Posted By John Cosgrove
Hi,

Does anyone have any ideas or methods which they have used to ensure that near miss reporting from staff is at the level is should be?

I was considering running a near miss incentive day but was wondering if anyone else had any other suggestions which might also work.

Thanks,
John

Posted By David Bruce
Hi John

Wasn't clear from the original message as to what industry you're in. However, assuming you have a shopfloor, the best way to kick this off is to carry out an a detailed health and safety audit of all aspects (machinery, processes etc...) During these inspections / audit process ask lots of questions to individual employees regarding the activity they are involved in. Most will tell you all you need to know in regard to near misses / minor accidents given the opportunity. You can then record these and inform that this information is valuable to the company and raise awareness from there.

Don't think a poster / memo excercise will really achieve anything on its own.

Posted By Gareth W Jones
John,

Look at the layer below near misses, unsafe observations, these are what will eventualy lead to the near misses,minor accidents,Serious accidents and of course fatalities, I made it the responsibility for all supervisors on a weekly basis to report safe/unsafe observation to myself, from this information you can act on reducing the unsafe acts, which will reduce your near misses !!


Regards
Gareth

Posted By Gareth W Jones
Tez,

I have also been carrying out H&S work for a number of years and for a great deal of them I have been working reactively pushing hard on the outcomes of the near misses and not looking proactively at the unsafe acts which where leading to the near misses.

Advising not policing thats my new role!!

Posted By James365
SOmetimes the simplest solutions are indeed the best ones. This is a case in point.

By far the most effective means of improving near miss reporting is to make it a requirement of every representative on the H&S Committee to bring at least one completed near miss report to each committee meeting, where they can be reviewed and discussed. This serves two main purposes:

1. Helps establish the near-miss mindset.
2. Encourages discussions between the representatives and the staff they represent ("I need a near miss to take to this committee meeting, so make sure you pass any on")

In terms of establishing this as a KPI which can be monitored and reviewed, it's not realistic to expect the reporting rations to approach the 300:1 ratio from the accident triangle (depending on the model you subscribe to), but the year-on-year ratio of near miss:accident reporting should be required to improve (i.e. accidents down and/or near misses reported goes up).

H&S auditors should always be wary of increasing accident stats, but conversely can take significant comfort from increasing numbers of near miss reports - this is something that should be borne in mind too, i.e., lots of near miss reports is a good thing!

Posted By Merv Newman
I saw the dreaded word STOP up there ! It's a great system for finding fault. Which is not what you want.

Sally started well by saying that the positive response is good. Fine. But you also need a positive response to the person who reports the NM. Not "Oh my good another one to give me a pain in the (neck ?)"

Rather : "Hey, thanks. Lets go and have a look and I'll buy you a coffee while we talk it over"

Merv

Posted By peter gotch 1
Hi All

Merv is probably better than most of us to advise on the pitfalls of some Behavioural Safety Programmes.

Some recent commentary...

Two reports published last week of March which both point to the downside of a "Zero accidents is achievable" philosophy….

Buncefield recommendations Annex 5 High Reliability Organisations.

Reward and recognition. Organisational reward systems have powerful influences on the behaviour of individuals in them. HROs will have reward systems that drive the desired behaviours and value the contribution of all in the organisation. For instance full and accurate reporting of incidents, and exemplary care of work equipment will be valued more than ‘zero reported lost time incidents’ (which can encourage competitive under-reporting). They will also be aware that punitive measures may reward behaviour that hides results or redirects blame.

and from final CSB Texas City Report

BP Texas City lacked a reporting and learning culture. Personnel were not encouraged to report safety problems and some feared retaliation for doing so. The lessons from incidents and near-misses, therefore, were generally not captured or acted upon.

And from BP's own Baker Report published in January.

as noted in the ANSI Z10 standard, "[w]hen injury indicators are the only measure, there may be significant pressure for organizations to ‘manage the numbers’ rather than improve or manage the process."

So the message is

1. Reward reporting and investigation of near misses so that we can learn.

2. Does 1 above give us information about the bigger picture i.e. major risks - explosion of the chemical plant, collapse of road bridge, etc in use?

3. Does our Behavioural Safety Programme reward good behaviour rather than criticise [and potentially discipline] bad behaviour.

As Merv has indicated previously on this forum, a balanced Behavioural Safety Programme is VERY resource costly to implement and maintina.

As example of how a Behaioural Programme can go disasterouly wrong, find the Canadian project bu Google for "safety bingo"

Regards, Peter

Posted By Jim Mc Nally
John

Be careful here. There is always a tendency for everyone one to say that every near miss needs to be recorded. The first thing you need to do is define in your own system what a near miss is. Within my own company, we have an incident reporting system which has a near miss category on it. In the past, we struggled with near misses because every incident which was entered onto the system required investigation etc and a corrective action plan assigned. This was regardless of severity. As you can imagine this slowed our system down especially for fairly minor incidents. We then developed an online observation which allows every employee to raise any issues which they come across. The observations are automatically sent to the line supervisor who very quickly can resolve and provide feedback to the employees and where appropriate they escalate the observation onto the incident reporting system. This has worked very well in the respect that we are now seeing "real" near misses coming through the system which allows us to focus on particular concerns. We have also seen our participation rates on observations raised tenfold. Within the observation system, we have introduced a suggestion scheme which is the only incentive's part of the process. again this seems to work out well.

Hope this is of use.

Posted By Kevin Maguire
Hi Dave,

I am hoping to get into the Health and Safety industry it's somthing that appeal's alot to me
so if i am way off the mark here just humour me.

I just want to give a response to your Near Miss policy, I feel that making Mandatory information such as Names optional could cause issue's my reasoning for this is even thought there is no physical damage in a Near Miss they may suffer from mental trauma in the aftermath of the incident.

This seems to me the safest route although may
Not be necessary in areas such as an office environment.

Although I do understand the great need for increased near miss report's as current statistics are dreadful but sacrificing Name's for Report's in some instances at least I feel is the wrong way around the issue.

Possible solution would be in areas of multiple Near Miss scenarios would be to evaluate
Each scenario and create 2 category’s of Near Miss report form's one with Mandatory name were the risk of trauma is increase and one without for Minor incident's.