Hi All,

I am looking into vehicle accidents that have occcured over the last year at my company. In regards the point wilful misconduct or gross negligence’. Example: bus is turning a corner in a tight area and scratches the lower body work, no staff or passangers injured. 

Looking for guidance around how I can clearly mark these incidents into these catagories or not? working on human factor inline with just culture also across the business. 

Thanks in advance.

Edited by user 30 November 2023 07:35:25(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: martinbrogan

wilful misconduct or gross negligence’. Example: bus is turning a corner in a tight area and scratches the lower body work, no staff or passangers injured. Looking for guidance around how I can clearly mark these incidents into these catagories or not?

IF (and it is a big IF) it would not be down to an individual to be determining that a driver had displayed wilful miss-conduct or committed gross-negligence in causing vehicle damage.

You HR / Disciplinary procedures should be followed through a fair and balanced investigation to establish the root cause.

Only when the disciplinary outcome ticks one of the boxes should it be recorded as such.

You need to be wary of creating a system that circumvents due process that will end up at tribunal ajudication

Of course, the investigation may also conclude that the organisation was expecting too much of drivers to be able to manoeuvre a bus constantly and consistently in such a “tight area”.

Martin

You seem to have stepped on to the theme of the month, which I think is an output of the continuing debate between various Safetyisms.

So, on the one hand we have those following the tradition that has evolved from misquoting the findings of Heinrich in 1931 and being encouraged to identify people's unsafe ACTIONS as being responsible for MOST accidents (and property damage, near misses etc), often via the application of Behavioral (US spelling deliberate) Safety programs (ditto).

....and on the other side, people in Safety II and other isms pointing out that many incidents are multicausal and that it is more effective to identify and deal with the underlying causes.....

.....which in turn then gets into debates as to Blame Culture or Just Culture

....which is all very good for keeping the proponents of different Safetyisms busy on Conference platforms, social media and the H&S press, with one of the first type of OSH proponents now accusing the second lot of being keen to assign incidents as being "Acts of God" rather than assign responsibility to those whose human error has been critical. [Opinion piece aka "blog" in the current edition of SHP - reading of which I am not counting as CPD as, to be honest, the piece says absolutely nothing new]

My own take on the scenario you present would be that a proper investigation should be done to consider all the various cause of the incident you describe, which might include that the CONDITIONS in which the driver was expected to perform were inherently sub standard, making it much more likely that any unsafe ACT was far from a deliberate "violation" if considering the various human factors as categorised by e.g. Reason and repeated in e.g. HSG245.

Then leave it to HR to make any decisions on disciplinary action IF merited.

The issue is that different people use language in different ways. Proponents  of HG48 (such as me) talk about violations, where people decide not to follow the rules but often for what  in their minds are good reasons:

• Routine: where nobody follows the rules so why should I?
• Situational: I would like to follow the rules but in reality, we are just not set  upto do that  and I don’t want raise this with my boss as he wants a quiet life.
• Exceptional: I don’t do rules

This is bread and butter to H&S people, but HR still tend towards the find some one to blame approach; sack the person responsible and move on. They are looking for  “wilful misconduct” which is  a sackable offence. Why is it a sackable offence because its wilful misconduct, obviously!

‘Gross Negligence’ is more of a legal term where the person is so negligent so they can be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter.

H&S people should only worry about the HSG 48  definitions and leave the blame/no blame stuff to others.

I am currently rewriting our incident reporting procedure. I am looking at the part when you have to classify the severity of the incident  and by implication the outcome for those people involved. The system was drawn up years ago, and it is very old school. So  it still looks to blame some one. If the wrong box gets ticked, then some poor sod  will have to go through a disciplinary procedure. Note this this starts near the beginning of the evidence gathering process before any sort of root cause has been established. It definitely needs changing.

This is what seems to have happened with the original posting: “bus is turning a corner in a tight area and scratches the lower body work, no staff or passengers injured.” There has been damage to company property, and someone must pay. The only severity ratings  seem to  be “wilful misconduct or gross negligence”. At no point is the question asked why someone might decide to turn the corner in a tight area.  Was it the wrong sort of bus? Every so often  bus companies manage  to send  a double decker under a low bridge. Does everybody else  get through the corner ok in their buses or do they have near misses (which people might not want to report). Has the corner been remodelled or its in the process of being remodelled  and surrounded by Heras fencing?

Lots to think about, which is supposed to be our job, to think about stuff and make it  better.