Take 5 Safety: How to Run a Pre-Start Check Crews Take Seriously
If you work on Australian sites, you have probably filled out a Take 5. Plenty of people have filled out hundreds. The question is whether the card in their pocket changed anything about how the job was done. Done properly, a Take 5 safety check is one of the simplest tools on site. Done on autopilot, it is just another form.
What is a Take 5?
A Take 5 is a short, personal risk check done right before a task starts. The worker stops, looks at the job in front of them, and asks what has changed and what could hurt them. It is quick, and the person about to do the work fills it in.
The name comes from its five steps.
The five steps
Wording varies between companies, but the usual pattern looks like this:
- Stop and think. Step back from the task before you start. What exactly are you about to do?
- Look for hazards. Walk the area. Check for anything that is different from last time: weather, ground conditions, other crews, plant, energy sources, people nearby.
- Assess the risk. For each hazard, how likely is it to hurt someone, and how badly?
- Control the hazard. Put the right control in place before you start. If you cannot control it, do not start.
- Do the job safely, and keep watching. If conditions change, stop and do it again.
You can download our free Take 5 checklist to use on site or adapt for your own team.
Do you have to do a Take 5?
No. The model Work Health and Safety Regulations do not mention a Take 5. What they do require is that a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) identifies reasonably foreseeable hazards (regulation 34), eliminates risks so far as is reasonably practicable or, if that is not possible, minimises them (regulation 35), and uses the hierarchy of control measures to do it (regulation 36).
A Take 5 is one practical way to support that duty at the point of work. It does not replace a risk assessment, a job safety analysis or a Safe Work Method Statement. It sits underneath them, picking up the things that change from day to day.
Note that Victoria has its own OHS Act and regulations rather than the model WHS laws, but the expectation to identify and control hazards is the same.
Take 5 vs JSA vs SWMS
These three get confused all the time:
- Take 5: personal, quick, done before each task or when conditions change.
- JSA (job safety analysis): breaks a specific task into steps and records hazards and controls for each one. Usually done by the crew before a non-routine job.
- SWMS (Safe Work Method Statement): a legal requirement for the 18 categories of high risk construction work under the WHS Regulations.
If you need to break a task into steps, our free JSA template sets it out for you.
Why Take 5s turn into tick-and-flick
If every card says “no hazards identified”, the process is not working. The usual causes:
- Pre-filled cards. Workers fill them in at smoko for the whole day.
- No one reads them. If a supervisor never looks at a card, workers learn it does not matter.
- Nothing happens when someone raises an issue. One ignored hazard is enough to teach a crew to stop writing them down.
- Too many questions. Once a Take 5 has 30 tick boxes, nobody reads it properly.
How to make them count
- Keep the card short, and include one open question: “What is different today?”
- Have supervisors read a sample each week and talk to the people who wrote them.
- Feed real hazards into your hazard register so someone fixes them.
- When a Take 5 stops a job, say so in the next toolbox talk. Crews need to see it pay off.
Hazards picked up on a Take 5 should flow into your wider WHS risk management process, and the OHS and WHS risk management guide explains how the pieces connect. Our WHS templates hub has more free checklists.
Getting hazards off the card and into action
Take 5 systems usually fall down after the card is filled in. Lahebo lets you log hazards into your risk register, and give each fix to a named person to close out. If you want to see how that works for your sites, book a demo.
