Running Effective Toolbox Talks

About this course.

This course gives site supervisors, leading hands, foremen, principal contractors and small-business owners a practical, plain-English guide to running toolbox talks that work. It sets the toolbox talk in its legal context — the duty under the model WHS laws to consult with workers so far as is reasonably practicable — while being clear that a toolbox talk is only one method of consultation and communication, not the whole of that duty. It then works through the practical craft: what separates a talk that shifts behaviour from one that people tune out, how to pick a topic that matters on the day, how to prepare and deliver a short two-way conversation to a workforce that may include subcontractors, apprentices and workers with English as a second language, how to check that people actually understood, and how to record and act on what was raised.

The course deliberately keeps its legal statements general. It refers to duties by their subject matter rather than by citing section or clause numbers, and it points you to the primary sources you should read yourself. Because Australia's WHS laws are a national model adopted separately by each jurisdiction — and because Victoria runs a different Act altogether — the course repeatedly reminds you to check the rules that apply where you work.