While it can be tempting to reduce safety to a set of best practices and regulatory checkboxes, we all know that an engaged workforce is an important key to maintaining a low-risk workplace. That’s easier said than done—getting hurt, making a mistake, or experiencing a near miss make for great stories and collective learning opportunities but when it comes to sharing those events in conversation with co-workers, they probably won’t make the person sharing their experience feel proud. Talking about safety on a personal level can be humbling, intimidating and intimate. 

With the right strategy, safety professionals can face that challenge head-on. Whether it’s in toolbox talks, one-on-one conversations during inspections or even in impromptu chats with workers, these five tactics are surefire ways to make employees feel comfortable talking about personal safety.

Tactic 1: Tell your story first

Leading by example can go a long way in making folks feel comfortable sharing their safety experiences. Telling a story before asking for one in return breaks the ice and demonstrates that you aren’t asking for anything you wouldn’t offer them, building a foundation of trust. But the benefits of telling a story first when speaking with employees individually or in a group have a number of knock-on benefits, too.

Importantly, by telling your story first you demonstrate useful communication criteria: how long a story should be, what details should be included, and what kind of tone you’re looking for. A lot of people have things to share but hold back because they aren’t sure what’s appropriate. By starting with your story you can answer all those questions at once while setting the stage for their turn.

All of this builds confidence, which when combined with the trust that comes with active leadership, is a powerful engagement tool. Normalizing safety talk starts with leaders who are ready to share first.

Tactic 2: Ask open-ended questions

In an ideal world, telling a story would be enough to get folks to open up. And while it might work for some of your more extroverted team members, others might still be reluctant to talk about their own safety experiences. This is when you can take a tip from journalists. Just like a good magazine or podcast interview, an engaging conversation with an employee runs on open-ended questions.

Otherwise known as the 5-Ws, open-ended questions start with the words who, what, when, where, why or how (which is a pattern-breaking honorary member of the group). These are powerful words in the world of communication because they resist yes or no responses, which can kill a conversation in its tracks. At the very least, an open question demands specificity. And the most important three—what, why and how—encourage sharing.

Let’s say you are talking about severe weather safety in your toolbox talk. You start things off with a story about encountering a hazard while driving to work, hoping to kick off a conversation. It might be tempting to ask a closed question like, “Can someone please tell a story about a near miss they had in severe weather conditions?” But that’s risky, as it opens up the possibility of hearing, “No.”

To avoid that conversation-chilling rejection, you can stack the odds in your favor with some open-ended questions instead:

• What’s an example of a time you stayed safe in severe weather?
• How does your workday change when there is a heat wave?
• Why do you think it can be so difficult to adapt to weather conditions while driving?

Just like with telling a story, asking an open-ended question lets others know what information you’re looking for, making participation easier while making it difficult to shut down safety discussions with one-word answers.

Tactic 3: Stay on topic

Once you get a conversation going, it can be tempting to give in to the flow. An engaged discussion can be energizing and is a great sign of high morale, but it is also at risk of veering off-topic. Keep in mind: these workplace interactions should be safety-oriented and it’s your job to keep them moving in the right direction.

It might sound obvious, but the key to staying on topic is to know what your topic is in the first place. Before a toolbox talk, make sure you write down the topic you want to engage with and a few conversational goals. The same goes for inspections and walking the floor. You don’t have to come up with new topics for every person you encounter, but having a well-defined topic or theme of conversation will help you structure open-ended questions, tell your own stories and gauge how well you are doing when it comes to engaging your workforce.

Coming up with topics can be a lot of work, but you’re not alone. There are many online resources you can use for inspiration. Peruse our toolbox talk topics and try using them to set your conversational goals. If you find your team engaging but wandering away from the topic of conversation, a simple open question about safety can be enough to keep folks focused.

Tactic 4: Reinforce participation with positivity

Positive reinforcement is the best way to take a good situation in the moment—like an engaging safety conversation with a worker—and carry it forward. Simple things like saying thanks or giving compliments can incentivize workers to participate next time they have the opportunity. People like hearing complimentary feedback and knowing that other people see value in their contributions. But some more advanced methods of positive reinforcement can really solidify employee engagement, turning a good climate into a strong culture.

Active listening is an effective soft skill that can offer positive reinforcement while a worker is participating. Make eye contact, nod along when you agree and be ready to answer questions they might pose to you. Without interrupting, ask your own questions to show interest. While this tactic is subtle, it stands in stark contrast to inactive listening. How would you feel if your supervisor asked you something and then started multitasking while you spoke?

Going the extra mile can really help, too. Remember what workers contribute to discussions and bring it back up when it’s appropriate in future conversations. Let them know when the insights they share have had an impact on your day. This long-range positive reinforcement is a way to show employees that their contributions have an effect and that at your workplace what people say matters.

Tactic 5: Frame without blame

Embarrassment, shyness and vulnerability are one thing, but fear is another. Some safety discussions are hampered by the discomfort of admitting to incidents and near misses in the first place. Overcoming this conversational obstacle requires a culture of psychological safety, a shared understanding of error and many supporting skills and activities like those mentioned above. That requires a lot of time, effort and skill. But one of the most efficient ways of establishing these organizational capabilities is teaching individuals about human factors. 

By providing context around the holistic elements that contribute to risk, like fatigue, rushing, distraction and other human factors, you are reframing errors, incidents and near misses in ways that explain how they frequently occur unintentionally. In turn, you remove blame from the equation and with that goes the sense of shame that can keep people from participating in workplace safety discussions.

And not just that, the benefits are manyfold:

• A shared understanding of human factors creates a common language for discussing safety.
• It helps listeners increase their awareness of how human factors might be affecting them in any situation.
• It expands the scope of safety beyond the workplace to anywhere workers are—including on the road and at home.
• It levels the playing field between organizational hierarchies and crosses silos which further increases psychological safety and team communication. 
• It helps everyone identify and diagnose human factors in organizational systems.

These five tactics all support each other, so don’t feel like you need to adopt them all at once. Try them out one by one based on what you think will be most helpful, and add new tactics according to your own comfort level. Keep them in mind next time you’re talking about safety with employees, in groups or individually. You might be surprised at the level of engagement you see.