It was not that long ago that we could all keep our attention for hours on end and can sit through several hours of training seminars and remember most of what was covered.

Nowadays, though, we experience so much sensory overload with technology that many of us seem to have … oh look! Squirrel!

[Image courtesy of The Natural Step Canada from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of The Natural Step Canada from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]

I mean to say, attention deficit. We can get easily distracted or just have a hard time focusing on one task at a time. I have found that in my various seminars, workshops and training sessions that if I don’t do various things to keep attendees engaged with me, I have to provide them with breaks more often so they can “refresh” their brains and be able to comprehend what I am teaching more readily.

Having a chance to provide short bursts of safety information in conjunction with (not in lieu of) formal safety training can go a long way in maintaining a positive safety culture. These informal mini-seminars are called “toolbox talks” or “tailgate trainings.”

What is a Toolbox Talk?

As the name suggests, a Toolbox Talk is simply an informal meeting around a toolbox (or the “water cooler,” if you prefer) in which a supervisor, safety officer or manager has a brief discussion with workers on the floor about some important safety protocol or rule for the workplace. These talks could be a reinforcement of some existing protocol or rule, an advisory of a change in the wake of some incident, or it could be discussion of how to operate a new piece of equipment safely.

These sessions only need to be a few short minutes and can focus mainly on one particular topic that is germane to the workers’ jobs. Maybe it’s part of a series of these meetings, or it’s called periodically only to discuss something specific that is a topic of general company conversation.

Developing Toolbox Talks

A recent article in the January 2016 issue of Professional Safety magazine discusses these Toolbox Talks and goes into some suggestions of what make an effective  talk and the various ways that these can be implemented so as to maximize worker engagement and the efficacy of these informal sessions.

While these sessions can be easily adapted to fit any worksite environment, they have become prevalent on construction sites, where temporary work is common and there are increasing numbers of workers who have English as their second (or third) language. These sessions can be provided in native languages by a person in some authority or respect among workers to ensure that the right safety information is not misunderstood by workers.

You need to be reminded that these talks are to engage workers and are not meant to be opportunities for you to hear yourself talk. The most effective ways to treat these sessions are as more a conversation rather than a sermon. One way can be what is called “narrative,” which can be a supervisor or a worker relating a real-life story about safety that others in the group could relate to, whether the event happened to the storyteller or someone close to him/her.  A more collaborative approach could involve the moderator of the meting bringing forth a topic or scenario and getting feedback from individual workers or the group in ways to solve the problem or answer the questions involving that topic. The two key points to these sessions are worker engagement and empowerment. This helps solidify the points your supervisor or safety officer intends to drive home.

In my next post I will further recap this important article to discuss a couple of different construction-site projects and how Toolbox Talks can be used in each of them to convey different points to workers.