Posted By Joe Ridley Hi there, I am in the process of redesigning our accident report forms to simplify the reporting of accidents and hopefully encourage the near missess to be reported. Does anyone have any forms that I compare with the current one I am working on to see if I can improve on it as I am struggling a bit for the moment. Thanks Joe

Posted By john ridley Sorry Joe but I have just seen your request and haven't been able to respond until now. Didn't appreciate your sarcasm though buddy. It aint helpful mate. However, in support of the Institute I will reply to you. What exactly are you looking for here? Is it an accident report or an investigation report as these are different? I would suggest that you make the accident report as easy to complete as is humanly possible e.g. Name address ocupation of the IP; date time of accident; exact location of accident; direct cause and nature of accident; and the name address & tel no of the perosn making the report. Make this available on the intranet system if it exists. This will make it immediately available to everyone who has access. You could then do a promotional campaign for reporting accidents and have some form of acknowledgement for reporting these. You could make the award particulalry appropriate to near miss situations which would serve to focus on this and not the accident when this is essentially too late. Maybe the award would be best linked morally to a local charity or something. This could then be covered by any newsletter you have in place e.g. employee of the month etc. I know this is a bit academic, but what you are trying to achieve has always been difficult as it requires a response from others when there is no incentive to do so. This works best when you dangle the carrot rather than hit them with the H&S rhetoric. Hope this helps buddy and if you do get something in place let's know how you get on.