Complete Guide to Farm Toolbox Meetings

Health & Safety

Free Farm Toolbox Meeting Template

Looking to structure your toolbox talks? Download our free Farm Toolbox Meeting Template

Farm health and safety is a key priority for any agricultural business owner or operator. A toolbox meeting is an excellent way to maximise health and safety protocols on your farm.

In our complete guide, we'll explore farm toolbox talks and their role on your farm. For further guidance, check out our PDF toolbox meeting template. Use it to inform how you hold toolbox talks on your farm.

What is a toolbox meeting?

Toolbox meetings are meetings held in workplaces for the discussion and improvement of health and safety. They provide an opportunity for managers to share information and insights about safety and operations on a farm.

Another important feature of toolbox meetings is the chance to have conversations with your team. Toolbox meetings are the perfect opportunity to gain insights from team members about health and safety on your farm.

Toolbox meetings generally begin with a defined list of points to be addressed. From there, things could look quite different from one meeting to another. One toolbox meeting might be top-down in nature, with managers guiding team members through new processes or hazards on your farm.

Another toolbox meeting might be highly collaborative. You could hold a meeting with the express intention of garnering feedback and insight from team members on a particular area of your business.

Why are farm toolbox meetings important?

Farm toolbox meetings are critical tools for improving health and safety on rural properties. Here are a few reasons they can be indispensable for your business:

Health and safety updates: Toolbox meetings are the perfect opportunity to share updates with your team. This may involve evolving hazards on your farm or new health and safety processes in place. With a toolbox meeting, you can ensure that everyone stays on the same page.
Insights from across your business: One of the top benefits of a farm toolbox meeting is the ability to solicit insights from employees around your business. Team members who work in particular areas of your business can offer their unique perspectives, leading to better health and safety processes.
Build a safety culture: Regular toolbox meetings help to improve the culture of health and safety in your business. Your team will become accustomed to regular safety discussions and will feel more open to discussing it among themselves and reporting their concerns.

What should you include in a farm toolbox meeting document?

A toolbox meeting document is an important element of successful safety meetings. They can be used before your meeting to help plan what you will cover and who will attend your meeting.

The document can be filled with notes during and after a meeting, allowing it to serve as an agenda and a record. Your farm toolbox meeting document should generally include the following elements:

Meeting details

Your document should begin with some of the basic details of your toolbox meeting, including:

The name of your business.
The location of the meeting.
The date of the meeting.
Key attendees, such as the meeting co-ordinator and WHS representatives.

Persons attending

Next, write a list of meeting attendees. Include their name and job title. It may also be relevant to make a note of significant absentees.

Issues covered

The next section should address the specific issues covered in the meeting. You may fill in this section before the meeting.

You could also add to it if different topics were raised during the meeting. This allows your toolbox meeting document to be an effective record of the discussions that have taken place.

Corrective action record

The final key component of a toolbox meeting document is a corrective action record. Throughout a toolbox meeting, a range of health and safety issues and solutions will be discussed.

After the meeting, key figures should get together and develop a comprehensive corrective action record to address these issues and formulate solutions. Your corrective action record should include elements like:

The risk or hazard to be addressed.
The action(s) to address the hazard.
The person responsible for addressing the hazard.
The timeframe within which the hazard must be addressed.

What topics are addressed in a farm toolbox meeting?

Farms are rife with potential safety concerns. A toolbox meeting could address any number of issues or corrective actions.

Here are some examples of topics that may be addressed in a farm toolbox meeting and the type of discussions that might take place around them.

Risk assessment

Risk assessments are a critical part of health and safety on any farm. In a toolbox meeting, you may discuss upcoming or recently completed risk assessments.

Discussing a risk assessment in a toolbox meeting might include the following elements:

Providing a list of hazards to be analysed in an upcoming risk assessment. Team members could add their own hazards to this list based on their working experiences.
Explaining the future tasks that will be required for a risk assessment to effectively take place.
Discussing insights and corrective actions from a recently conducted risk assessment.

Activity training

Toolbox meetings are the perfect opportunity to discuss training on your farm. You can even conduct training demonstrations for simple tasks. Addressing activity training in a farm toolbox meeting might involve:

Reviewing recent training sessions and having a discussion around effectiveness and room for improvement.
Exploring upcoming tasks or incoming machinery that will require specialised training.
Asking your team for any activities they feel would benefit from refresher training.

