Posted By Claire C
Dear All,

I work for a construction company and i am attempting to improve our near miss reporting culture. I would like to explain to the operatives what a near miss is and also the importance of reporting near misses.

Does anyone have any suggestion on how to best explain this to the operatives? I would like something simply, yet catchy.

Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks




Claire

Posted By Glen Coe
I have always said a near miss could have been a hit, except for a few millimetres or a few milliseconds. So these events are fortunately free learning, unless riddor reportable. I also ask them how many times do they think they can repeat the same event before they are injured and therefore what would they change to stop it happening again.

But there are loads of approaches, bird triangle etc.

Posted By alan brotherton
Bird's triangle is a simple model to use and can be explained as "improving things at the bottom lessens the probability of the fatality at the top". Managing accidents at the bottom end is aided greatly by understanding near miss events. I good deffinition is to use for "near miss" is an event in which injury, damage or some loss was averted only by good fortune.
This of course carries with it the follow on message that next time they might not be so lucky!!.

Alan

Posted By Chris Jerman
Sorry Bob, the reason that that doesn't always find favour is that today's near miss might be tomorrow's slight bruise. You have to get people into the mind set that incident reporting is risk assessment in reverse. The reactive and pro active sides of your safety management system. Assessment what do people do, what could go wrong, why, how badly and then how likely versus what were people doing, what did go wrong, why how badly and how likely it is to happen again. The only difference is that assessment works on the virtual injury and investigation works on the actual injury - which might be zero of course. Face it the level of investigation is traditionally driven by the level of actual injury.

To make this work, we have to get away from injury and focus on the event and, just as we do in risk assessment, highlight the reasonably foreseeable worst case injury. This goes for ALL events. The reason that you can't get people to report 'near misses' is that when you examine the content of the accident book, most of the written account is about the injury. Hence accident has become synonymous with injury. Treat every event in line with its RFWCI and seriously show that you investigate 'near misses' that could have been high (on your injury scale) with the same robustness that you would if someone HAD been killed or maimed. Until then, the workforce won't buy in or believe that there's any point to reporting non injury events. Sorry Bob, didn't mean that to come out hostile - merely to point out that not every 'near miss' is actually worth bothering with. If reasonably it could have resulted in a bruise at worst, we should be looking elsewhere.

Posted By Chris Jerman
No you're right Bob. But as usual I can't resist trying to change people's view in relation to the question that they asked in the first place. It's like NEBOSH. They never ask you question that you'd like to have been asked!

Posted By Bob
I know where you're coming from Chris but I think we need to remember what Claire is trying to achieve here, ie simply to get the workforce to report NMs rather than be able to write a thesis in the subject. In this situation it's usually more effective to keep the message as simple as possible.

(Incidentally, what are you saying about NEBOSH!! This is tantamount to sacrilege, go wash your mouth out!!)

Posted By Mark H
Claire,

Try the SGB DVD, the cost of accidents. Good descrition of near miss, accidents etc and filmed on a construction site.

Regards

Posted By Chris Jerman
I know Bob. I was quoting an old friend who's a NEBOSH examiner. He always said that he had some fabulous answers - just not to the questions that were set. It was candidates single biggest failing. I did ask him why the questions often appeared to be so ambiguous, he didn't reply!

I appreciate the need for snappy stuff, but I never do anything unless there's a point to it. In this case, i appreciate the thesis but - very true. We have our own bespoke Incident reporting system geared exactly to my reply. It's called IRIS. So we say t our employees, if you have a close shave TELL IRIS. We've tried to make it sound like a person, an agony aunt if you will. Guess what? It's caught on and people are now reporting non injury events. Never found sticking posters up was worth a jot.

Chris

Posted By Pete48
To Steve B , thanks mate, you just made me famous! Pleased my original story stuck in your mind.
Claire, what your description tells you is something different from needing to get people to report near miss events.
They think, and they may be right, that their life is full of near miss events every day, every shift; it goes with the territory. So nagging them to report is really like asking them to write down everything they do! It is more likely to get you out of favour than a near miss report.
I haven't read all of the posts but hopefully someone has made the point about starting at a different place. There will be some that do frighten these guys, talk to them about those, ask them the last one they remember, then accept that if you can get those started you have moved forward. Then keep looking yourself and making reports. Lead by example stuff.
Then as i am sure you know, make sure that something gets done about every one that is reported, even if that is just giving feedback.
Catchy title. How about.

CATCH HER (if you can!) :like near MISS??!!

Claire Asks Tough Construction Hunks
Help Eliminate Risks.

Best I can do after a couple of glasses of Goats do Roam

Best of Luck

Posted By Sally
Claire

In the scenario you described is it really necessary to report the incident. The supervisor took all the right steps to prevent reoccurence without the need for a paper form and I would much rather be in that position than having the piece of paper but no action taken.

I'm not saying that reporting near misses isn't a good thing to encourage in general.