What is a toolbox talk?

What a toolbox talk is

HSE's definition is as short as the talk should be: "a short presentation to the workforce on a single aspect of health and safety". The important words are "short" and "single". It is one subject, a few minutes, given to the people doing the job, in the place they do it.

Toolbox talks are best known on construction sites, but they work anywhere people do practical work: a warehouse, a workshop, a kitchen, a care home, a cleaning team at a client's building. The subject is whatever matters this week: the ladder that is about to be used, or the near miss on Tuesday.

It helps to be clear what a toolbox talk is not.

Is a toolbox talk a legal requirement?

No regulation requires a toolbox talk by name. What the law requires is the thing a toolbox talk delivers.

• Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires every employer to provide the information, instruction, training and supervision necessary for the health and safety of employees, so far as is reasonably practicable.
• Regulation 13 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires health and safety training on recruitment and when risks change. It must be "repeated periodically where appropriate" and adapted to new or changed risks.
• Regulation 10 of the same Regulations requires employers to give employees information they can understand on the risks and the precautions.

A toolbox talk is one way of meeting those duties. It suits the "repeated periodically" and "adapted to new risks" parts well, because it is quick enough to do often and easy to point at this week's work.

HSE's own guidance treats talks in the same way. It lists toolbox talks among the ways of consulting employees directly on health and safety, which employers are also required to do. Its asbestos guidance says refresher awareness can be given as a safety talk in house by a competent supervisor. Its construction guidance says a site induction should explain how workers will be briefed on an ongoing basis, "e.g. toolbox talks".

Two limits are worth knowing. A talk does not replace the training someone needs before they use equipment or do a hazardous task. And many clients and principal contractors require regular toolbox talks, with records, as a condition of working for them. That makes them compulsory for you on that job. It is a contract term, not a regulation.

How long and how often

The law gives no length and no frequency. What follows is common practice.

Length. Five to fifteen minutes. Past fifteen, people stop listening and the job is waiting. If a subject will not fit, split it into two talks.

Frequency. It depends on how fast the hazards change. Many construction sites hold one every week. Many workshops, warehouses and factories hold one a fortnight or one a month. A fixed day and time works better than "when we get round to it".

On top of the regular talk, hold one when something happens:

• after an accident or a near miss, while it is fresh
• before a job the team does not do often
• when new equipment, a new substance or a new method arrives
• when an inspection finds the same fault twice
• when the season changes the risk: ice, heat, dark mornings
• when new people join the team

Our list of toolbox talk topics has around forty subjects and a twelve-month programme to start from.

Who should give it

Usually the supervisor or foreman. They know the job, they know the people, and it is their instruction the team follows for the rest of the day. HSE's guidance on supervision is that supervisors need to make sure the workers they are responsible for understand the risks and the measures to control them. A toolbox talk is that duty in practice.

The person giving the talk does not need a safety qualification. They do need to understand the subject well enough to answer questions, and to say "I will find out" when they cannot. For a technical subject, such as asbestos or a new machine, bring in someone who knows it: your safety adviser, the hire company, the supplier.

Let experienced members of the team give one now and then. People listen differently to a colleague who has done the job for twenty years.

How to run a good toolbox talk

1. Pick one subject and tie it to this week's work. "Ladders, because we start on the gutters tomorrow" beats "working at height".
2. Give it where the work is. Stand by the racking, the saw or the excavation. Point at things.
3. Do it at the start of the shift. Not at the end, when everyone wants to go home.
4. Open with something that happened. A near miss here, a defect found last week. Real events hold attention.
5. Make three to five points and stop. Say what the hazard is, what can go wrong, and what you want people to do.
6. Show, do not only tell. Bring the damaged sling. Demonstrate the pre-use check.
7. Ask questions and wait for answers. "What would you check on this ladder?" tells you more than "any questions?".
8. Write down what people raise, and act on it. The quickest way to kill toolbox talks is to ignore what was said in the last one.

HSE's guidance on involving workers adds a point that is easy to miss: if some of the team have limited English or find reading hard, allow more time, use pictures, and check understanding. A talk nobody followed has not informed anyone.

If you want something to read from, we have written two complete talks: a manual handling toolbox talk and a working at height toolbox talk. HSE also publishes free toolbox talks for construction.

How to record attendance

Write the record while everyone is still standing there. It needs:

• the subject of the talk
• the date, the time and where it was given
• who gave it
• the key points that were covered
• any questions or problems the team raised
• the name of everyone who was there, with a signature if you are using paper
• the names of people who should have been there and were not

The last line is the one most often left off. Whoever was on holiday or on another job still needs the talk, and the record should show when they got it. Our free toolbox talk record sheet has a space for each of these.

Why the record matters

Neither section 2 nor regulation 13 says how training must be recorded, so there is no set form for a toolbox talk record. Keep one anyway, for four reasons.

• It shows the information was given. After an accident, an inspector or an insurer will ask what the injured person had been told about that risk, and when. A dated sheet with their name on it answers the question.
• It shows who was missed. Without a list, the same people miss every talk and nobody notices.
• It holds what the team told you. The questions raised are free information about what is going wrong on the job.
• It helps you plan. HSE's advice is that keeping training records will help you decide if refresher training is needed. A year of records shows which subjects have never come up.

Recording toolbox talks in SafetyPro360

In SafetyPro360 a toolbox talk is recorded with its title, topic, date, duration and key points. You choose who was required to attend and mark who did. Anyone required who did not attend goes on an outstanding list until they have had the talk. It works in a web browser on a phone, so the record can be made on site. The product does not collect signatures and does not schedule talks for you. If a client asks for signatures, keep the paper sheet as well.

Questions people ask