Vehicles

Farm vehicles can be a major cause of injury on rural properties. Toolbox meetings are the perfect opportunity to share and discuss ways vehicles can be made safer on farms.

Incorporating vehicle safety into a farm toolbox meeting can involve:

Reviewing recent incidents or near-misses to identify opportunities to improve vehicle safety.
Sharing and discussing information around maintenance schedules and procedures for farm vehicles.
Discussing special upcoming tasks involving farm vehicles. What activities or maintenance are required to ensure these tasks are conducted safely?

Electrical safety

Electrical considerations are a crucial, but often-overlooked area of farm health and safety. It's an important area of focus for farm toolbox meetings.

Consider addressing electrical safety in your next farm toolbox meeting in the following ways:

Asking team members to share insight on areas of the farm where electrical risks exist but have not been attended to.
Reviewing proper inspection and maintenance protocols for electrical equipment on your farm.
Providing additional training for safe handling of electrical equipment, and how to respond to electrical emergencies.

Lone worker safety

Lone working is a necessary but potentially dangerous part of agribusiness. Take advantage of a toolbox talk by discussing the following areas of lone worker safety:

Reviewing lone worker safety checklists and discussing how they can be enacted.
Identifying high-risk tasks that should not be conducted by lone workers, or require significant additional safety protocols.
Reviewing communication protocols for lone workers, such as the role of regular check-ins and the use of safety devices.

Falls

Falls from significant heights are a leading cause of injury on farms. In a farm toolbox meeting, you can mitigate the risk of falls in the following ways:

Identifying areas of the farm where falls are likely to occur. Through a group discussion, you may find out that work is taking place in areas with fall hazards that managers are not aware of.
Discussing the role of safety equipment in managing falls on a farm. Open a group discussion into how this equipment is used and address any issues that team members have experienced.
Asking team members to share any incidents or near-misses that have occurred recently. Analyse changes that are required to mitigate the risk of these instances recurring.

Reporting and documentation

Having top-notch procedures in place for reporting and documentation is essential for successful operations on your farm. A farm toolbox meeting is the perfect time to analyse and upgrade reporting and documentation on your property.

You can achieve this through:

Providing instructions and training for using your farm's reporting system.
Reviewing and discussing your farm's incident reporting system. Is it functioning as intended? Or is it time to upgrade to a digital reporting solution like Onside?
Going over recent reports that have been made. Analyse exactly what went wrong and how similar incidents can be avoided in the future.

Chemical safety

Chemicals like pesticides and herbicides are frequently present on farms. If you don't take the proper approach to dealing with hazardous chemicals, your team can experience life-changing consequences.

Toolbox meetings are the perfect place to review chemical handling and safety procedures on your property in the following ways:

Providing training for staff on the personal protective equipment (PPE) required for undertaking tasks involving hazardous chemicals.
Review storage and handling procedures for hazardous chemicals in your business. Are there any concerns to be addressed?
Providing a refresher on what to do in case of a chemical spill or exposure, including how to report incidents and seek medical help.

Personal protective equipment

PPE is an indispensable part of farm safety. Use farm toolbox meetings to ensure your farm's approach to PPE is up-to-date and effective in the following ways:

Getting feedback from your team on how PPE is being used in your business and how it could be improved.
Analysing tasks in your business where PPE is not used, but potentially should be. Again, seek advice from your team.
Exploring procedures for reporting and replacing damaged PPE. Does your team feel empowered to get the PPE they need to do their jobs safely?

Three tips for improving farm health and safety

Toolbox meetings are one small part of creating safer growing operations. Here are three other ways you can step up health and safety on your property.

Perform regular audits: Conducting regular safety audits is the ideal way to highlight issues in your farm's processes. These audits can lead to important insights to be covered in your health and safety meeting.
Create documents: Other health and safety documents you can use on your farm include health and safety policies and lone worker policies. These policies help your team to maintain legal compliance and think more deeply about farm safety.
Use a farm management app: A farm management app like Onside offers numerous benefits for improving health and safety on your property. Features include a hazard map that can be updated in real-time, easy incident reporting and emergency plans.

A Complete Guide to Farm Toolbox Meetings with PDF Template