Talk to your staff and find out why they aren’t reporting the incidents.
You can set up discussion groups or carry out a survey but the important thing is to find out what they regard as the barrier to reporting. Is it apathy: the feeling that what’s the point they won’t do anything anyway or fear: just another thing to blame the workers for.
You need real positive engagement support by management.
This is hard to do and you might decide it’s not worth it, so think about before you start.

Do you have a tool, system or procedure to report the unsafe acts/conditions?

The way I have done this in the past is to introduce a specific way of reporting these and put together a presentation on how it is used, what it is for and what you expect to gain from introducing it.
A big step is to get the buy in.

In my experience it is things like this that make a difference and work

You need to find out what barriers there are stopping people reporting and remove them. Perhaps it is the fact they have a lot of info to put on the form and making it tick box is easier. Maybe they think they are not responsible for it?

I would suggest speaking with them and highlighting the benefit to them reporting issues and how you are going to make it really easy for them. Manage their expectation and remove the barriers.

We have been looking at this for a number of years. We put in a system called Airsweb, and yes as controversial as it is we set our employees a target of 4 a month - could be a safe or unsafe observation or conversation. in the first 3 months we had the tool the target was everybody put 1 observation on - that was 3 years ago After that we set the target. We use these numbers as part of the Byrds triangle which we communicate on team commcells weekly. There are various types of actions that come out of the observation - from immediate corrective actions to ones requiring investment but we knew that and are committed to it.

Yes we get some real dross - I picked up a pen - it was a trip hazard - but so what people are engaging with the system and this has absolutely worked for us and we have 5000 employees. We dont enfirce it but last year we had 18500 observations on the system. I'm not complaining and the operational guys are in the rhythm- its the managers we do struggle with at times. Its not the easiest for office guys when they are in the same environment day after day - but they are still doing it very successfully.

It takes some administering even at smaller company level as you have to absolutely upfront decide how you are going to manage the actions that do come out or it then leads to guys being cynical, as they think they are reporting and nothing happens. We have had that but do communicate reguallary how our UC block is spent and commincate the rules. For us it is all about managing expectations and being clear what they are and what they can expect from us. We get it wrong at times, but we do work hard to remedy it - and are happy to admit when we are wrong.

Good point well made Ray - we have seen our LTI rate decrease from 1.1 in 2012 to a rate 0.29 on the 31st March 2015 - dont think I can post a picture of our graph here can I? We have also had an increase ris in near miss reporting with little effort on the back of the HSA (Hazard Safe Act reporting) and we actually were the best safety performer in the water industry last year! And to be fair our Exec Committee made mention of the postive reporting culture with this. the thing is its horses for courses, I do not think one solution fits all but in all these posts there are great bits. Yes ours is not cheap, but the company felt it was worth investing in it and so far the numbers have just gone on rising, and the accident rate is going the right way too.

As a matter of interest did the ad hoc plan lead to injuries or was he lucky and got away with it?

Regards

And so his luck will have reinforced the unsafe behaviour thus likely increasing the risk of an accident at some time in the future, when the luck runs out.

Regards

Qucik Question on this as I too am looking into this at the moment..

An Unsafe Act or Condition has the potential to cause injury/accident.

Should we not therefore be utilising a near miss procedure for the recording of these findings?

Interested in your thoughts!!!

Incidents like this are soon talked about all around the company and the benefits of a reporting system go down the pan overnight.

It sort of depends on how you define or categorise a near miss, near hit, close call, or whatever you want to call it. For example, a near miss is usually an act or condition which has not resulted in an accident/incident. However, I have seen it argued that a minor outcome from a potentially catastophic unsafe act or condition is also a near miss - seems perfectly rational to me.

There is a view that by reporting unsafe acts or conditions this will lead to a reduction of accidents/incidents. This is only partly true. There is research which shows that only the minor accidents/incidents are prevented, the serious ones, normally where there are multiple causal factors are not prevented. Of course, we would like to prevent all accidents and incidents, but there is a price.

So, like most things in life you need to consider the time, effort and cost which goes into developing and maintaining such a system and moreover, whether those resources could be better utilised elsewhere. I know what I think...but it's up to others to decide.