Getting employees to report Near Misses is a challenge. Employees often question the value of reporting what they've seen. Indeed, many fear that coming forward with a report will cause trouble and lead to punishment. However, I've found an effective technique to overcome reluctance: Analogize Near Misses at work to incidents at home. Since many of our employees are parents - and all of them were once children - this casts the subject in a light to which they can more easily relate. Here's how to use the technique.

Near Misses Happen at Work and Home

A Near Miss is an undesired event that, under slightly different circumstances, could have resulted in harm to people or damage to property, materials or the environment. Proper reporting of Near Misses is essential and the investigation that follows is for the purpose of training, educating and preventing future incidents or injury.

Near Miss is a term used by occupational health and safety professionals. But incidents also take place outside the workplace. Parents frequently handle Near Miss situations at home. Here's a tale of a domestic Near Miss to illustrate how this works.

The Near Miss Occurs

You tell your 16-year-old son (let's call him Junior) to wash the dishes. Junior drops a carving knife while loading the dishwasher. The knife falls violently to the ground and lands blade-down on the kitchen floor, just missing the foot of Junior's little sister, Suzie, by a few centimeters.

That is a Near Miss. As a parent, you will want to know what happened so you can take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. But will Junior or Suzie tell you about the incident?

Junior and Suzie Decide Whether to Report It

It depends. Through life experience and social conditioning, children are encouraged not to report situations that cast a "supposedly" negative light on themselves or anyone else. And, in many families, there's an unwritten code among siblings to keep misbehavior a secret and not "tattle tale to mom and dad."

The motivation for such behavior is to protect oneself and one's siblings from punishment. But there are ways to defuse this. One way is to persuade your children to always tell the truth and promise they won't be punished for doing so.

The Happy Ending

Let's say Junior does in fact come forward and tell you what happened. Like a good parent should, you investigate the incident and assess the risk of recurrence. As a result, you discover that Junior:

• Always rushes to load the dishwasher (1st mistake); and
• Grabs knives by the blade instead of the handle (2nd mistake).

Now that you know what's going on, you are in a position to educate Junior on the dangers of always being in a rush and on the proper handling of knives. The problem is resolved and dishwasher loading becomes safer at your home.

The Unhappy Ending

Junior and Suzie don't report the incident. So you have no reason to suspect that Junior is rushing to load the dishwasher and handling knives by the blade. And since no injuries have occurred, the improper behavior is reinforced. So it's repeated.

Two weeks later, Junior asks permission to go out with his buddies on Friday night. Your response: "Okay, but only after you load that dishwasher." Junior accepts the deal but is in an even bigger hurry than usual to complete his chore. He distractedly grabs a steak knife by the blade and slices open his hand.

This accident could have been avoided. But it wasn't. The reason: You didn't know about Junior's dangerous loading techniques until after an injury occurred. The Near Miss, in other words, was an opportunity to fix the problem before it led to an injury. Unfortunately, that opportunity was lost since the Near Miss wasn't reported.

Conclusion

This is simple stuff. But it's surprising how placing the importance of Near Miss reporting in the context of the home situation drives home the message to employees. The technique has a secondary benefit: In addition to encouraging the reporting of Near Misses, it enables parents to consciously build on the practice at home and thus eliminate dangers that threaten their families. So give it a try.

MEMBER REPLIES

Golf Cart Training Pays Off

This is in reference to last week's article about the golf cart training.
That is a very well written article. I have been with my company, The Charles Machine Works, Inc., for over 11 years and have been involved with training for nearly 10 years. We have a comprehensive training class for our "Powered Industrial Equipment" (PIE) in which we present a very similar training as this article describes. Our classroom portion covers general vehicle safety operation, along with specific concerns of different types of vehicles (cargo carts, forklifts, platform lifts, aerial lifts, tractors, etc.). Following about 2 hours of classroom training and written test, we proceed to hands on orientation of the different types of vehicles and driving practice for each participant.

We have found that spending a half day or so with these people who will be authorized to operate vehicles valued at several thousand dollars really pays off in reduced maintenance costs, minimal accidents and an overall safer environment for all employees. I have had some comments from new employees who have had experience driving PIE elsewhere that they learned new information in our class about a particular type of vehicle. That's always good to hear. I have a philosophy I have followed for many years... "Share the knowledge; Enjoy the sharing".

I appreciate your newsletters very much and frequently learn from them. Thanks for sharing.

Sincerely,
Rich Ferrell
Safety & Training Representative
The Charles Machine Works, Inc.
Perry, OK.

Sharing Pays Off

Please relay my appreciation to Mr. Anonymous (the writer of the golf carts articles). I was in my way to a meeting to discuss that same issue when I open my email and saw the article. Gosh, I hope I'm that lucky when I buy lottery. I complemented the material I had with the article and the results were amazing. Please express my most sincere thanks.

Rafael A. Dominguez N.
Especialista en Salud y Seguridad Ocupacional
Division de Seguridad, Autoridad del Canal de Panamá

More Training Needed

Having been involved in claims adjusting many years ago, I can tell that there are a huge number of injuries and fatalities on golf courses as a result of reckless driving. It does not take much to toss a passenger out of the cart while rounding a sharp curve too quickly. Many times, the passenger gets thrown into an unyielding tree. All too often the combination of alcohol and poor driving can have tragic results on a golf course.

Henry Flattery
Director, Management Systems

POP QUIZ

Barriers to Safety Training

By Catherine Jones

Question: In a recent survey, Michigan business owners, operators and managers were asked to explain the reasons they don't teach employees about workplace safety. What do you think they listed as their number one barrier?

A. Availability of information
B. Cost of training
C. Lack of time
D. High employee turnover
E. Other reasons

Answer: C. 25% of respondents cited lack of time as the single top barrier to workplace safety training.

Other obstacles ranked in this order:

Availability of information 7%
Cost of training 7%
High employee turnover 11%
Other reasons 11%
Undecided 38%

The survey also uncovered that only 26% of respondents had increased their focus on educating employees about health and wellness in the past year, with the vast majority - 61% - reporting little or no increase at all.

Source: EPIC-MRA

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