Motivating workers to report near-misses

Recently, I ran a poll on my LinkedIn page, asking how easy managers felt it was to get workers to report near-misses. Out of 296 votes, 42% said they found it not so easy, with 34% saying they found it challenging. Just 24% of people reported that it was easy to get people to report close encounters at work.

Of course, a LinkedIn poll can’t be considered an in-depth survey, but I was surprised at the high number of people who said they were struggling to get their employees to report near-misses.

David Cant - Health and Safety Professional

Let’s delve a little deeper into the subject and look at ways to make the reporting of near-misses clearer and easier.

What is a near-miss?

To get your workers to report near-misses, you first need to identify what exactly a near-miss is. From the comments on my poll, I’ve come to realise that there are a few schools of thought on the subject.

I feel we need to start by differentiating between ‘accidents’ and ‘incidents’. In my experience, the difference between these is that an accident = an event that causes injury or death, and an incident = a breakdown in health and safety that did not result in injury but highlighted a flaw in health and safety.

This outlook is backed by the Health and Safety Executive, who we can safely assume are the arbiters of definitions within health and safety.

The section of their website, which discusses accidents and investigations, discusses various terms – including accident, incident, and near-miss – which can help clarify these various ‘adverse events.

According to the HSE, ‘accident’ can be defined as an ‘event which results in injury or ill-health.

Meanwhile, ‘Incident’ is broken down into two definitions, ‘near-miss and ‘undesired circumstance’.

near-misses are defined as ‘an event not causing harm, but which has the potential to cause injury or ill health.’
Undesired circumstances, meanwhile, are defined as ‘ a set of conditions or circumstances that have the potential to cause injury or ill health.’

The final term is ‘dangerous occurrences, which are defined as ‘one of a number of specific, reportable adverse events, as defined in the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR)’. The Regulations use ‘near-miss and ‘dangerous occurrence’ interchangeably.

Under RIDDOR, employers and those in control of work are legally bound to report near-misses as ‘dangerous occurrences. Thankfully, the HSE has supplied a handy list of reportable events within the regulations under this definition. Some good examples include:

‘Any explosion or fire caused by an electrical short circuit or overload (including those resulting from accidental damage to the electrical plant) which either:
- (a)results in the stoppage of the plant involved for more than 24 hours; or
- (b)causes a significant risk of death.’
And ‘the collapse, overturning or failure of any load-bearing part of any lifting equipment, other than an accessory for lifting.’

So, although some might think there is a lack of clarity in the term ‘near-miss, the HSE is pretty clear cut on what it sees as near-misses, as well as what needs to be reported.

What are the reasons for not reporting a near-miss?

There is any number of reasons why an employee might feel uncomfortable reporting a near-miss.

They are afraid of blame

The worker might not have been following standard procedures, or perhaps previous events have led them to believe that they will face punishment for the incident, even if it wasn’t their fault.

They don’t believe it will happen again, or it wasn’t that bad

The worker might feel that it is unlikely to happen again and is not worth reporting. Many employees often feel a sense of invulnerability at work, unaware that simply being ‘good at your job’ or having plenty of experience doesn’t make you invincible.

They don’t believe anything will be done

If a company has a lax safety culture, employees might not think reporting near-misses is worth the effort. Unless you make a real effort to take employee concerns into account and act on them, this can become a real problem.

The only way to honestly know why employees are not engaging with the safety culture is by making an effort to get to know your workers as people rather than statistics. I’ve discussed the ‘human factor’ in previous blogs and what you can do to overcome the unpredictability of people at work.

Why is it so important that workers report near-misses?

Outside of RIDDOR requirements, employees must report near-misses as part of a greater health and safety effort.

Health and safety is more than just putting up notices on the board and filling out risk assessments. The only way to effectively push down accidents and safety failures in your business is by implementing a culture in which safety is a top priority for everyone, from directors to employees to sub-contractors.

Only by encouraging everyone to participate in this culture will you reap the rewards of a truly safe company. Employees must see their safety and the safety of others as a top priority.

