There is not a lot an employer can do to prevent someone hitting their thumb with a hammer either !! - but it is an accident non the less.
Certainly if over 3 days, then it is RIDDOR reportable as ACOP states: "Employers must notify their enforcing authority in the event of an accident at
work to any employee resulting in death, major injury or incapacity for normal
work for three or more consecutive days. This includes any act of non-
consensual physical violence done to a person at work."

By a similar token, such incidents should also be treated internally the same as any other accident i.e. recording, investigation, risk assessment review etc.

that's my point - "sorry I headbutted you mate -it was an accident". These are criminal acts involving the Police and crime reference numbers.
Where does the accident come into it when it's unprovoked? The investigation and follow up is for the Police.
How can the employer's input improve safety? I'm not against doing anything, I'm just unclear why we're measuring something that, in many cases, we can't directly manage.

It's work related. I know what the law says -just trying to understand the rationale behind it (bonny lad)!

I wasn't really asking about RIDDOR. As a large public facing org, we have safety KPIs around stuff like LTA, public injuries, high risk defects etc. Each year we agree and set a % reduction target against these KPI as part of normal continuous improvement. Local management teams then agree initiatives to meet those reductions.
However, LTA currently includes all lost time events, and the assaults described make up a fair proportion of those events. Managers then rightly challenge the concept of targets which they have no control over. It's probably the RIDDOR element that has them in there in the first place, but is that appropriate? I was after a concensus as to whether others have the same issue or deal with assaults separately, or are we setting management teams up to fail.

If the employees are placed "at risk" because of work and then that risk bites them...

The terminology "accident" is being replaced by "incident" by quite a few employers as accident infers an unlucky freak occurence, rather than a predictable event or failure of a risk management regime. On that basis very few work-related "accidents" are truly accidental.

Individual managers may have little direct control over these external events but they are still work related and your organisation appears to want to count them. It may be that your question is better directed to the ones who do the totalling.

We included such events including those where no physical injury is sustained. You have to really otherwise you are going to lose them and it is all too easy for managers to slip into assuming that 'nothing can be done'.
We ran a parallel system alongside the routine standard accident reporting system and were therefore not only able to provide a form process better aligned to such events but also to ensure we could present the results separate from the more obvious type of accidents at work.
It was acceptable for a business or department to demonstrate that they had met their KPI if random obviously 'uncontrollable' events were discounted. However, they could not claim relief if the event was preventable. For example, if staff acted inappropriately or failed to follow agreed procedures. Or another case where a location was opened to the public with the local security measures out of action. A known previous offender gained access and assaulted a member of staff. Such events would always be included in the KPI result.

hth
p48

Thanks for all contributions. I'm thinking around a separate KPI for these events. I don't want to hide them - just filter them away from the more mainstream LTA that we can influence.
Offline now -it's me bingo night.

I don't know what your area of work is but most organisations would surely need to demonstrate they are doing all that is reasonable to manage the risks of acts of violence to employees. Are you sure it's not possible to exert any 'influence'?

If you work where the general public is present the question "Are you sure it's not possible to exert any 'influence'?" does not mean anything I can assure U irrespective of what the official policy says and who's saying it even where U have names, addresses and witnesses who are willing to stand up and talk!

Intimidation and much more of public sector workers is rife especially so in these hard times but the media is not interested in reporting it nor exploring it

I agree with Barnaby on this. If the possibility of an assault is being discussed then it reasonable to say that such an event is forseeable.

The type of work being undertaken would dictate the measures needed to control the risk, i.e. if you're talking about staff in an A&E we all know there's a significant risk of assault when undertaking this type of work. For someone working in a toy shop (as an example) the risk would be considerably less but would still need to be considered as a part of the RA for dealing with members of the public.

The debate on KPI's is a dodgy one and something that I've had issues with in the past. It comes down to what they are there to acheive, is it just a performance measure or something that can be used for genuine gain? I've had people tell me an accident wasn't a RIDDOR because there was evidence that the IP has a prior injury ('it's not an accident, it's a recurrence of an existing injury') but all this does is demonstrate that the accident causation has not been sufficiently investigated. To my mind KPI's shouldn't be used to demonstrate performance but instead be used to analyse trends and identify areas for focus.

this waffle has nowt to do with what a was asking man!!

This is what I asked originally. I wanted to know whether organisations lumped all LTA together when calculating risk and agreeing safety plan targets/controls with management teams. We do but it doesn't sit right with those who have to manage unachievable targets. I think it's wrong too -putting aside whatever you think aboot KPIs.

Yer approach to KPIs is spot on marra. I think we're a bit stuck in the 'iceberg' model of 'every minor contributes to a major', so the pressure is on to drive down all events through kpi. Reducing these in theory reduces the chance of the big lash up.

plenty of knobs roond here mate!

Onions, I can’t help but feel that your post at #24 was rather illuminating, to say the least. If you have unachievable targets then the target needs to be looked at rather than looking for ’creative’ ways of massaging the figures to fit the target. If this is what is happening then I can’t help but feel that your company’s approach to using the KPI is seriously flawed.

So, I'll have another go at answering. You actually asked 3 questions.
1. (which was actually the second question) Is it an 'accident'?
In general I would tend to say ‘yes’. There might be some cases where this would be ‘no’ e.g. the IP was assaulted because his next door neighbour found out that he had been having an affair with his wife and came in the office to punch him on the nose. Otherwise I would think that most cases would be considered to be, and recordable as, an accident.

2. If a member of staff is assaulted by a member of the public, and consequently loses time off work through injury, does it become a lost time accident statistic?
If answer to question 1 is ‘yes’ then I suggest ‘yes’ again.

3. But should a random assault be an accident recordable against an LTA KPI target?
If this is the same event as happened at 1&2 above, then ‘yes’.

Totally random and unprovoked violence in the workplace is not, in my experience commonplace. I can’t actually recall an act of workplace violence that I have dealt with that I can’t find some underlying, ’provocation’ or aggravating factor, that might reasonably be considered work related rather than being totally unprovoked or ’random’.

I thought that the iceberg theory/model was concerned with the hidden costs of accidents. Are you referring to Heinrich’s theory/accident pyramid?

However, I have it in my mind that you are looking for responses that would support NOT recording this as an accident, or for it NOT being accounted as a LTA for the purposes of it subsequently NOT being counted against the KPI, which has, it seems to me, have at the heart of it, an “unachievable” target!

Frontline rail industry eh? Ok, we're talking the same language then.

Many assaults can be prevented, just like most 'industrial accidents can. With that being the case the question isn't 'should we report these as LTA' but 'how can we reduce the likelihood of this happening'. If it happens at work then it's a workplace accident and no amount of justification to the contrary will change it especially in the eyes of the law.

I don't agree that this is impossible to manage, difficult yes, but that's no reason to brush the problem under the carpet because the root problem isn't with the KPI's but with staff being put in a position where they may come into harm.

So there's your answer, an assault should be counted as a LTA (or RIDDOR where applicable). "Waffle" over.

Nee,

BST International reported on a study this year, following up concerns amongst seven multinationals that whilst their accident frequency rates were on continuing downward trend, rates for serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) were levelling off or in some cases increasing.

They looked at the data for six (not sure why not seven) of these organisations and concluded that only 20% of minor outcome incidents were precursors of SIFs.

US National Council on Compensation Insurance reported in 2005 on claims trends from 1999-2003. Much higher reduction in small claims than reduction in those of >$50,000.

Similar patterns in UK and Eurostats.