Close calls or near misses means someone got lucky this time, but the next person might not be so lucky. The old “she’ll be right” attitude has had its day and with so much at risk, it’s simply not good enough.
The challenge is around creating a workplace and safety culture where your team feels confident enough to speak out, and understanding that’s how you really take care of your mates.
Early Warnings
Close calls are early warning signs and signals. It doesn’t make sense that they are sometimes ignored.
Near misses shows something needs fixing. It could be the near miss that occurred due to lack of training on a certain task or a certain piece of equipment. If that’s the case, that means more robust training is required.
It could be that safe operating procedures aren’t being used correctly that clarifies how a job should be done or a piece of equipment should be used and the worker just went off what they’ve always done. The warning has now got us to create or update procedures, share them at toolbox talks and encourage employee engagement to identify any gaps or opportunities for improvement.
It could be a guard missing from machinery allowing staff to access areas which could scalp them, cause amputation or entanglement. A simple assessment and guard can prevent a debilitating incident.
The message should be made very clear; if you see something, or hear something, or did something that could cause harm, by reporting it you’re saving someone else who might not get away with it just being a close call next time.
Reporting Is More Than Just “Red Tape”
Reporting near misses isn’t just red tape or something the boss says to do.
It’s a key part of preventing serious accidents.
There’s often a lot more value in a close call report than most people realise. With a thorough investigation process, a close call report can lead to big improvements, not just in safety culture, but in the overall company culture. It shows that the business genuinely cares about its people when you get your near miss reporting right.
Report, Learn, Prevent
To recap, reporting near misses or close calls takes a three-way approach:
- Report – make it a rule all close calls must be reported. Once you embed this into your safety culture, it becomes automatic. Reporting near misses is a tool to prevent accidents from happening and lives being lost
- Learn – we can all learn lessons from close calls; from the person who experienced or saw it, to the management team who are in the role of responsibility around managing risks, training, inductions, procedures, policies and more
- Prevent – this is the end goal because near miss reporting saves lives and serious harm.
Sadly, we can give you very real-life examples of what happened when near misses were ignored. We know that in some workplaces and worksites near misses are going underreported and we don’t want that to continue because we know the next time could be bad.
If you need help getting your near miss reporting on track, I’m here to make it simple and effective. Get in touch and let’s get it sorted
Example 1:
I was driving a government vehicle between Mount Maunganui and Rotorua and as I was heading into Paengaroa I was trying to reduce my speed from 100km to 60km. Unfortunately when I applied the brake, the vehicle wasn’t slowing down; in fact it was speeding up.
I looked down to see the floor mat had flicked up and was over the acceleration pedal. It meant that whenever I applied the brake the mat was pushing on to the accelerator. I managed to move the mat in time to not rear end the vehicle in front of me but sh*t it was close!
I pulled over and removed the mat to prevent it from happening again. When I arrived at the Rotorua office, I explained to the team what had happened. Three of the team went ‘oh yeah, that has happened to me in the carpool vehicle also’.
We could have corrected this ages ago but the team had taken a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude! Yet it took me reporting it before we did something about it! Not only did I ensure it was reported to management, I explained this was the fourth incident, yet it went unreported till now due to our culture. I explained in the report, I have removed the mats that were not fit for purpose in the carpool vehicles and that if they want a new mat to prevent the mud and debris everywhere, they need to get one that secures into position and cannot move. Now the issue has been reported, when we look at adding new vehicles to the fleet, this is a criterion that’s checked before they are put into circulation.
Example 2:
One of my clients has a tall operator that was assigned a new Hiab. He found that the steering wheel was low and he kept catching his knee on it when he had to get out of the cab. He didn’t think much of it… just saw it as annoying but no big deal… Until he arrived on a construction site, went to get out of the cab and when his knee caught on the steering wheel this time, his body kept going and his knee was stuck and stayed behind, causing him to fall out of the cab. Not only did he fall, he landed on an uncapped rebar that punctured his rib cage.
If he had reported it sooner, we would have taught him how to lift the steering wheel thus preventing the incident. Something so simple can prevent a nasty incident… if only he had spoken up rather than accepting it was just an annoying thing but no biggie.
The cost? His injury meant time off work. He got ACC which means he only got 80% of his average earnings. His company had to replace him with another operator that needed site specific training etc so this was an extra cost to the company.
