Morning,

I  just want to get some idea of what other organisations do here.

We currently class failure to report an accident as major misconduct, but are still getting some late reporting of 'suspicious incidents'.

We are considering changing it to gross misconduct. Your thoughts would be welcome.

Sharon

I’d love to class it as gross misconduct at my workplace but currently it won’t happen because:

• Not enough value is put on H&S in general and an effective management system in particular
• Our HR people will not support it as it is “not one of their priorities”
• The unions will whinge
• Based on survey we are doing at least half the staff don’t know how to report accident/incidents anyway
• The system we use is hard to find and not very good eg it does not automatically copy in the reporters line manager nor does it send a copy of the report back to person reporting the incident

So for the time being all I can do is fume…

If an accident is not reported how do you know a miss-conduct has occurred or is the gist of your post that if a claim shows up and the incident had not been previously notified?

Good reporting policies must have wording like "as soon as is reasonably practicable" to provide the necessary flexibility to accommodate injuries received/treatment given/recuperation and working patterns.

Consider you implement Gross Miss-Conduct (often summary dismissal) for tardy reporting:

The MD mentions Monday an incident from Friday afternoon - nothing happens, because, well.. its the MD.

The following week an FLT driver tells you on Monday of an incident Friday afternoon - same time frame but now it is deemed excessive delay, an example must be set and a summary dismissal follows.

Next stop employment tribunal because the policy wasn't equally applied to all employees.

Failure to report in a timely manner indicates the instruction and training for reporting accidents is not universally understood - perhaps time for some refresher education rather than writing policy?

Sharon

Whatever category is chosen to classify 'failure to report an accident' inevitably expresses the culture of your organization.

In that light, three perspectives are worth bearing in mind:

1. Not reporting an accident may be an error rather than a violation with the effect that the challenge is to ensure you and senior managers address the issue as an opportunity to further a 'just culture'

2. In the event that one or more individuals choose not to report an accident, there is an important failure of leadership and followership, rather than a procedural matter and

3. Those involved may feel very unhappy and out of place in your organisation and capable of improved performance elsewhere

OK, so if you are talking about a deliberate failure to report, then I'd say it's a breach of s7, duty to co-operate, however there are probably deeper things at work as well. If it's an omission rather than deliberate, then you need to be looking at awareness raising rather than punishment, doing some work on the culture etc. My question is, how do you differentiate one from the other? Surely the missing piece here is investigation. Investigate all episodes of non/late reporting, and determine a course of action on the outcome of the investigation,

Jo0hn

Edited by user 04 December 2017 14:07:59(UTC)  | Reason: tpying