How to Run an Effective Toolbox

Talk

Toolbox talks, tailgate meetings, pre-work safety meetings –

whatever you want to call them, these brief safety sessions can be
a valuable opportunity. They help focus your workforce on safety,
prior to the beginning of their work shift, and they are an opportunity
for you to ensure that all of your employees are fit for duty.

Or, they can be dreadfully boring, disorganized, snooze-fests.

Meetings for the sake of meetings are inefficient and often serve no
purpose other than giving the workforce something to complain
about. Your toolbox talks need to be run properly to ensure that
your workers are not just paying attention, but benefitting from the
time spent. They need to be run in a way that will remind your
employees what they should be concentrating on or to impart brand
new knowledge on them. If your workforce is bored, distracted, or
otherwise disengaged, you will achieve nothing other than keeping
your people from working.

So, how do you do it right?

Don't Read to Them

If you think grabbing the safety write-up that gets emailed to you
weekly and reading it to the workforce is going to get the job done,
think again. Nothing is easier to tune out than somebody reading
words off a page. Unless you’re planning on doing impressions and
cartoon voices, your employees will see this as nap time. Doing it
this way makes it harder for you to put any feeling into what you’re
saying, difficult to make eye contact with the people you are
addressing, and it puts the idea in the mind of your audience that
maybe you don’t know anything about the material you’re trying to
present to them. Read those weekly mailings (if that’s what you’re
using) ahead of time. Familiarize yourself with the topic. I know
we’ve all got a love/hate relationship with the internet, but here’s an
opportunity to take advantage of the “love” part of it. Do some
research. Find news stories relevant to what you’re discussing and
other supplemental information. Show your workers how your topic
applies in the real world. If you need inspiration or ideas on what to
discuss with your team, subscribe to the Simplified Safety
newsletter. Just don’t read right off the page!
Engage your Audience

So, once you’re armed with all the information the internet can
provide (from reputable sources, please!), what’s next?

Have a conversation.

Talk with your employees about the chosen safety topic,

not at them. Think back to your school days. Which classes did
you find more entertaining: the ones where your teachers engaged
you and got you to participate, or the ones where the teacher stood
in the front of the class and lectured at you…on and on and on? I’m
guessing the former. And, make no mistake, entertainment is
important. No, you don’t have to tell jokes and juggle (though
juggling would be cool…just not knives…or fire…these
are safety meetings for Pete’s sake!), but you do need to give your
audience a reason to want to pay attention. Don’t speak in a
monotone voice unless you want to lull your employees off to La-
La-Land. DO tell related stories from personal experience, ask
questions of your audience, and have them tell their own personal
anecdotes (but don’t let this run wildly off topic or take an inordinate
amount of time - you still need to control the meeting). Do all this
and watch their attention grow. The more they pay attention, the
more they’ll learn.
Be Relevant

Does most of your work involve digging excavations? Then don’t

do a toolbox talk on steel erection. Do you do a vast majority of
your work at heights? Then why are you discussing forklift
safety? If your topic doesn’t apply to the work you do, then why
teach it? Now, there are topics that don’t apply as much as other
topics do or as frequently, but still apply. You don’t need to
eliminate those, though they may only serve more as backup topics
once your main topics are exhausted. However, if the topic
has nothing to do with what your people do then toss it. Find a
replacement. Try and have a backlog of topics. The Simplified
Safety blog archive is a great place to find inspiration.
There's a Time and Place

If my parents told me this once they told me a thousand times,

“There’s a time and a place for everything.” I’m sure many of you
are nodding your heads in agreement. And, most of the time it was
followed by, “And this is neither the time nor the place!” Well,
luckily my judgment has improved over the years. And you know
what? Mom and Dad were on to something. When and where you
hold your toolbox talks play a big part in how successful or
unsuccessful they will be. Holding a toolbox talk in the work area is
a good idea because it may be easier to demonstrate something
you’re teaching or it may just mean people are already focused on
their work. It can also be a terrible idea if the work place is loud,
uncomfortable, or offers other distractions. Immediately following
lunch can be a great time to hold a meeting because you can find
everybody in one place, but it could also be a terrible idea as
everyone struggles to fight off their food-comas. Make sure that the
time and place you choose to hold your meeting is conducive to
learning because that’s the ultimate goal.

Toolbox talks don’t have to be tricky. Sure you might be a

Pinterest-level demonstrator who’s got all kinds of fancy, outside
the box ideas and visual aids, but you can hold a great toolbox talk
without all that. Just remember though, while it can be simple to
have a great toolbox talk, it’s also fairly easy to turn a topic that had
potential into a poor use of company time. As the Boy Scouts say,
“Be Prepared.” Know your material, know your audience, know
your environment, and make sure everything you plan works within
those parameters. If not, change it up. Better to delay a toolbox
talk and get it right, than to have your workers walk away from your
meeting with nothing to show for it.