5 Ways to Deliver an Effective Safety Talk

and one you wouldn't expect ...

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Small Business Safety Pro.

Weekly or monthly safety talks or “toolbox talks” are becoming increasingly common among companies looking to deliver relevant safety information to their workers. It’s a great way to raise awareness for safety initiatives, ensure that you’re doing your due diligence when it comes to safety training and open up the floor for a quick Q&A with your team.

However, there can be a wide variation in how effective these talks really are. Done right, they are engaging, informative and spark excellent feedback and discussion. Done wrong, they can be confusing, rambling and even give workers the impression that you’re just “checking the box” and not really committed to what you’re saying. What makes a safety talk interesting and engaging?

How can you make it clear? And how do you make sure it doesn’t suck?

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Key Points at a Glance

• Safety talks are a great way to regularly communicate with your crew and keep safety top of mind.

• The talks should be brief, focused and use a story or relevant example to make it real.

• You must communicate consistently and review information on a regular basis to make it stick.

• Consider letting team members give the talk on occasion to spark interest and give a different point of view.

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Here are my top 5 tips for safety talks and a bonus one at the end that you might not expect.

1. Focus on One Key Point

Keep your message short and focused—one hazard, one behavior, or one reminder. People remember simple messages better than lectures. For example, instead of providing instructions on how to use all different types of PPE, just focus on why gloves matter for one specific task.

Short, focused messages hold an employee’s attention and are likely to stick with them longer. Once you start to go off on multiple topics, you risk having your team start to tune you out. If you start to see blank stares, eyerolls or people whispering to each other – it’s time to wrap it up.

2. Make It Relevant

Tailor the talk to the actual work your team is doing that day or week. Workers need to see how a particular message applies directly to them if you want to capture their attention.

A good way to come up with relevant topics is to review recent or historical incidents in your workplace. What happened? What was the outcome (protecting the privacy of those involved of course)? What corrective actions were taken? Did they solve the problem?

Using this kind of targeted message is much more effective than just reading out some generic content.

3. Use a Story or Example

Stories are memorable and emotional. Use a short story to highlight why the topic matters—whether it’s a personal experience, a real incident, or a hypothetical 'what if' scenario.

As humans, we’re drawn to stories. The more you provide some background and a narrative, the more employees will be drawn to it and the longer it will stay in their mind. You want to give enough context for people to care about the outcome, but keep it concise enough that their attention doesn’t start to fade.

4. Involve the Crew

Ask a question, get someone to share a thought, or do a quick show of hands. When people participate, they engage more and retain more. This also helps build your safety culture instead of just ticking boxes.

Getting the crew involved gives you a great opportunity for feedback on your safety program and specific risks or hazards in the workplace. Giving employees a chance to speak up and tell you what problems they’re experiencing and what they have to deal with on a daily basis can give you some ideas on what needs to be changed, where deficiencies lie and whether your safety training is effective.

5. Be Brief but Consistent

In today’s society of quick hits, soundbites and ubiquitous content, our attention spans are short.

Like, goldfish short.

We can debate whether that’s a good thing or bad thing, but it’s the reality we currently live in. If you want people to listen to your safety talks, the message needs to follow this principle. Long, rambling monologues are the best way to get your workforce to tune you out and miss the entire point of the session.

Aim for a talk of 2–5 minutes, delivered regularly. Routine and rhythm matter more than length or formality. This sets the tone that safety is a consistent priority, not an interruption.

Having your safety talk on a regular schedule also gives you opportunities to reinforce the message. This reinforcement is critical to getting your team to remember and retain information.

Information that is delivered once is mostly forgotten within a week. Information that has been repeated multiple times will gradually start to stick. You can’t just tell people once and expect them to remember, you have to consistently repeat the message until it sinks in. And then repeat it some more.

Bonus: Don’t Be the Expert

Finally, here’s one you might find a bit counterintuitive:

Let someone else, especially a frontline worker, lead the talk occasionally.

Allowing a different voice to take the lead automatically spurs interest – what does this new person have to say?

Additionally, in the eyes of workers, one of their own has instant credibility. They know the job, they know the problems workers face, they’ve been there and done that and members of the team view them as trustworthy. As a manager, it might be a tough pill to swallow, but workers will often listen more closely to a peer than a manager.

Giving your workers this opportunity builds greater employee ownership in your safety culture, shows respect, and may reveal blind spots in your safety plan you don’t see from the management side of things.

To recap, keep it brief and focused, make it relevant, and involve the crew. And try stepping back and letting someone else lead once in a while, you might be surprised at the results.

That’s it for this week, but before I go, I need your help. I’m putting together my first digital training and need your input on what topics you’d like to see covered.

Do you need help with getting management and worker buy in? Dealing with limited resources? Building Safety culture? Dealing with contractor management? Mental health and psychosocial hazards or something else?

Also, what format would you prefer? A live training? Video walk throughs with slides? E-books or checklists and templates?

Drop me a message below and let me know. I’ll select one of the responses at random to get a free copy of the training.

Small Business Safety Pro is published every Tuesday on LinkedIn and Substack.

Cheers,

Dan.