Once you have staff openly reporting the near-misses and safety failures they see, you’ll be able to properly analyse the gaps in your safety strategy and improve it, avoiding potentially much more severe failures in the future. The more information you receive from those on the ground, the more data you have to work with.

Encouraging workers to report near-misses

So, what steps can you take to ensure your employees feel comfortable and correct in reporting near-misses?

Recognition over rewards

The first port of call for many health and safety managers looking to encourage a certain behaviour is incentives. This seems to be simple human psychology: offer a reward for a particular act.

However, these rewards often do not work the way you would expect them to and can lead to unintended consequences, such as over-reporting on frivolous things to get the reward.

Instead of taking the easy road with incentives, you should invest in recognition. When employees bring a near-miss to your attention, recognise both the risk and the employee. Take visible steps to close the gap in your safety systems, and do what you can to ensure that the employee feels like they are being taken seriously.

Highlight a particular near-miss in your safety briefings

Often, employees might fail to report a near-miss simply because they didn’t know they were supposed to report it. As I mentioned earlier, there can be some uncertainty around what counts as a near-miss and what doesn’t.

By taking a recent, or even theoretical, example – such as equipment failure or a close call with a forklift – you can clarify what employees need to watch out for and report.

Please keep it simple

Even employees engaged with your safety culture don’t want to spend hours filling out forms. They’ve got better things to do. A simple hotline or email address for near-miss reporting is all you need. The system must be short and straightforward if you have any hope of employees engaging with it.

Never punish reporting

Just as you should not over-reward, you also should not punish those who come forward to report safety failings. All punishing responsible employees will do is make them less likely to report near-misses in the future.

If the safety failure was the employee’s fault, you should make sure you do what you can to identify what went wrong and educate them to prevent it from happening again. Safety coaching is a fantastic alternative to disciplinary action.

A safer workplace

Once again, this comes down to a matter of encouraging a better workplace safety culture. By ensuring that employees are engaged and feel that coming forward is worthwhile, you will find that more and more employees report near-misses because they genuinely care about making their workplace safer.

I’ve worked with hundreds of companies over the years to improve their safety culture and get employees engaged. If you think I might be able to help you, send me a text or WhatsApp message on 07814 203 977, or get in touch via my contact form.

Competent or Not: Who’s Working on Your Site?

To most right-minded individuals, ‘incompetent’ is quite the insult. Incompetence implies uselessness at a given task, possibly even dangerousness, and most of us – quite rightly – would take serious offence.

In health and safety, however, competence is actually a technical term. Describing someone as competent in a health and safety sense clearly states they have the right training, skills, experience, and knowledge to carry out a given task that could be risky safely. Someone without the required amount of any of the above, or lack of physical ability to do the job, wouldn’t be considered ‘competent’ to do the job. No insult intended.

Competence is vital to health and safety and managing risk safely, especially on construction sites or in potentially dangerous industrial settings. Employers and those with a health and safety remit are responsible for ensuring anyone hired to carry out tasks – including contractors – is competent.

Competence to carry out a job should not be confused with assigning a competent person. This is a different but less important part of risk management and involves assigning someone in a general sense – not for a specific task – who has the skills, knowledge and experience to manage health and safety. It’s worth noting that this person doesn’t need to be an employee of the business. Veritas Consulting offers several cost-effective external Competent Person packages for almost any budget if that’s what you’re after.

In this blog, I’ll be discussing competency and what you as an employer or health and safety manager can do to ensure those working for you are competent, to keep your workers safe and your company out of legal hot water should things go awry.

Ensuring competency

Health and safety legislation states that employers and those with health and safety responsibilities must ensure that workers are competent before allowing them to commence work.

There are a few ways to guarantee a competency, but these will differ depending on whether the worker in question is an employee or a contractor.

