Pre-starts — often called toolbox talks, pre-shift meetings or daily safety briefings — are part of everyday work across many industries.
When they’re done well, they help teams feel prepared, focused and aligned before the day begins. They set the tone for how people think about risk, how they communicate with one another, and how they show up to the work ahead.
Yet for many teams, the experience of pre-starts doesn’t always match the intention.
As one leader reflects during a recent discussion on pre-starts:
It’s the first touchpoint for the day. If the tone isn’t right, it follows you all the way through.
Most leaders genuinely want pre-starts to motivate and protect their teams. At the same time, many workers describe them as repetitive, rushed or easy to tune out. Over time, what’s meant to be a meaningful safety conversation can start to feel like background noise.
So what makes the difference between a pre-start that becomes routine, and one that genuinely shapes how people show up to work?
Dr Vanessa Cook
Head of Positive Safety
Sentis
Rebecca Hill
Wagon Maintenance Superintendent
Aurizon
Adrian Niebling
Safety & Environmental Manager
NRG Services
This article draws on insights from Dr Vanessa Cook, Head of Positive Safety at Sentis, alongside industry leaders Rebecca Hill, who brings over 25 years of experience across heavy industry at Aurizon, and Adrian Niebling, a safety and systems leader at NRG Services with more than 20 years’ experience across construction, manufacturing and major projects.
Together, they share practical reflections on why pre-starts often fall short and what they’ve learned about making them more meaningful in real workplaces.
Why pre-starts matter more than we think
Pre-starts are often the first meaningful interaction a team has at the start of the day. They shape focus, mindset and behaviour long before work begins.
Vanessa explains it simply:
“We want people motivated, risk aware and communicating effectively. And pre-starts are where those attitudes start.”
Despite this intention, research consistently highlights a gap between what leaders hope pre-starts achieve and how they are experienced on the ground. A Sentis survey of 11,985 respondents across 7 industries reveals 51% of employees describe their team safety meetings as a poor to average experience.
Leaders commonly notice the same patterns emerging over time:
- people are physically present but mentally elsewhere
- low participation
- leaders are reading from scripts
- conversations become monotonous
When pre-starts look and sound identical, familiarity breeds complacency. Attention drifts, messages blur together, and the opportunity to influence behaviour is quietly lost.
This isn’t a failure of care or intent. It reflects the reality of busy, complex environments and the fact that many leaders are doing the best they can with the time, expectations and tools available to them.
The real-world constraints leaders face
In practice, even well-intended pre-starts can be undermined by the conditions they’re delivered in. Noise, distractions and poor locations are common barriers.
Adrian shares a familiar example:
I’ve seen pre-starts run next to a generator on site. You’ve lost people before you’ve even opened your mouth.
In other workplaces, pre-starts happen on buses or in crowded rooms where people can’t see or hear properly. Engagement is lost before the conversation even begins.
There’s also pressure on leaders to cover everything. Rebecca notes that developing leaders often feel responsible for including every hazard and every message, every time:
They want to cover everything all of the time. But people only remember three things when they leave the room.
Trying to say too much often results in very little being retained. These challenges are understandable, but they also point to an opportunity to rethink how pre-starts are designed and delivered.
What effective pre-starts do differently
Despite these constraints, some teams are finding ways to make pre-starts more meaningful. Their approaches aren’t complex or time-consuming. Instead, they are intentional.
Rather than relying on a single technique, effective pre-starts work because they combine a few consistent elements. Together, these elements help leaders create conversations that people actually pay attention to, participate in and carry with them into the day ahead.
1. Set people up for success
Attention is limited. People can only focus on one thing at a time, especially at the start of a busy shift.
Effective pre-starts are more likely to be:
- held in a space where people can see and hear each other
- short and purposeful
- delivered with eye contact and presence
- centred on a small number of clear messages
Rebecca describes a simple shift her team made to put these insights into action:
We started asking three questions: What’s the work of the day? What’s going to hurt me? And what do I need to do to stay safe?
2. Ask better questions
The quality of a pre-start is often shaped by the quality of the questions being asked. Many pre-starts rely on closed questions designed to check compliance rather than invite thinking, such as:
- Everyone understand?
- Any issues?
- All good to go?
These questions are quick and familiar but they rarely tell leaders what people are actually thinking or noticing.
As Vanessa explains:
People will always say yes. No one wants to look like the one who doesn’t get it in front of the crew.
Open questions, on the other hand, change the dynamic. They invite people to reflect on the work ahead, draw on their experience and take ownership of safety in the moment:
- What risks are you most concerned about today?
- What might make this job harder than usual?
- What will help us work safely on this task?
These questions don’t just gather information, they signal that leaders value input and expect people to think, not just listen.
Rebecca emphasises the role this plays in building psychological safety:
It’s not a safe space because we say it is. It’s a safe space because we show it is.
3. Use storytelling to make it real
Facts, procedures and controls matter — they provide structure and clarity. But on their own, they rarely change how people experience risk. Stories help bridge that gap.
By sharing real experiences, leaders can connect safety messages to emotions and consequences that matter to people. Stories turn abstract rules into something personal and memorable.
Rebecca shares the impact of talking openly about a serious incident with her team:
When we talked about what happened, people started opening up about their own experiences. That’s when it became real. It wasn’t just a safety message anymore — it was about families and getting home.
Grounding the conversation in lived experience shifted the focus from compliance to care. Adrian saw a similar effect when he shared a personal fatigue story:
I told a story about a fatigue incident from when I was younger. Then four or five others shared similar experiences. That’s when people start thinking differently.
Stories don’t need to be long or dramatic. The most effective ones are simple, honest and relevant to the work people are doing right now.
4. Keep it engaging and unexpected
Our brains constantly filter information, prioritising what feels most relevant in the moment. We’re more likely to pay attention to things that feel Dangerous, Important, Pleasurable or Interesting.
When pre-starts become predictable, they slip below this filter. Even important messages can be tuned out simply because they feel familiar.
Introducing small elements of novelty helps reset attention and bring people back into the conversation.
Adrian describes a simple approach his team uses:
We created a dice game. They don’t know what’s going to come up, so they have to think on the spot — just like they do in real work.
Other teams refresh pre-starts by making small but intentional changes, such as:
- rotating facilitators
- changing locations
- recognising good work
- using visual prompts
These changes don’t trivialise safety. They help restore attention, curiosity and participation, and make it more likely that safety messages are noticed, discussed and carried into the day’s work.
5. Close the loop with feedback
Nothing damages trust faster than asking for input and doing nothing with it.
Adrian shares an example of a worker raising an issue about fogging safety glasses:
Once the issue was followed up and a new solution trialled, it opened up more trust.
Rebecca observes the same pattern:
Once we gave people feedback, nearly everyone said, ‘That’s all we wanted — just to know it was being heard.
When leaders report back on what’s been raised, participation grows. Over time, pre-starts become a place where problems are surfaced and solved.
A mindset shift for leaders
It can be tempting to see pre-starts as a formality, a script, or even an interruption to ‘real’ work. The leaders in this discussion view them differently.
They describe pre-starts as one of the few consistent moments in the day where leaders can deliberately influence how work is approached. A space to pause, read the room, connect with people and reinforce what matters.
For many leaders, improving pre-starts doesn’t require a new process or program. It starts with small, intentional choices, whether that’s asking one better question, sharing one honest story, or following up on something that was raised.
Over time, those choices shape how people experience the start of their day and how safety is thought about beyond the pre-start itself.
As Vanessa sums it up:
Pre-starts are already happening every day. The opportunity isn’t to add more — it’s to make them matter.
