I'm part of a working group for the company I work for, tasked with eliminating the word Accident and only talking about injuries i.e Lost Work Day Accident to Lost Work Day Injury The reason for this is a belief that using the word Injury makes it more personel and that using the word Accident seems to say that there was no reason why an event happend If anyone has been through the same sort of process can they let me know how they went on and if there where any pit falls

Again, I agree. I use the terms 'incidents' and 'injuries' too, as I believe the word 'accident' can be very much a misnomer. You could use 'Lost Work Day Incident', but that could infer something much more significant than it is. Therefore, I'd stick with the 'injuries'. I'd suggest your starting point would be to involve all concerned, and explain your reasoning behind the proposed change, then ask for feedback. If you cover multiple sites, you'd need to work out whether a mass switch over or a phased in approach would work best.

Just to update, unless I have missed anything, I thought that the BI510 was brought about by and when etc Social Security claims and payments [pensions] laws/areas and not the HSE? As the main purpose of the book is related to possible SS claims and stats and not really the causation and stopping of accidents I think, that the HSE [& now their agents; noting the enforcement of copywrite and the £ to be made!] have some sort of licence/agreement via the SS claims area and they use SS stats to help in compiling accident stats &/or to possibly to make £ out of supplying the book hence the HSE's name is on it, although the Data protection people are also involved Nowhere in H&S law, that I know of, is it written that an accident book is a requirement but it is a requirement via SS law Friends please correct me if I am wrong!

bob you are correct, it is SS regulation requirement to complete and record under direction from DWP. Nowhere in H&S law does it state an accident book, well I will concede that, but, report and record some deaths and injuries arising from accidents at work. Coming back now. So now H&S are a stand alone with no connection to any other legal requirement, DDA, DPA,RTA, SS, EL my work will be so much easier. I wish

RayRapp - fully agree with you. JohnG - whilst my respone may not help you alot, my advice would be to avoid spending time on such an initiative. Will it really improve the safety performance of the site? I would doubt it. I've seen a number of threads on this topic - definition of incident vs accident - and I always think 'Does it really matter?' I think we all have a common understanding of what we are talking about - something goes wrong and either someone gets hurt or could have done. If we choose to call them Accidents, Incidents, Near Hits, Near misses, Learning events etc etc etc doesn't really matter in my view. What I think does matter is understanding why things have gone wrong, really exploring root causes and putting good corrective actions in place to reduce the risk of it happening again.

David H - Hi. Nothing wrong it that at all. My point is that I feel we would be better using our time tackling other issues - like, for example, the quality of root cause analysis and good corrective actions. I've seen a number of threads on here debating the terminolgy (at some length) and in my opinion it adds little if no value to what I believe we are really about - making our workplaces a safer place to be so we are better at our business. My only real experience regarding terminology was when I went through a company take over. First company used SHE, second one insisted on EHS. Quite a few people got bent out of shape (myself included !) as to the merits of which acronym they were used to. Looking back now - made no difference - and I put quite a bit of time and effort into the dabate - time I believe now to have been wasted !!

quote=johng]I'm part of a working group for the company I work for, tasked with eliminating the word Accident and only talking about injuries i.e Lost Work Day Accident to Lost Work Day Injury The reason for this is a belief that using the word Injury makes it more personal and that using the word Accident seems to say that there was no reason why an event happened If anyone has been through the same sort of process can they let me know how they went on and if there where any pit falls

So if it isn’t an accident does that mean they won’t claim? ;-) As for the RTC’s which were the RTA’s which are now RTI’s (Road Traffic Incidents) what next? Garfield agree totally

Chance occurrence perhaps - not so sure about luck. If you allow unsafe acts and conditions to occur without taking corrective measures, then I am not sure it is just good fortune which prevails. Possibly an accident waiting to happen.

Not one for being cynical (tongue firmly in cheek) but if you don't call them accidents, what do you tell your clients when they ask you how many accidents you've had?

John, I think that trying to encourage a safety culture such as you have described at #20 is a laudable aim; however, I am inclined to agree with the likes of Ray, Garfield, Taylor etc. We’ve had the accident/incident/near miss discussion previously, and I feel you could spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to eradicate the word accident from the vocabulary, but with the best will in the world, but I am not convinced that ‘stigmatising’ the word will in itself will help you eliminate…………accidents. My understanding is that the Police dropped the word accident as they thought it suggested that there was nobody was responsible for it (the accident that is). I don’t suppose that this has actually had much effect, if any on the number of RTC or RTI’s though, although I think that it has had a significant affect on their approach to investigating them. I actually use incident report forms but I have no hang ups at all about calling an accident an………………………..accident. I tend to agree – largely semantics. Safetysmurf -of course the answer would be - none :-)

John I am not sure if that was aimed specifically at my response in isolation or to the other people that didn't entirely agree with your initial post. In fairness at #1 your post centred on the elimination of the word “accident”, whereas your post at #20 was somewhat more lucid and provided an insight into what you were actually trying to achieve. It is a laudable aim. People get injured at work for all sorts of reasons, often despite the best efforts of 'health and safety professionals, good, bad or indifferent. I totally agree that a significant part of risk management is to think 'out of the box' and seek creative solutions to problems, and I think in fairness a good number of the people on this forum have a deal of experience in doing so. As I and others have suggested, the important thing is not to concentrate too much on the 'A' word but to delve into the chain of causation to identify both immediate and root causes and TRY and deal with those; which is what your campaign is seeking to do. This isn’t anything new to the majority of us or the industry in general, or probably to you either. It might be something new to many operational managers though. I for one have never understood why some people consider that the word accident suggests that there is no causal chain, or that it has significantly negative connotations over the use of another word e.g. incident. I suggest that the key issue is recognising that there is a sequence of events, sometimes long and complex that leads to the accident/incident, call it what you like, happening at the end of the chain.

John You moved from an outline of a problem ending 'If anyone has been through the same sort of process can they let me know how they went on and if there where any pit falls' to (quite understandably) talking about 'safety culture', 'thinking out of the box' and your experience as a trade union repl. What make enable you to co-ordinate the diverse comments and your trade union experience is appreciation of some of the research on safety cultures and safety climates, which are expressed in remarks of others. Legal compliance is only one form of effective safety culture; your experiments with changing the political usages of language at work is a very enterprising experiment in an alternative kind of 'safety climate'. Sharon Clarke at Manchester Business School has published several useful papers on this area, often citing the innovative Israeli safety researcher Dov Zohar. Why not read why they say about 'pit falls'? If you need the relevant references, you're welcome to email me.