Does your near miss reporting suck?

Why don’t people report near misses?

Near miss reporting is essential for identifying potential hazards and preventing accidents, yet many organizations struggle with underreporting. Understanding why employees hesitate to report near misses and addressing these challenges is crucial for fostering a safer workplace.

Why Don’t People Report Near Misses?

1. Fear of Repercussions: Employees often worry about being blamed or facing negative consequences if they report a near miss. This fear can discourage open communication and lead to underreporting.
2. Belief in Inaction: Many workers feel that reporting near misses is pointless because nothing will be done to address the issues. This belief can create a sense of futility and discourage proactive safety behavior.
3. Lack of Trust: If there is a lack of trust in management or the safety reporting system, employees may be reluctant to share their experiences. Trust is vital for encouraging honest and open reporting.
4. Poor Communication: Ineffective communication channels can make it difficult for employees to report near misses easily and confidentially. Complex or cumbersome reporting processes can further hinder reporting.

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Challenges in Encouraging Near Miss Reporting

1. Building a Safety Culture: Creating an environment where safety is prioritized and near miss reporting is encouraged requires time and effort. It involves changing mindsets and fostering a culture of openness and continuous improvement.
2. Providing Assurance: Companies need to assure employees that reporting near misses will not lead to negative consequences. This includes demonstrating through actions that the organization takes safety reports seriously and acts on them.
3. Enhancing Communication: Simplifying the reporting process and ensuring it is accessible and user-friendly can encourage more employees to report near misses. Regular updates on actions taken in response to reports can also boost confidence in the system.
4. Offering Training: Educating employees about the importance of near miss reporting and how to do it effectively can help overcome hesitation. Training can highlight the benefits of reporting and reinforce the company’s commitment to safety.

Leveraging technology for near miss reporting

Technology plays a crucial role in improving near miss reporting in the workplace. A recent panel discussion highlighted the benefits and challenges of using advanced tools and AI for this purpose.

Adoption and Benefits

A poll showed a 52/48 split among attendees on the use of online tools for near miss reporting. Panelists emphasized that any tool simplifying this process is beneficial, as it allows safety professionals to focus on strategic safety management. AI tools like Protex AI can detect behavior trends and provide real-time alerts, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of reporting.

Customer-Centric Approach

Selecting the right tools involves considering the workforce's demographics to ensure accessibility. While concerns about access to smartphones and tablets exist, the advantages of AI—such as real-time notifications and deeper event analysis—are significant.

Enhanced Understanding and Prevention

AI helps identify root causes of near misses, aiding in the development of corrective actions and training programs. This proactive approach not only addresses current safety issues but also helps prevent future incidents.

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How does technology do this?

Technology now supports the collection of information about unsafe conditions and near misses automatically, before anyone spots the unsafe condition – and long before anyone fills in an incident report form. Examples of this are shown in Table 1. 

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While location sensors provide information about a single workplace, wearable technology, such as watches or devices incorporated into PPE, can provide information about an individual’s exposure to risk as they move around. However, wearable technology at work faces several barriers.

People must remember to wear it, and keep it switched on. Workers sometimes turn off devices that provide a vibrating or audible alert because of false alarms or over-sensitive triggering. While a proximity device might be a small RFID tag attached to a high-vis jacket, some of the technology for assessing posture requires sensors directly on the skin to measure muscle activation. Despite promises of anonymity, people have concerns about privacy with wearable devices. 

Computer vision (CV) provides an alternative to some wearable or location-based devices. It is less personal than wearable technology, and sees people and machinery only as objects. It can detect when two objects are too close to each other (such as when a person is too near a vehicle), when an object is moving too fast (such as a speeding vehicle) or in the wrong direction (in a one-way system), when a required object is missing (such as a high-vis jacket) and even when an object is the wrong shape (such as when someone’s posture could cause an injury).

Unlike wearable tech, CV doesn’t rely on people to charge it, wear it and leave it switched on. The information collected by CV can be more easily anonymised.

Analytics software can review data from sensors, computer vision and other monitoring systems to identify trends and patterns in safety behaviour. Critical information can be selected and highlighted, and presented in summary form, using graphs and tables to improve understanding of workplace risk. 

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What should you be detecting?

The choice of technologies might feel overwhelming. Where should you start? The following steps will help you to get the best return on your investment in technology:m

1. Identify hazards where there isn’t sufficient evidence that controls are effective. 

 Your risk assessments should show where existing controls are dependent on people needing to remember to do something, or to avoid something. For example, if a control in a risk assessment states “the worker will not overload the shelf” how is that achieved? If by training, do you have evidence that people apply their learning once they leave the training room? Audits, accident and incident reports, inspection records and safety observations will also help you to identify target hazards.

