A guide to better safety conversations

This introductory guide to safety conversations helps leaders build clarity, connection, and capability in daily work by moving from compliance checks to meaningful dialogue. It includes principles, steps, and examples leaders can use immediately.

Why safety conversations matter 

Safety conversations have the potential to shape how people think, decide, coordinate, and care. They influence whether an employee feels heard, whether leaders understand what is really happening, and whether risks are managed in ways that make sense on the ground. 

At their best, safety conversations create: 

• Clarity about work and its risks 
• Connection between people who depend on each other 
• Capability to recognise, respond, and adapt
• Continuous learning, so problems become possibilities 

At their worst, they become:

• Box-ticking rituals 
• Polite-but-empty exchanges 
• Blame-seeking interrogations
• Narrow checks for compliance rather than understanding 

This guide helps you move toward the former; conversations that make work safer, smarter, and more human. 

What makes a safety conversation useful? 

A useful safety conversation does three things: 

1. It reveals how work really gets done. Not how the procedure describes it. Not how the audit checklist imagines it. But the real pressures, constraints, trade-offs, and adjustments people make every day.
   
   
2. It strengthens relationships. People rarely share deep insights, risks, or concerns with someone they don’t trust. Safety is relational: when trust increases, information quality improves.
   
   
3. It leads to better decisions and better conditions. Not by blaming individuals or adding more rules, but by understanding and improving the system in which work happens. 
   
   

Common pitfalls that reduce safety conversations to noise

Many organisations fall into predictable traps: 

• Conversation as control. Leaders ask questions to test, check, or verify compliance. Workers protect themselves, offer the “safe” answer, or go quiet. 
  
• Chasing compliance. The focus becomes: Are you following the rules? This tells you nothing about what makes the job easy or hard. 
  
• Talking without curiosity. Leaders talk more than they listen, give advice too early, or fill silence with assumptions. 
  
• Focusing on failure instead of capability. We ask what went wrong instead of exploring: What enables, or could enable, people to get it right every day? 

The steps in this guide can help leaders shift from policing conversations to learning conversations, and from shallow exchanges to meaningful ones. 

A practical conversation flow  

This six-step flow works in any field, office, workshop, or boardroom. 

Step 1: Open (Connection & context) 

Purpose: create ease, warmth, and readiness. 

Examples: 

• “How’s your day going so far?” 
• “What’s happening on site today?” 
• “Anything already surprising, frustrating, or going better than expected?” 

Tip: Don’t rush this; it sets the emotional tone. 

Step 2: Explore how work happens (not the paperwork) 

Purpose: understand realities, pressures, variability, and expertise. 

Examples: 

• “What’s a tricky/favourite part of this job?” 
• “Where might this get messy?” 
• “If something were to go wrong here, what would most likely be the reason?” 

Goal: See the world through their eyes. 

Step 3: Identify what’s hindering, and what could help 

Purpose: uncover system conditions, not personal faults. 

Examples: 

• “What makes this easier?” 
• “What slows you down or introduces risk?” 
• “Where do you have to improvise?” 
• “What’s one thing that would make this work safer or smoother?” 

Step 4: Call things out (if necessary) 

Better safety conversations aren’t soft, permissive, or conflict-avoidant. They blend connection with courage, care with clarity. Safety leaders must be able to say: 

• “I’m worried about this. Can we talk it through?” 
• “I need to be upfront; the way this is set up isn’t safe enough. I know you’re doing your best with what you’ve got. Let’s pause, understand what’s going on, and figure out a safer way forward together.”  
• “What’s making this the best available option right now?” 

Remember, how you say it determines whether people retreat or engage. 

Step 5: Co-create improvements 

Purpose: generate better ways of working; not impose fixes from above. 

Examples: 

• “Based on what you’ve said, what small shift would help?” 
• “Who else needs to be involved?” 
• “What’s one thing we could try?" 

Step 6: Close  

Purpose: reinforce trust and create forward momentum. 

Examples: 

• “Thanks for walking me through that.” 
• “Here’s what I’m taking away…” 
• “I’ll follow up on X by Friday.” 

Conversation starters you can use today

For a comprehensive list of questions that support better safety conversations, download the Better Questions Guide from HOPLAB.  

What to do/not to do in safety conversations 

Better safety starts with better conversations 

Safety isn’t only about procedures or controls. It is fundamentally about relationships and conversation; the everyday moments where people make sense of work, navigate uncertainty, and keep each other safe. 

When leaders learn to have better conversations, safety stops being something to enforce and becomes something people can create together. 

This introductory guide is an invitation to slow down, get curious, speak with courage, and see work with fresh eyes. Because every conversation is an opportunity; to learn, connect, challenge, and help work go right. 

• Learn more about safety leadership in practice through our Safety Leadership Series
• Develop and implement safety conversation skills and other safety leadership principles through our 6–12 month  Safety Leadership Program.