The Truth About Safety Toolbox Talks in 2023

January 24, 2021
By N. Nicholas, ASP
The truth about safety toolbox talks

Here’s the reality, most employees don’t take toolbox talks seriously.

In fact, they hardly learn anything from them because these safety talks are hardly engaging.

To make matters worse they aren’t done consistently.

If you think not having regular toolbox talks doesn’t affect your company’s bottom line, think again.

Every toolbox talk session is an investment in each and every employee involved.

The more you educate your employees about safety measures on a consistent basis, the more talks will be fresh in their minds.

Which leads to:

  • Increased worker productivity
  • Improved employee morale because the company values their safety
  • Less workplace accidents 
  • Reduced employee workers compensation costs 
  • More safety based culture
  • A OSHA-complaint workplace 

All of which directly affect your company’s revenue.

Having these regular talks encourages your team to be “safety conscious” which is priceless.

That kind of “safety-first” mentality can saved any company millions.

So it’s a big deal.

How to create the best toolbox talks for your meetings

If you’re planning to just grab a talk you found on google and read it out during the meeting, It’s going to come off as mediocre, redundant  and unprepared.

And your team will pickup on that.

If your team is getting the “I haven’t really prepared for this meeting” kind of vibe, do you think they will take what saying seriously?

Of course not.

They won’t even pay attention because you don’t seem invested, just going through the motion.

As the safety manager or supervisor you need to follow a framework on how to create and structure your talks.

I just created that guide a few days ago, here’s a summary of the main points. 

  1. Never go into safety talk without preparation 
  2. Define your goal meaning what’s the main thing everyone must learn at the end
  3. Prep your team early and let them know a talk is coming up
  4. Work on your delivery
  5. Reward employees with good safety practices 
  6. Make sure to make good eye contact 
  7. Ask questions early to trigger engagement from the team
  8. Give them a chance to talk
  9. Make sure to gather feedback after each meetings 

If you want to see the full guide with each point explained, go here.

Following those simple tips will skyrocket your team’s engagement and make your talks effective.

How Often Should These Talks Be Done?

Even though OSHA doesn’t tell you how often you should have toolbox talks, ideally it’s best to do them at least 3-4 times a week.

It’s not too much or not too little. 

Just the right balance to keep your team reminded and mostly importantly educated about the safety measures. 

Remember, your employees have a lot on their minds and other things competing for their attention.

So you have to make sure that safety is always at the forefront of their minds.

But there’s a problem, doing consistent safety meetings is hard

Preparing and planning consistent safety talks takes of a lot of time and resources whether you’re a small or big company.

It affects production time and each employee have to be present which leads to “rushed” meetings.

And I think you’ll agree that rushed safety meetings won’t cut it.

So as the safety manager you’re at a decision crossroad:

  • Do I keep consistent toolbox talks 3-4 times every week and do “rushed” meetings?

Or…

  • Just do hold talks whenever it’s “convenient”?

To add on top of that COVID-19 has made group toolbox safety meetings dangerous due to risk of transmission.

So there must be another way right?

Actually, there is another way. 

One that won’t require group meetings but also consistently educated your team about safety measures.

This is were automating your toolbox talks become an effective solution to this problem

Let me ask you a question.

What’s one device everyone keeps on themselves at all times?

If your answer is the mobile phone, you are correct. 

As the safety manager, you can use this amazing little device to your advantage to distribute toolbox talks via Safelyio app. 

This way your employees can digest the content at their own pace. 

How to automate safety talks with ease

Let’s create an example of how this can be done.

For example, let’s assume you’re the safety manager for several office locations but one of your location is having a serious Covid-19 breakout. 

For this example, lets say this location is in the state of Oregon.

The Oregon office has 365  employees that needs to be regularly updated and reminded about the safety measures to reduce the spread

So, we will call this “Oregon Team”.

Go to teams, and click “create a team” button.

You’ll be given a popup, enter the name of the team. It’s recommended to the name the team based on the location.

Enter the team’s name and hit create.

Now you’ll be given a invite link that you would email only to the Oregon employees.

After everyone on team Oregon is signed up. It’s time to create a campaign for this location.

Lets name the campaign after the location and select the team’s time zone. In our fictitious example, Our team is somewhere in the state of Oregon and the time zone there is Pacific Standard Time.

Next, it’s time a create a toolbox talk. For this example, let’s go into the toolbox library and copy a pre-made video talk about COVID-19 to our campaign.

I’ll select this 1 minute video that quickly explains how the coronavirus spreads. 

You’ll be able to preview the video in a popup modal to make sure its what you’re looking for.

Now we can schedule this video talk to be sent out on a particular date and time to all 365 employees at the Oregon.

After the talk, the employee would click the “I acknowledge” button to confirm they’ve watched the content.

That’s it.

From my experience as a safety professional, employees and supervisors prefer video safety talks that are easily digestible and delivers relevant information in a short amount of time. 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then video is priceless. 

Video is very engaging, short and your team will learn a safety concept video pretty quickly.

As a safety manager, this makes my job a lot more effective because I can schedule multiple of these mini-talks over a period of weeks and even months.

You would have a massive impact on the entire company’s effort to make the work environment safe for employees and customers.

Final thoughts 

The world is changing very fast because of technology and I think safety professionals must use this change to their advantage.

Your employees are getting more and more tech savvy which means their more open-minded to automation like these.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us here.

See How Easy It Is To Automate Safety Talks Weeks & Months in Advance Saving Hours All While Boosting Safety

Lets show you how Safelyio can help.


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