Choosing appropriate workplace safety topics for tailboard meetings can make the difference between a lost-time accident (or worse) and preventing it. Ensuring workplace safety is paramount for any organization, especially those managing field crews operating across various locations. As a manager, your primary goal is to protect your team and keep operations running smoothly. This is where tailboard meetings come into play.

Tailboard meetings, those quick, focused safety briefings held before the start of a shift, are a powerful tool for reinforcing safety protocols and addressing potential hazards. When conducted effectively, these meetings can significantly reduce the risk of accidents and enhance overall team efficiency.

In this article, you’ll discover essential workplace safety topics tailored for your tailboard meetings. These topics are designed to resonate with your team, making each meeting a crucial step toward a safer, more productive work environment. By integrating these discussions into your routine, you can ensure that safety remains a top priority, empowering your crew to tackle their tasks with confidence and care.

So, let’s dive into the critical safety topics that will transform your tailboard meetings into a cornerstone of your safety strategy.

Understanding Tailboard Meetings

As mentioned, a tailboard meeting is a pre-work safety briefing where you and your crew can discuss the day’s objectives and hazards associated with the work. Furthermore, it’s time to ensure that all of your team members are on the same page regarding safety and how to mitigate risks so everyone can go home safely at the end of the day.

The tailboard meeting is critical to operations, especially in construction, utilities, and other industries where safety needs to be discussed. However, any industry that utilizes field personnel at remote sites should include a pre-work safety meeting (aka the tailboard meeting).

Importance of Tailboard Meetings

Regular safety briefings offer a variety of benefits, including ensuring that workers understand job hazards, site condition risks, and how to prevent accidents associated with the tasks required for the day. Furthermore, the tailboard meeting helps to bring any obfuscated hazards to light due to the open forum concept, where workers can share their concerns about the associated site conditions, equipment, and task safety.

Critical Elements of Effective Tailboard Meetings

To ensure your tailboard meetings are effective and impactful, focus on the following essential components ⁽¹⁾:

1. Clear Objectives: Begin each meeting with specific safety goals and topics to address. This methodology keeps the discussion focused and relevant.
2. Active Participation: Encourage your team members to share their insights and concerns. Active engagement helps reinforce the importance of safety and fosters a collaborative environment.
3. Relevant Content: Tailor the meeting topics to current tasks, recent incidents, and seasonal considerations. This practice ensures timely and applicable discussions.
4. Concise and Structured Format: Keep meetings brief and structured. In many cases, 10-15 minutes is adequate. This structured approach maintains attention and ensures the meeting fits seamlessly into the workday without causing undue harm to the bottom line.
5. Visual Aids and Demonstrations: Wherever possible, use diagrams, charts, or live demonstrations to illustrate key points. Visual aids can enhance team member understanding and retention of safety protocols for those who learn better visually.
6. Actionable Takeaways: Conclude with clear action items and responsibilities. Ensuring everyone in each crew knows their role and responsibilities to team safety makes it easier to implement the discussed protocols immediately.
7. Follow-Up and Accountability: Review the outcomes of previous meetings regularly and track progress on action items. Holding team members accountable ensures continuous improvement and adherence to safety standards.

Remember, including these key elements is not mandatory but good practice. Safety is, after all, everyone’s responsibility, and it’s crucial everyone knows their role in maintaining safe and effective working conditions.

9 Essential Workplace Safety Topics To Consider For Tailboard Meetings

From my many years of experience running tailboard meetings, I’ve devised a list of nine essential safety topics to include in your pre-work safety meetings. Keep in mind that these items may not all fit your site, nor should you include all of them in every meeting (otherwise, your tailboard meeting will take up too much labor time). Focus on the appropriate topics, and ensure to include the following items within your tailboard meeting calendar of topics.

Safety Protocol Updates

Any updates to safety, changes in protocol, or even discussion of related topics are crucial to effective tailboard meetings. 

Importance of Staying Updated

In 2022, there were 5,498 fatal work injuries in the United States, a 5.7% increase from the previous year. ⁽²⁾ To help avoid and mitigate the risks associated with workplace fatalities, keeping your teams updated with the latest safety protocol is a minimum requirement, especially in dangerous industries like construction.