2. For the target hazards, identify critical workplace activities.

Look at documents, such as safe operating procedures and method statements, which describe how tasks need to be done, who can do it, and what tools and equipment are needed. Within a procedure there might be some steps that you know work well, and others that you are concerned about. For example, you notice that staff tend to wear their safety boots all day, but they often forget their hearing protection in the plant room. Or you know that the shelves in the post room will only contain regular shaped parcels, but the shelves in the workshop can contain awkward and heavy items which don’t stack well.

3. For each critical workplace activity, define goals for that activity.

Your list might look like table 2

4. Agree some priority goals with workers and other interested parties

Selected goals must be reasonable and achievable. Talk to workers to develop goals that are meaningful to them - they might suggest simpler solutions. For example, providing a trolley that is easier to use might help them to meet a goal without the need for high-tech solutions. Involving people will also help to create a culture where workers believe the technology is there to serve them, not to police them.

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5. Determine the best technology to achieve the goal

It’s better to manage two or three goals well, than to manage a dozen badly. You need to balance the risk benefit of achieving a goal with the cost in time, effort and money of managing it. Checking that vehicles are driving within the speed limit might reduce the risk more than checking vehicles are in the right zone; using CV to check that people aren’t over-reaching might be easier to achieve than to check that shelves are stacked correctly.

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7. Keep it going

Giving feedback at team level reinforces a culture where people support each other to do things safely. Tell a team that they are wearing PPE correctly 70% of the time, and you would like them to get a higher score next month. The supervisor now has a reason to praise the person who wears safety goggles, and everyone in the team will want to remind the person who doesn’t. Once a team achieves their goal for a whole month, continue to encourage and reinforce the behaviours. Make sure that doing the right thing continues to be the best option.

What do I do once it’s all working?

Creating a positive safety culture where employees willingly choose the safest option over the quickest one is challenging, and this culture can be easily damaged by new supervisors focused on production targets or new hires bringing unsafe habits from previous workplaces. It's not enough for employees to behave safely just because they are being monitored; they should do so because it is the most rewarding way to work. Computer vision and other technologies can help identify how to support safe working practices and provide the necessary information to reinforce and celebrate safe behaviors continuously.

In a webinar, Dan mentions the Heinrich Triangle, a concept suggesting that identifying and addressing precursors to significant incidents can prevent accidents. A poll revealed mixed views on its practicality. Christian shares an example from the National Gallery in London, where video monitoring revealed more near misses than reported incidents, underscoring the importance of near miss reporting. Peter discusses how AI can uncover unknown hazards and near misses that might otherwise go unnoticed, emphasizing that AI should complement, not replace, human decision-making. Both Christian and Peter see significant potential in AI to enhance health and safety by identifying and preventing accidents before they occur.

Key Strategies for Improvement

1. Build Trust: Ensure employees feel safe reporting near misses without fear of repercussions.
2. Encourage Open Communication: Foster a culture where safety concerns can be freely discussed.
3. Provide Feedback: Regularly inform employees about the actions taken in response to their reports.
4. Offer Training: Educate staff on the importance of near miss reporting and how to do it effectively.

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Why It Matters

‍Creating a proactive safety culture that values near miss reporting can significantly reduce workplace accidents and improve overall safety. By implementing these strategies, organizations can transform near misses into valuable insights for preventing future incidents.

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What about Marks & Spencer?

Did the M&S investment in AI pay off? Marks & Spencer (M&S) is a leading British retailer, established in 1884, offering food, clothing, and homeware through over 1,400 stores worldwide, employing around 65,000 people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, their Castle Donington distribution center saw a surge in online orders, necessitating an increased workforce and raising safety concerns. To address these issues, M&S implemented Protex AI, an AI-powered safety monitoring system that autonomously captures and analyzes safety events. This technology allowed the Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) team to identify risks, make data-driven decisions, and implement proactive safety measures.

Within three months, the use of Protex AI led to an 80% reduction in incidents and a 10% increase in near-miss reporting. Key to this success was the seamless integration with existing CCTV infrastructure, which enabled efficient deployment. The system's ability to identify unsafe behaviors and trends facilitated targeted staff training and improved safety practices. Additionally, the increased visibility of incidents prompted a review and enhancement of the induction and training programs for agency workers, further reinforcing M&S's commitment to a proactive safety culture. Overall, Protex AI significantly improved workplace safety, demonstrating M&S's dedication to protecting their employees and maintaining a safe working environment.