I'm interested to know whether anyone has any experience of dealing with employees who are reluctant to report incidents/ near misses.

I've tried the rational; HASAW Act requirements, RIDDOR, own employer policy together with the human; 'why wouldn't you want to report an incident if you or someone else has been harmed?' or 'if you can stop someone else coming to harm.....' angles and am still getting resistance. (No reason given).

Ultimately it could be pursued as a disciplinary issue but I'm keen to see if anyone has any other ideas as this approach will only get bad press.

The reasons for non-reporting could include fear of blame, spoiling the proud number of accident-free days, embarrasment, previous responses to reports, complete dislocation of the safety dept from the workforce, they dislike or have no respect for you, let's not give 'em a chance to investigate and be unable to defend the claim, macho culture, bullying etc etc.

Is this spread across all sections of the workforce or concentrated in one area or group? Get to the bottom of why and you may be able to come up with a solution.

Disciplinary action is, I suggest, an inappropriate response, as you appear to suggest.

B,

We found that a combination of positive publicity [ picture of senior manager handing certificate for flight safety to individual who reported a problem] plus human factors training worked well for us, all of a sudden pointing out problems became a "cool" thing to do

Additionally we issued everyone with a tiny notebook to report any hazards
either - unsafe practice or unsafe condition

Letter boxes / trays appeared all over site to post them in - our SHE reps collect them, investigate and these get counted in the stats

We picked up a mass of low level stuff but in amongst it was some serious stuff that the SHE reps then prioritised / escalated


Regds CDB193

We use and electronic system which we developed in house. it’s easy to use and feeds back directly to H&S. I’d have thought that this would be ideal in your line of business as most of your people will have IT access and you will have the resource to buy in a decent system.( are there any poor banks?)