Take 5

What is a Take 5 pre-task risk assessment?

A Take 5 is a personal, point-of-work check you do right before you begin a task. It complements (but never replaces) your Safe Work Method Statement (SWMS) and site procedures by confirming the job is safe in today’s conditions.

Even the best documentation can’t capture every real-time change—yesterday’s thunderstorm can leave a walkway slippery, or another crew can park equipment across an emergency exit. A Take 5 functions as a dynamic risk assessment that helps you spot these changes before they become incidents.

Most Take 5s use a small card or an app with a short checklist and a simple risk matrix. You record the task, identify hazards, rate risk, confirm controls (using the hierarchy of controls), and make a clear go/no-go decision.

How a Take 5 works

The format varies by industry, but the intent is consistent: you pause, scan, assess, control, then keep watching as conditions change. If you treat it as a genuine decision point—not a form—you get the safety value it’s meant to deliver.

The assessment typically covers:

• Stop and think before starting
• Identify hazards in your immediate environment
• Assess the risk level
• Confirm controls are in place
• Monitor conditions as you work

1. Stop and think

You’re most likely to miss hazards when you’re rushing or repeating a familiar task. The “Stop” step breaks autopilot and forces active thinking.

Make the pause visible. Many sites use a simple rule like stepping back about two metres so you can see overhead hazards, adjacent workgroups, and your escape route.

2. Look and identify

Do a quick sensory sweep of the area—up, down, behind you, and along your travel path. Don’t just look for objects; think in terms of uncontrolled energy like gravity, motion, mechanical energy, electrical, pressure (hydraulics), thermal, chemical, and biological hazards.

In Australia, prompts often reflect local conditions. Remote sites may prompt you about snakes, spiders, and biting insects, while busy worksites focus on traffic interfaces, exclusion zones, and interactions with other contractors.

Many organisations also include "human factors" prompts (fatigue, distraction, time pressure). These aren't soft issues—your mental state changes how you see risk and how safely you execute controls.

3. Assess the risk

Rate the risk using the matrix on the card or in the app (usually likelihood × consequence). Don’t rate based on how often you “get away with it”—rate based on the worst credible outcome if controls fail.

A dropped tool might usually just rattle on the floor, but if people are below it can be catastrophic. This step forces you to acknowledge that credible outcome before you proceed.

4. Control the hazards

Apply controls starting at the top of the hierarchy of controls. If you find yourself relying only on administrative controls or PPE, treat that as a flag that higher-level controls may be missing.

A common limitation is that you can’t always implement higher-level controls as an individual worker. That’s why your Take 5 process needs clear escalation pathways and support from supervision.

If you can’t control the risk to an acceptable level with the resources available, you stop. That’s where stop-work authority is essential: you pause the job and escalate rather than “making do”.

5. Monitor

Risk isn’t static. Weather changes, light fades, equipment moves, and other workgroups enter the area.

Keep checking as you work, especially after breaks or when the task changes. If conditions shift materially, repeat the Take 5 or revisit the controls in your SWMS or JSA process as required.

When to use Take 5

Use a Take 5 when you’re about to start work and you need to confirm the environment and controls match the plan. It’s best suited to routine tasks, low to medium risk activities, and as a final verification step before more complex work begins.

Common triggers include starting a new task, changing locations, returning from breaks, changes in weather or site conditions, or when something doesn’t match what your SWMS assumed.

The key is positioning. A Take 5 supports your broader dynamic risk assessment approach—it shouldn’t be used to replace higher-level planning or become “safety clutter”.

Understanding where Take 5 sits in the hierarchy of risk documentation prevents confusion and paperwork overload. The table below shows how different assessment tools serve different purposes.

A Take 5 can’t replace a SWMS where one is legally required. Use it to verify SWMS controls are actually in place today—and to surface hazards the SWMS couldn’t reasonably predict.

Why Take 5 matters: legal and business context

Supporting your duty of care

Under Section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers. Section 17 mandates that risks be eliminated or, if that’s not possible, minimised.

You can’t delegate this duty away. You need systems that help your workers identify hazards that higher-level planning may have missed—especially when conditions change at the point of work.

Worker responsibilities under Section 28

Section 28 of the WHS Act requires workers to take reasonable care for their own safety, ensure their actions don’t harm others, and comply with reasonable PCBU policies. When you require Take 5 use, completing it properly becomes part of that “reasonable policy” expectation.

In the event of an incident, the Take 5 is often one of the first documents reviewed. If it lists “No Hazards” when hazards were obvious, it can undermine confidence in your system and highlight a gap between paperwork and practice.

ISO 45001 compliance

For organisations seeking alignment with ISO 45001:2018, Clause 6.1.2 requires processes for ongoing, proactive hazard identification. This includes routine and non-routine work, human factors, and conditions in the vicinity of the workplace not controlled by the organisation.

A point-of-work tool like Take 5 helps you operationalise those requirements day-to-day. The business value comes when Take 5s lead to controls, escalation, and learning—not when they just create a paper trail.

If you use digital Take 5 solutions, you can also turn individual assessments into trend data, making it easier to prioritise higher-level fixes across sites.