Ensuring employees are competent

According to the Health and Safety Executive: ‘someone’s level of competence only needs to be proportionate to their job and place of work’. Essentially, the person doing the job at hand needs to illustrate they are equipped with everything they need to do that job safely. Someone who has spent their life working in an office will (probably) be competent at their own job but won’t have the first idea where to start when asked to tile a roof. The reverse is also true.

Hopefully, when employing the person, you will have already been able to determine that they possess the right level of physical ability and the best attitude to perform at a safe level so that you can build on that foundation.

Of course, while it’s always a point in their favour, you can’t expect candidates – especially newer, younger ones – to have on the job experience or the exact qualifications or certificates. Hiring candidates who have already completed courses relevant to the job does mean that they can hit the ground running, as it were, but on-the-job training should be a priority for everyone. By training employees yourself or using a trusted safety trainer, you know for sure that they’ve been taught what they need to know and are getting the right qualifications.

Another vital part of competency, experience, comes with time and practice. None of us was born with a hammer in our hands, of course. However, with the right foundation and temperament, employees can learn the ropes on smaller, safer jobs or by shadowing more experienced employees before taking the reins themselves.

Regular risk assessments are key to ensuring workers without the right skills or experience aren’t left out of their depth. They will allow you to identify any training you need to offer or improvements you need to make.

Ensuring employee competence isn’t a matter of checking off a checklist. It’s an ongoing joint task between you and your employee, in which you provide the training and access to skills they need, and they implement what they’ve learned safely and sensibly.

Ensuring competency in contractors

With contractors, guaranteeing competency is a little bit different.

Although the contractor isn’t your employee, you become responsible for their safety by bringing them onto the site. This potentially makes you equally liable for accidents caused by their poor behaviour or lack of skills.

Luckily, it’s a little more straightforward to identify competency in contractors. Here, there is a checklist to follow. According to the HSE, you should ask any potential contractor the following questions to ensure they’re competent enough to carry out work on your site.

How will work be managed? Who will be responsible for each task, who will supervise, and what checks are carried out on equipment and materials?
Will subcontractors be used? How will the contractor check that they are competent? This will vary based on the risk and complexity of the work.
Can they show a record of recent health and safety performance? E.g. a number of accidents, ill health, HSE enforcement action etc.
Do they have a written health and safety policy? If the contractor has fewer than five employees, this isn’t legally required.
Do they have any independent assessment of their competence, or are they members of a trade association or professional body? Both of these are great ways to show competence.
Do they have examples of existing risk assessments? Again, the contractor will likely only have this if they have more than five employees.
Do they have a safety method statement? This isn’t a legal requirement but shows positive investment in health and safety.
Can they show relevant qualifications or proof of skills and experience?
Do they have relevant liability insurance?
Vitally, what health and safety information and training do they offer their employees, and can they provide records of this training?

Any contractor worth their salt will be happy to provide all the above to guarantee their ability to do the job. They should, in theory, also be happy to provide testimonials from other clients who have had positive experiences. The contractor wants to work for you and know that minimising any concerns is crucial.

By following the above checklist when working with contractors, you can minimise the risk of those who aren’t equipped properly to set foot on your site and make you liable for any incidents.

The experience paradox

Let’s say you’re required to carry out a specific type of work at height. You have a number of highly skilled and very competent workers, but none of them has experience carrying out this type of job. Instead, you seek out contractors who can do the work for you.

You have two options. A friend of a friend recommended company A. They haven’t provided any record of qualifications, training, method statements, and risk assessment consisting of a quick run around with a clipboard. They’ve got their CSCS cards, but not much else. Their reasoning? They’ve been in business for forty years. They’re experienced.

Option A, meanwhile, are happy to provide everything you need. They’re registered with CHAS and ConstructionLine. Their workers recently completed a Work at Height refresher course, PPE training, rescue training, and training in mobile elevated work platforms (MEWPS) and PASMA. Unfortunately, they’ve only been in business for a year.

Of course, seeing it laid out like that makes the right choice obvious.

