Rank: Super forum user 
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I have just finished reading the article ‘Straight Talking’ in this months IOSH Magazine. Near the end of the article Louise Ward, the subject of the article, states that “the change will be when we see the near-miss reporting staying high, but the accidents reducing, because that means we are acting on the near misses and plugging the holes in the Swiss cheese”.
This appeared to me to suggest that bad practice and bad conditions were acceptable so long as they do not lead to accidents? And as this was a article on communication it seemed to be sending out the wrong message.
To have I got it wrong, am I missing something? I would be interested in others take/understanding on this.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Only the near miss reports wont stay high if you rely on others as reporting fatigue sets in - too often we have a purge that sees a lot of reports being made followed by a natural decline over time.
Stopped using them as a metric many moons ago and now use gemba walk observations.
The other consideration - if a reduction in reactive metrics is a KPI who should be brought in to measures for the lack of improvement. After all the management systems are about continuous improvement not maintaining a status quo or becoming worse.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Only the near miss reports wont stay high if you rely on others as reporting fatigue sets in - too often we have a purge that sees a lot of reports being made followed by a natural decline over time.
Stopped using them as a metric many moons ago and now use gemba walk observations.
The other consideration - if a reduction in reactive metrics is a KPI who should be brought in to measures for the lack of improvement. After all the management systems are about continuous improvement not maintaining a status quo or becoming worse.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Surely a high level of near-miss reporting indicates that the risk assessment and management standards are inadequate. In theory with a 100% safety/health management system (clearly an impossibility) we would have zero near miss reports. Should our aim not be to utilise any near miss reports to ensure that the situation is rectified so that the near miss cannot reoccur and consequently see a reduction in near miss reports?
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Rank: Super forum user 
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The correlation between near miss reporting and accident/incidents is problematical. It's too simplistic in my opinion to do a direct comparison between near miss reporting and accidents/incidents. And don't mention the Byrd/Heinrich pyramid!!
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 1 user thanked RayRapp for this useful post.
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Rank: Forum user
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“the change will be when we see the near-miss reporting staying high, but the accidents reducing, because that means we are acting on the near misses and plugging the holes in the Swiss cheese”.
I agree with Ray, very problematic to talk about consistently without solid and agreed definitions. My own opinion is that the reporting of NMs was a sign of improving culture – an improving culture would lead to a rise in reports as this indicates increased scrutiny and ownership of standards throughout the organisation. I believe that there is something in the opening statement from the article, but this is far from scientific - I know many will disagree with this.
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Rank: Forum user
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I have had this discussion / argument more than once, especially when KPI’s are used for Near Miss reporting. My expectation has always been that when introducing a Near Miss / Hazard reporting system I would expect to get a high amount at the start but as the issues get addressed I would then expect a steady decline. If after a year I was still getting high amounts of reports I would question the effectiveness of the safety management system, because something must be going wrong.
I then fully expect someone to say that ‘no incidents or near miss reports does not mean that everything is ok and the system is working, you can’t sit back and think you are safe’. So what do you do!? I would still expect reports, but quality over quantity.
Does a constantly high amount of Near Miss reports, but a reduction in accidents denote a good working safety management system!? Is this just a way of thinking that has been hammered into Safety Professionals and Managers through training courses and fancy triangles, that rather than challenge people stick to the status quo?
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Rank: Super forum user
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Depends on what you mean by near miss reporting. Simply recording the fact that you are having incidents that do not lead to injury or other losses is not much use. If on the other hand people report near misses and they then lead to action which plugs the gaps, this is a good thing. In that situation people’s willingness to report near misses in expectation that something will be done about them is a measure of the level of Health and Safety engagement in an organisation. Like a lot (most?) of the leading indicators, it is very easy to create culture of over-reporting where people are told that they expected to report so many near misses per month or they are not doing their job properly. That just discredits the whole H&S system. I think that you will never get zero incidents: something will go wrong somewhere so insisting on zero as the only target is also dangerous as it can lead to under reporting. Who said that measure H&S performance was easy?
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Rank: Super forum user
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The examples in the article do not refer to near misses, in my opinion. I suspect most are a mixture of hazardous conditions being found during inspections (formal and informal) and safety interventions (behavioural safety observations).
The fact that someone who is identified as "a career OSH professional" would say "it is possible in many cases to eliminate the worst accidents" is seriously worrying to me.
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