How to Effectively Communicate Protocol Changes

When you communicate changes to safety protocol, it’s important to ensure that all team members understand. When I used to run tailboard meetings, I would generally draft a quick point-form handout of the vital safety protocol changes and ensure that each team member received a copy. 

In today’s age of electronic communications, using a tool that includes features where you can share critical safety protocols and their changes is crucial. If I were running tailboard meetings today, I would utilize a field reporting tool like 1st Reporting and its Handbook feature that enables you to upload documents that are instantly accessible to team members via the 1st Reporting mobile application, making sharing new protocol changes simple and effective.

Equipment Checks and Maintenance

Daily Equipment Inspections

Daily equipment checks are a part of the job when referring to construction, utilities, or other industries that use equipment. Ensure that teams understand the equipment inspection process and protocol for related communications. Including a brief mention of the necessity of performing equipment pre-use safety inspections is crucial for ensuring a safety mindset with your team before they start their day’s tasks.

Reporting and Addressing Maintenance Issues

Any concerns found via a pre-use equipment inspection must be addressed immediately. Immediate response may include locking out a piece of equipment, should the safety concern be of vital importance. Again, using an app like 1st Reporting with its custom instant notifications feature can help you and your team cut equipment management response times down to a fraction of what they would be otherwise.

Hazard Identification and Reporting

Identifying and reporting hazards at a job site is mandatory in many countries. For example, Canadian Occupational Health and Safety Regulations state that team members must report to management every accident or hazard that has or is likely to cause injury. ⁽³⁾ Similar rules exist in the USA and other civilized countries that value workers’ lives and safety.

Encouraging Prompt Hazard Reporting

Prompt hazard reporting and quick response to hazard management are key to maintaining safe working conditions. That’s why if I were running tailboard meetings, I would use a digital mobile application like 1st Reporting with its customizable instant notification system. This way, your team could complete hazard identification forms, and the appropriate safety officer could receive a notification enabling near-instantaneous response. Remember, when life and safety are on the line, every delay in communicating and mitigating hazards increases the chance that someone is injured or worse.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Proper Use and Maintenance of PPE

Discussing PPE within a tailboard meeting is a crucial step to preventing accidents and ensuring all team members have the appropriate equipment to maintain safe working conditions.

Ensuring Compliance with PPE Guidelines

All PPE should undergo a pre-use inspection that coincides with safety regulations and requirements. For more information about PPE management, review my article, Complete Industry PPE Guide (Personal Protective Equipment).

Emergency Response Procedures

A tailboard meeting should include emergency procedures. Team members need to know their role in emergency response and the appropriate measures to take to ensure emergencies are managed properly. Therefore, all team members must understand the emergency response tasks and obligations prior to an incident occurrence.

Developing and Practicing Emergency Plans

According to OSHA, a workplace emergency is defined as a situation that threatens workers, customers, or the public, halts (or disrupts) operations, or causes damage to persons, equipment, property, or the environment. ⁽⁴⁾ With this definition in mind, your team must have developed emergency plans to counter common or expected emergency scenarios. Typically, these protocols are included in your health and safety manual. However, you should ensure that they are discussed within the daily tailboard meeting to ensure team members understand their responsibilities during an emergency incident.

Ergonomics and Safe Work Practices

Ergonomics and safe work practices are typically discussed in a tailboard meeting. This information may include instructions for safe lifting, safe handling of materials, and the proper utilization of PPE to ensure team member safety.

Importance of Ergonomics in the Field

According to research, approximately 30% of all construction workers report lower back pain. Lower back pain is typically caused and associated with improper lifting practices, which are common when workers are managing their actions at a remote site. ⁽⁵⁾

In the field, team members may not fully understand the importance of working ergonomically (and safely), but this importance should not go unappreciated. Field teams must self-govern their working actions and understand the best practices to avoid stress and strain injuries.

Weather-Related Safety Precautions

Managing any work site where team members spend time outdoors requires an obvious amount of attention to weather conditions. Rain and similar weather conditions can make worksites muddy and slick and hamper operations and safe equipment use.