Common challenges: when Take 5 fails

The “tick and flick” problem

The most common failure is “tick and flick”—completing the checklist mechanically without a genuine assessment. High production pressure, repetitive tasks, and excessive paperwork quotas drive this behaviour.

Research from Griffith University involving alternating treatment trials on construction projects found “no evidence” that poorly implemented Take 5 programs improved work planning or worker heedfulness. For many routine tasks, the Take 5 can function as “safety clutter” rather than genuine risk management.

Shifting risk control onto the worker

A Take 5 sits at the lowest tier of documentation, but it can accidentally become the highest expectation. If workers are expected to “control” hazards they don’t have authority or resources to fix, the process becomes frustrating and unreliable.

This is where stop-work authority and practical escalation pathways matter. A Take 5 should expose gaps in controls so you can fix them, not normalise working around them.

The social defence mechanism

Safety researchers propose Take 5s can act as a “social defence” that reduces organisational anxiety and deflects blame. The card creates an auditable trail that can be used to individualise incidents: “We provided the system, but the worker didn’t use it.”

If you want trust and engagement, you need to show that Take 5s drive action. When hazards are raised, respond visibly—otherwise the process becomes a bureaucratic shield instead of a safety tool.

Best practices: making Take 5 effective

Make the pause real

Treat Take 5 as a decision point, not a ritual. You should be able to clearly name the top hazard for the job and the control you’re relying on before work starts.

If the task is genuinely routine, keep it fast—but still meaningful. If conditions have changed, slow down and escalate early rather than “working it out as you go”.

Stop measuring cards completed—measure hazards fixed

Quotas drive quantity, not quality. If you want to reduce “tick and flick”, shift your metrics away from forms completed and toward hazards identified, corrected, and verified.

A single Take 5 that triggers a practical fix is worth more than dozens of “safe to work” cards that don’t change anything.

Coach, don’t police

Supervisors largely determine whether Take 5 becomes safety clutter or useful risk management. A compliance check (“Have you done it?”) encourages paperwork; a coaching check encourages thinking.

Practical coaching questions you can standardise include:

• What’s the one thing that could seriously injure or kill you on this job today?
• What’s different about this job compared to last time?
• Which control are you relying on most, and what would you do if it fails?

Use the Take 5 to drive higher-level controls

Repeated hazards are rarely “worker problems”—they’re system signals. If the same issue keeps appearing (poor lighting, traffic conflicts, unstable ground), treat it as a prompt to implement higher-level controls using the hierarchy of controls.

The goal is to reduce the number of hazards workers need to manage at the point of work. Over time, a well-run program should make Take 5s simpler because the workplace becomes better controlled.

Digital vs paper: choose the format that improves follow-through

Moving from paper to digital Take 5 solutions can improve verification and make hazards easier to act on—but only if the tool is usable in real conditions (gloves, dead zones, harsh weather) and you have capacity to review and respond to the data.

Turn Take 5 data into action (or don’t collect it)

Digital Take 5s are most valuable when you aggregate data to identify patterns. If a large portion of assessments in one area report the same hazard, that’s a clear signal to intervene with higher-level controls.

Avoid creating a “data swamp” of unreviewed assessments. If you collect the data, allocate ownership: review cadence, escalation triggers, and close-out workflows that actually fix what workers report.

Manage the new risks you introduce

Digital tools can create distraction hazards, especially in high-risk zones. Design and training should discourage “walking while typing” and keep the process quick and practical.

Poor usability also drives “tick and flick”. If the app requires strong internet in dead zones or is hard to use with gloves, frustration rises and quality drops—regardless of how good your policy sounds.

Integrate fatigue and psychosocial prompts with real follow-up

Fatigue and distraction are serious hazards, especially with long shifts and demanding rosters. If you add prompts like “Is your head in the game?”, make sure the system supports a real conversation and adjustment, not just another checkbox.

The objective is practical control: reassigning tasks, adding supervision, changing the plan, or stopping work when risk can’t be managed—consistent with stop-work authority.

References and Further Reading

Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), Sections 17, 19, and 28 establish the legal framework for risk management and duties of care that underpin Take 5 processes.

Safe Work Australia's How to Manage Work Health and Safety Risks: Code of Practice (2024) provides guidance on risk management processes including pre-task assessments.

ISO 45001:2018 Occupational health and safety management systems - Requirements with guidance for use, Clause 6.1.2 details requirements for proactive hazard identification.

Rae, A.J., Weber, D.E., & Provan, D.J. (2022). Should We Cut the Cards? Assessing the Influence of "Take 5" Pre-Task Risk Assessments on Safety. Safety, 8(2), 27. This peer-reviewed paper from Griffith University examines whether Take 5 assessments actually improve safety outcomes, highlighting the challenges of "safety clutter" and social defence mechanisms.

The Safety of Work Podcast, Episode 95: Do Take-5 risk assessments contribute to safe work? provides an accessible discussion of the research findings on Take 5 effectiveness.

Queensland Resources Safety & Health's Guidance Note QGN 17: Development of effective Job Safety Analysis categorises risk assessment tools into four levels, positioning Take 5 as the base-level personal assessment for dynamic hazards.

SafeWork NSW maintains an Incident Information Releases database that includes case studies where Take 5 processes failed to prevent incidents, providing valuable lessons for implementation.