Use near misses to create a safer workplace

British government researchers have found that for every lost-time injury more than 3 days in length, there were 189 noninjury cases. You just can't afford to ignore near misses.

Understanding the circumstances surrounding a near miss can be valuable to employers. But according to an article in the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) journal, Professional Safety, many organizations and employees resist reporting near misses.

Near-Miss Reporting: A Missing Link in Safety Culture looks at the reasons for this resistance and provides ways to overcome it. Author Mike Williamsen considers near misses to be an opportunity for personal risk assessment and adds, "We want to develop a culture that doesn’t wait until someone is injured, but identifies the risk before it happens."

How do you overcome hesitancy to reporting near misses? Williamsen offers the following tips:

• Clarify the expectation that employees report unsafe conditions or risks.
• Provide employees with safety training.
• Offer strategies to measure how near-miss reporting improves safety performance.
• Recognize and reward employees for proactive safety engagement.

According to Williamsen, near misses go unreported for a variety of reasons. These include fear of retaliation, peer pressure, concern about a safety record, complicated report forms, and lack of feedback.

5 Steps for More Effective Near Miss Reporting

• Establish oversight of process. A good task for a safety committee.
• Provide incident investigations training for all levels of staff. Even organizations that have a good process fail to train on the process. Provide mentoring help for new investigators.
• Investigate everything!! The time you spend investigating near misses will give rewards down the road that are better than investigating major injuries or property losses.
• Conduct comprehensive follow-up of corrective action plan. Ask who, what, and by when. Make sure the plan gets put in place. Many organizations fail to develop specific plans.
• Report out on all investigations. Make sure everyone knows about it. Everyone needs to hear about every near miss. Hearing about near misses helps the workforce think about other similar situations. It also encourages ongoing reporting of near misses as people see the value of the reports and understand that they help them do their work more safely.