Adjusting Work Practices Based on Weather

Including a brief mention of the day’s conditions is crucial for team member safety and thus holds a place of importance in your tailboard meeting agenda. Team members must understand how to adjust or even halt working in specific conditions (like not operating cranes during inclement weather like thunderstorms or windy conditions). Therefore, paying attention to and discussing protocols related to weather is crucial for industries like construction or utility management.

For more about safety topics for construction, please read our guide, 12 Safety Topics For Construction Not To Overlook.

Health and Wellness

Health and wellness may seem an odd topic for a tailboard meeting. However, there are most definitely conditions where including health and wellness in your tailboard meeting is crucial. These sorts of situations can include discussing appropriate dressing for weather conditions such as cold or hot weather, ensuring team members drink proper levels of water, and ensuring that workers know when they should respond to cold or hot conditions to avoid situations involving heat stroke or frostbite.

Addressing Fatigue and Stress Management

According to the American Psychological Association, 44% of workers surveyed report feeling physical fatigue at work. Furthermore, nearly 3 of 5 team members reported negative impacts due to work-related stress. ⁽⁶⁾

Fatigue and stress management are also crucial safety concerns to discuss. For example, new team members may feel the need to ‘give it their all’ and, in turn, could overexert themselves. Here’s where your tailboard meeting comes into play. Discuss the day’s goals and objectives, but ensure your team knows not to push themselves to fatigue and not to stress about things out of their control.

Incident Review and Prevention

The last critical workplace safety topic to include in a robust tailboard meeting consists of a review of previous incidents and how these accidents could be prevented. With over 270 million occupational accidents and 160 million work-related diseases worldwide each year, the number of reasons to discuss and prevent incidents is apparent. ⁽⁷⁾

Analyzing Recent Incidents

Including an analysis and brief discussion of previous or recent injuries or incidents is crucial to ensure team members understand the appropriate prevention protocol. If an incident has occurred recently or in the past but is related to the day’s tasks at hand, then inclusion in the tailboard meeting is of the highest importance.

Final Thoughts and Next Steps To Better Tailboard Meetings

Workplace safety is not just a protocol—it’s a culture that needs constant nurturing. By incorporating these nine essential topics into your tailboard meetings, you’re taking proactive steps to ensure the safety and well-being of your team. Remember, effective communication, active participation, and continuous improvement are the cornerstones of a robust safety strategy.

Now, it’s time to implement these insights. Start by implementing these topics in your next tailboard meeting and see the difference. Additionally, leverage tools like the 1st Reporting app to streamline documentation, enhance real-time communication, and ensure accountability. Together, we can create a safer, more efficient work environment for everyone.

Take the initiative today—make safety your top priority and empower your team to work confidently and securely.

Article Sources

1. “Tailboard Meetings and Their Benefit with Sample Form – CompSource Mutual.” 2024. Compsourcemutual.com. 2024. https://www.compsourcemutual.com/resources/safety-library/tailboard-meetings-and-their-benefit-with-sample-form/.
2. “Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries News Release – 2022 A01 Results.” 2022. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2022. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.htm.
3. “Guide to the Investigation and Reporting of Hazardous Occurrences – Canada.ca.” Canada.ca. 2022. https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/reports/investigation-reporting.html.
4. “Emergency Preparedness and Response: Getting Started | Occupational Safety and Health Administration.” 2015. Osha.gov. 2015. https://www.osha.gov/emergency-preparedness/getting-started.
5. “Tracking Sprain and Strain Trends in the Construction Industry – LHSFNA.” LHSFNA. December 7, 2019. https://lhsfna.org/tracking-sprain-and-strain-trends-in-the-construction-industry/#:~:text=About%2030%20percent%20of%20all,what%20conclusions%20can%20we%20draw%3F.
6. Abramson, Ashley. 2022. “Burnout and Stress Are Everywhere.” Https://Www.apa.org. 2022. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-burnout-stress#:~:text=Nearly%203%20in%205%20employees,a%2038%25%20increase%20since%202019..
7. “ILO: Work Hazards Kill Millions, Cost Billions.” 2003. International Labour Organization. May 23, 2003. https://www.ilo.org/resource/article/ilo-work-hazards-kill-millions-cost-billions.