A mix of voluntary reporting, with light enforcement of minimum reporting limits, has worked in a great many companies, large (50,000+ employees) and small. But there are a lot of concrete things the company has to do to achieve high rates of reporting of near misses. An achieveable target appears to be about 50 near misses being reported (for events with potential but not actual safety, economic impact, reliability issues, enviornmental impacts., etc.) compared to 1 loss event occuring (actual harm, actual money lost or equipment damage, etc.). In some companies this equates to about 4 to 6 near misses being reported per worker per month. This ratio of reporting (with follow-thru) has proven to equate to 95% reduction in losses of all types (economic first, then safety and environmental). But as mentioned above, there are concrete activities the company has do and Most of those involve strong enforcement by Owners of the company on the management below them (so enforcement by Vice Presidents of Operations on the Site Management, for instance) to ensure the site management is not screwing things up. Not much enforcement is needed on worker reporting after that; in some (not sure if it is Most since the in-depth data set we have so far is for about two dozen corporations) the reporting system has been totally voluntary (with light incentives) at the work level (but on the other hand, in a few cases, a site manager needed to be replaced). If you want to read more, then download the paper:
If the steps are followed for lowering the barriers to getting near misses reported, as described in the paper (which may mean cracking heads in the management ladder when management doesn’t follow the rules imposed on them by senior management or Owners for getting high near miss reporting), you can achieve 95% reduction in actual losses. This can result in millions to tens of millions of USD per site… of course it lowers safety incident rates proportionally also…that is a fun theatre to “act in” or watch. Of course there are several potential barriers. Of course follow-thru is necessary. A first step is reading the paper; it is Free It has lots of actual case studies across many cultures and countries.
Contact us at www.piii.com if your company needs help achieving high reporting rates of near misses.
