Danger Ahead: Why Close Calls Hold the Key to Safer Workplaces

Workers are often reluctant to report close calls, wary of a company culture in which they’ll take the blame, OSHA says. As a result, opportunities to prevent more serious incidents are lost.

At one large transportation company, for example, more than 60 percent of surveyed employees worry about the consequences of reporting an injury, according to a McKinsey & Co. study on attitudes that undermine workplace safety.

True Injury vs. ‘Bruise’

“Upon joining field teams, new employees learn from both peers and supervisors the difference between a ‘true injury’ and a ‘bruise’: The former should be reported and the latter should not,” the report says. “The message is clear—regardless of what these employees learned in their training sessions, it is best not to report too many incidents.”

There are a number of steps that businesses can take to change such attitudes, however—simultaneously protecting their workforces more effectively and buoying productivity, according to OSHA and the National Safety Council. They include:

• Setting policies that make near-miss reporting non-punitive and ensuring that employees understand them
• Teaching employees why near-miss reporting is necessary, the key role that they play and the process for reporting
• Ensuring that the near-miss reporting system is easy to understand and use
• Including training on near-miss reporting in orientation for new employees
• Considering incentives that encourage reporting, but avoiding those that might have the opposite effect
  • An example of a good incentive is one that recognizes the participation of workers in recognizing and reporting hazards.
  • An incentive that recognizes management performance in lowering OSHA-reportable incident rates, on the other hand, might have the unintended effects of suppressing reporting and prompting punitive actions.

“It is important that all companies have some type of near-miss reporting system,” the Center for Chemical Process Safety, a group formed by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers to help prevent catastrophic chemical accidents, says in a report.

Many companies have discovered that an increase in reports of near misses, at least for the first several months after a policy is established, signals a stronger safety culture, the center says.

As a result, the group adds, “it is quite possible that the number and count of more significant incidents decrease as the number of near misses reported increases.”

OSHA, which provides the sample form above on its website, says internal investigations of near misses should include the following questions:

• If a procedure or safety rule was not followed, why was the procedure or rule not followed?
• Did production pressures play a role, and, if so, why were production pressures permitted to jeopardize safety?
• Was the procedure out of date or safety training inadequate?
• If so, why had the problem not been previously identified, or, if it had been identified, why had it not been addressed?