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Tailgate meeting

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A tailgate meeting form is an informal safety meeting which is usually quite short (5-10 minutes) and typically conducted on site prior to a shift or work commencing.

These tailgate meetings enable supervisors and industrial companies (construction, oil and gas etc.) to talk about important and relevant safety topics in a conversational way.

Unlike formal safety training, the purpose of a tailgate meeting is to surface hazards associated with a specific task or operation and discuss it on the context of work on that site.

This makes the conversations more relevant to everyone in attendance, and also creates a more open dialogue about safety issues, which also enables more workers to take an active role in their own safety and in creating and maintaining better safety practices.

The name tailgate meeting stems from practice of meeting around the tailgate of a pickup truck, which is done in the construction industry as well as at sporting and other events. The term and phrase 'tailgate' is used mostly in the Americas, and most other parts of the world call these tailgate meetings

There are a number of very tangible benefits to tailgate meetings including:

  • Creating a culture of safety where people are encouraged to discuss and think about safety on site
  • Keep safety top of mind for all workers as they begin the days work
  • Covering a number of safety topics which give site workers a more comprehensive understanding of a number of different safety issues
  • Tailgate meetings showcase a supervisor and company's commitment to safety

Safety is becoming a more central part of almost every companies operations, and tailgate meetings are one of the great tools every company can easily use to improve safety every day.

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Tailgate meeting safety topics can be broad or very narrow, and they can be associated with specific hazards, processes, tools, equipment and the general working environment.

The most important thing when it comes to tailgate meeting topics is that they are as relevant as possible. This doesn't mean that you need to discuss electrical safety with only electricians, it means that the topic should be relevant to the current project and environment the workers are operating in.

Some tailgate meeting topics are applicable to all sites and so come up fairly often (repetition is good), while some of the topics are much more specific and tailored to a specific aspect of this project.

This list is far from exhaustive, and there are hundreds of tailgate meeting safety topics which you can talk about.

You can get topic ideas from the internet, you can reference past talks, or you can ask workers for the safety topics which they care about.

Typically, it's best to focus on one topic during a tailgate meeting and create a number of discussion points and actions around that topic - but some companies look to cover more ground and more topics as well. The makeup of your tailgate meeting and the topics you cover should be based mostly on what you have seen be successful to date, as well as how you want to embed these talks into your operations moving forward.

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Another important part of running an effective tailgate meeting is documenting it properly.

The best piece of documentation for doing this is a tailgate meeting form. This form, as you can see from the example below, enables the supervisor or person conducting the tailgate meeting to document who was at the meeting, the presented the tailgate meeting, which topics were covered, and provides a sign-off sheet for all of those in attendance.

Documenting your tailgate meetings has a few major benefits:

  • It enables you to keep track of who was in attendance for specific safety meetings
  • It enables you to document what was talked about and covered so you can re-visit that topic in future, or skip it because it has been talked about
  • It enables you to create action items for topics which were discussed, and make a person or people responsible for actioning those things, so that every tailgate meeting becomes more useful
  • It enables you to print or share your tailgate meeting records with other people on the team or at your company

The problem with tailgate meeting forms, like most documents, is that they can be difficult and time-consuming to create, complete and then organise. A supervisor may document a tailgate meeting only to lose the piece of paper he filled it in on.

To make managing tailgate meeting forms easy (as well as other site documents), you can use a dedicated tailgate safety meeting app, also known as toolbox talk app.

These tools enable you to capture information from a mobile or tablet quickly and easily, sync those records online instantly so that they stay organised and searchable, and then export them as hard copy documents like you see below.

Tailgate meeting

Use and customise this better site instruction template for free

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The best way to create tailgate meetings that work is to start conducting them. Tailgate meetings are short and informal and designed to create feedback and collaboration, so they don't need to be well honed and professional presentations.

Documenting and organising your tailgate meetings well is a big part of making your tailgate meeting work in the bigger project or company-wide picture, while making each individual tailgate meeting comes down to the culture of the group and relevance of the topic.

But it's best to not overthink your tailgate meetings. Brainstorm some great tailgate meeting safety topics, setup your systems and processes so that you can document and action your talks properly, and then start conducting your tailgate meetings.

A major part of improving safety on construction and work sites comes down to keeping safety top of mind and creating a transparent culture where people feel comfortable taking the time to consider, care about and discuss safety.

The tailgate meeting can have a very positive impact on all of these things.

Heading lorem ipsum

The best way to create tailgate meetings that work is to start conducting them. Tailgate meetings are short and informal and designed to create feedback and collaboration, so they don't need to be well honed and professional presentations.

Documenting and organising your tailgate meetings well is a big part of making your tailgate meeting work in the bigger project or company-wide picture, while making each individual tailgate meeting comes down to the culture of the group and relevance of the topic.

But it's best to not overthink your tailgate meetings. Brainstorm some great tailgate meeting safety topics, setup your systems and processes so that you can document and action your talks properly, and then start conducting your tailgate meetings.

A major part of improving safety on construction and work sites comes down to keeping safety top of mind and creating a transparent culture where people feel comfortable taking the time to consider, care about and discuss safety.

The tailgate meeting can have a very positive impact on all of these things.

Daily diary template

Site diary template

Complete and organise your daily diaries more efficiently.

Daily diary template

Site diary template

Complete and organise your daily diaries more efficiently.

Sitemate builds best in class tools for built world companies.

About Lance Hodgson

Lance is VP of Marketing at Sitemate. His aim is to bring awareness to a brighter future for the Built World where industrial workers and companies work smarter.

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