The Health and Safety industry deals with many controversies weekly – but one particular aspect continues to be an ongoing issue. There is a disagreement in the wording for reporting incidents.
‘near miss’ or ‘near hit’
The argument is whether the phrase ‘near miss’ or ‘near hit’ should be used. Others prefer terms such as ‘incident’, ‘event’, or ‘failure’.
This may seem like an insignificant and purely semantic disagreement – but this issue of specific terms affects the way in which incidents in the workplace are reported.
Safety professionals tend to categorise the types of events that are tracked, as to how their workers have described them. These confusing categories are:
- Could have resulted in injury but didn’t
- Could have resulted in property damage but didn’t
- Involved property damage but had no injury
- Involved pedestrians or vehicles
So should we define a near miss?
Safety professionals can’t agree on the definition of a near miss/hit/accident/incident, so it’s no surprise that managers and employees have differing views on what to identify as an incident – which can lead to non-reporting.
The solution?
As an organisation, defining what these ‘incidents’ will be called, and then educating staff and workers as to what that definition is will help. All personnel will then be aware of which incidents need to be reported, regardless of whether they think it is a ‘near hit’ or a ‘near miss’.
But – semantics aren’t the only reasons why workers don’t report incidents at work. Here are some of the main reasons why near misses/near hits are going unreported. You’ll be shocked…!
Difficult process
If a business makes incidents difficult to report with complicated paperwork or a complex process, workers will tend to steer clear of reports. Managers could simply listen to each worker’s account of the event and then can file every report themselves – regardless of any disagreements.
A non-importance
If workers believe that the business or organisation does not consider that near misses/hits are important, they won’t take them seriously either. If that company does not actually try to use that information in the proper structured way, workers will tend to not report the incidents.
Is it pointless?
If a near miss/hit was not a particularly serious incident and would not have resulted in a serious injury, some organisations may consider the process of reporting incidents a pointless process. Yet reporting ‘more serious’ incidents are not more important than smaller events in the workplace. This perception definitely needs to change.
It’s easy not to!
Most can’t be bothered to take part in any work that is outside their particular job roles. If workers suspect that nobody at their particular organisations even cares about near hits, or it’s made difficult to report, or they worry about being asked about it – it may be easier to ignore it!
So what is the answer to avoiding this non-reporting?
ZoneSafe Insight
ZoneSafe, the Proximity Warning System offers a cloud-based management information system that increases awareness and improves site safety.
Identifying, monitoring and improving areas of risk can often prove difficult especially when incidents such as near miss occurrences go unreported. Using identification technology, data logging and management information, ZoneSafe can improve awareness of collision risks and help keep workers and assets safe in the work place.
Zonesafe InSight is our cloud based management information system used by site managers and supervisors to help make efficient and effective decisions relating to site safety.
ZoneSafe InSight provides users with essential information recorded by each ZoneSafe system and is displayed in a user friendly, graphical report format. This enables easy analysis of events and identification of incidents such as near miss occurrences or high risk activities or even the ability to track personnel and vehicle movement and tag battery levels.
