yes my solution would be get rid of the board --bad idea concentrate on safety culture instead and replace with board saying we look after our staff rather than you have an accident and you are to blame which you are doing with this board

'Recordable accident' is an American term and refers (roughly speaking) to accidents resulting in serious injury or in medical treatment. In the USA these are the ones that businesses are legally obliged to record. Accidents resulting in first aid only are not normally 'recordable'. Your number of 'recordable' accidents is probably very similar to your number of RIDDOR injuries. So if you use the definition of 'recordable' on the OSHA website (they have a very precise definition that goes into far more detail than I will here) your stats will instantly improve. 'Recordable accident' is not a meaningful term in the UK. I'm pretty sure the board was copied from an American one. Many sites globally do use 'recordable accidents' as a metric because they are US-owned. The fact that the board is mis-named is another argument to get rid of it in addition to those already given (with which I agree from experience).

As Ray says, you will not find a thinking H&S person who likes them. They drive incident reporting underground. Have a read of what the Baker report (BP texas city refinery) has to say about managers telling their bosses what they want to hear.

My goodness it must be Christmas or something everyone is agreeing! I hate them as well - especial if linked to a performance target or a bonus all they do is drive the real picture underground as people stop reporting so reduce your chances of recognising patterns and putting control measures in place.

I agree that personally I wouldn't use them. I prefer the open and honest approach of how many accidents we have had and whether they were RIDDOR, LTA or minor first aids etc. I would rather be able to show amount of accidents or the severity has gone down, or that reporting is going up rather than have days clear of accidents. Part of a good health and safety culture in a workplace is being open and showing just blame where required.

These signs fall into the same category as the 'Zero accidents target' discussion from the other day. All part of the h&s propaganda school - meaningless nonsense.

Crikey, I keep expecting when new responses are added that someone will have broken ranks on this - but not yet!

Kate There IS value in letting your employees know when you have reached a milestone, for example if you've had one year since the last RIDDOR reportable, in my opinion, its worth the boss sending an email or putting a notice up to thank people and to promote good performance. But I cant think of any good reason for these boards except for the Simpsons comedy value of someone falling off a ladder while they are changing the number.

Andy S Your original query was "Is there a better solution?". I agree with the ideal that the safety culture needs working on, however, that is unlikely to happen overnight in most organisations. So, for us, our aspiration is Target Zero....zero LTIs (which we're currently achieving, as we're are currently at 1.9 million hours since our last LTI) but also zero first aid cases - which we're not close to! Working in a combined office- and field-based environment across UK, Europe, USA and Africa we're pretty happy with this record but appreciate that there is always room for improvement. We focus our safety campaigns on trend analysis and are looking at reducing our First Aid Cases Frequency Rate period by period. Does this drive reporting underground? Not in our experience, and not in my experience across almost 20 years as a H&S Professional - if anything, my/our initial experiences have seen the opposite as we've experienced, for example, a significant increase in near misses! No system is perfect, but the important thing is that they are business specific and add value operationally and not just pander to bonkers conkers! We try and enthuse and encourage management, operators and contractors/supply chain by providing them with simple-to-use systems that don't stifle their ability to work. Remember - Information, Instruction, Training and Supervision are key. (PS Kate - I've spent the last half hour thinking about this and only just seen yours and subsequent comments lol) Pete

It depends on the maturity of your safety culture and how you got there. 'Days since' boards are fine and do give some indication of performance but don't paint the full picture. I also measure inspections, coaching sessions, health reviews, safety reps inspections, equipment reliability, near misses, etc etc. I also trend this to find out where are issues are. If your culture is mature enough the number of unreported accidents will be very low. You won't get all of them but acting on the ones you get, however trivial, will encourage an acceptable level of reporting.