best served by creating your own.

Invest in Toolbox Talks

What to Look for in Free Toolbox Talks Free toolbox talks can still be useful if they address many of the concerns listed in this guide. Know what you’re looking for and don’t compromise—feel free to use this guide to set the bar on quality for free toolbox talk material.

#14

22 safestart.com

Instead of spending money you can spend a bit of effort to craft your own toolbox talks. Even if it’s not perfectly polished, it can still be effective if you follow a few key steps:

• pick a topic your workers might deal with that week

• offer a story about a relevant incident to get things started

• outline what the safety standards are or ask the audience for best practices

• ask how states of mind like rushing, frustration, fatigue and complacency could elevate the risk

Don’t forget to keep it SMART (tip #7) and to practice it a few times fi rst (tip #4).

Your toolbox talk doesn’t need to follow an exact formula. The goal is to engage your workers and get them thinking about possible risks—and anything that gets them talking about hazards, human factors and safety practices will do exactly that.

The time investment is worth it—you’ll get talks tailored to your strengths as a presenter and that are focused on your company’s specifi c safety challenges.

Create Your Own Talks#15

23www.safestart.com

A good toolbox talk can lead to safer behavior, fewer broken rules and more attention paid to human factors that increase the risk of injury.

But even the best toolbox talk can only remind workers of things they already know.

You would never try to teach someone how to use a forklift in a 10-minute toolbox talk, and you shouldn’t limit your discussion of human factors to brief safety meetings either.

Never stop improving your talks. Keep an eye out for new material, new ideas and try new things. There are tons of tweaks you can make—and the better you get, the safer your employees will be.

Here’s to delivering your best toolbox talk yet!

Summary

Toolbox talks are all about communication—but the advice in this guide is only useful if your supervisors read and use it.

Please share this guide with anyone in your organization who delivers toolbox talks or supervises those who do. Feel free to share it with others in the safety industry too—the more we collectively improve our safety meetings, the safer our friends, neighbors and communities will be.

Download an electronic copy to share with others or direct them to safestart.com/toolboxtips

Check out our other safety guides for useful advice and inspiration for future toolbox talks.

Share This With Supervisors and Others

Back InjuriesProtecting against back pain requires a lot more than 15 minutes of instruction on safe lifting techniques. Deal with this chronic issue and apply a few techniques that will strengthen your back safety efforts. Get the guide at safestart.com/backguide

PPE ComplianceEven the most comfortable and stylish PPE isn’t always worn when it’s needed most. Learn about the factors that affect whether employees wear PPE and discover what you can do to improve PPE compliance at safestart.com/ppe

Slips, Trips and Falls54% of slip, trip and fall incidents are caused by employee distraction. This guide outlines the major physical and human factors involved in slips, trips and falls and provides practical solutions to address this problem. Download at safestart.com/stf

About SafeStartSafeStart is the most successful safety training process in the world for developing personal, 24/7 safety skills that address human factors in safety— proven to reduce injuries 50% on average by more than 3,000 clients in 60+ countries.

Copyright © 2017 by Electrolab Limited. All rights reserved. SafeStart is a registered trademark of Electrolab Limited. Printed in Canada.

WebinarsOur webinars are an easy way to get introduced to SafeStart. We host free 45-minute sessions every month as a way for you and your colleagues to learn about SafeStart principles and discover how SafeStart can transform your company’s safety performance.

Learn more at: safestart.com/webinar