Option B, despite their lack of experience compared to A, are more competent. But too often, those in a position of hiring subcontractors put a huge emphasis on experience alone rather than all factors. Of course, experience is important, but being able to prove that ability, with external, relevant, independent proof – is much more important.

Remember: just because someone has been doing the job for 40 years doesn’t mean they’ve been doing it right. Luck can be powerful, but it runs out.

The final word

Competency is crucial, but it can often be an afterthought. It’s important to consider all factors when determining competency and remember that just because someone is sensible and highly experienced in one particular area does not mean they are competent in another.

It’s up to you as an employer or health and safety manager to always check for and monitor competency, as it’s one of the most vital tools in ensuring the safety of those on-site and minimising your own liability.

I have two decades of experience in safety and risk management, including advising on competency and more. Can I help you? Please send me a message on 07814 203 977, or use the contact form below to book a 15-minute virtual call. To talk things through.

Risk Management During COVID-19

Almost one year on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s safe to say the world has changed. One area seriously impacted by the pandemic is risk management and health and safety in the workplace.

Working practices have shifted dramatically, and health and safety managers and those charged with risk management have found themselves in a new and challenging environment.

How has risk management been affected by COVID-19, and what can those with safety responsibilities do to counter it?

Impact of COVID-19 on risk management

We are all painfully aware of the changes COVID-19 has had on the workplace in general. Most people not in front-line roles are now confined to their homes, with living rooms, conservatories, and spare bedrooms becoming offices.

But not everyone has been affected by the pandemic in the same way when it comes to working. Health workers are still required to face the public every day, as are other vital workers such as those in the food, shopping, and service industries. Important building and infrastructure works remain ongoing.

These workers are continually exposed to the risks posed by COVID-19 and the general dangers of their particular profession. This is even more concerning now that supervisors, health and safety professionals, and others in charge of keeping them safe are tasked with tackling the new challenges posed by COVID. It is a delicate balancing act to ensure COVID-specific measures are implemented, without neglecting standard, vital health and safety provisions.

Risk management during COVID-19

What steps can you take to identify and manage risks during COVID-19?

Remember people

People can often get so caught up in the other factors of health and safety/risk management; they can forget the most important part: PEOPLE.

Factoring in the constantly changing COVID-19 situation alongside standard risk management means you can lose sight of the people involved. When managing risk, you should always keep in mind that you are dealing with real people, not statistics.

Whether your employees are home-based or working on-site, remember that they are individuals, and their safety is paramount.

Conversely, as I discussed in my recent ‘Human Factor’ blog, human behaviour is the most unpredictable part of safety and risk management. COVID has made this even more apparent: people are stressed, balancing work and childcare, and fearful of the future. It may be more difficult to predict and mitigate risky behaviour. When carrying out your role, remember to be sympathetic and allow for these new factors.

Identify new risks, but don’t forget the classics

As mentioned above, the pandemic has brought with it a host of new challenges. Many businesses neglected to develop robust work from the home policy before the pandemic. These businesses had to scramble to align the new world of home working with health and safety policies as best they could.

Those managing risks in frontline fields faced an even greater challenge. COVID brought a host of new challenges including social distancing and sanitisation, to a greater degree than ever before. Things which were comfortably standard before – such as the number of workers on-site or the length of time between cleaning – became major considerations. The constantly shifting nature of the virus, and sometimes vague government guidelines, made tackling these things difficult and time-consuming.

Despite these new dangers, other risk considerations remain. Work at height on building projects still requires the correct training, equipment, and planning. Human behaviour still needs to be managed. The health of employees needs to be maintained with regularly enforced breaks and ergonomic management.

If you are overwhelmed in your risk management role trying to tackle everything, make sure you communicate. If necessary, ask to recruit support staff, or seek out the help of a professional consultant.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Sometimes it feels like we’re further apart than ever before. No amount of Zoom calls, quizzes, and Slack chats can make up for real face-to-face interaction. Even those not working from home feel the disconnect, with masks and social distancing making banter a thing of the past.

With the rigid structure of video calls and email chains, it’s easy for things to get lost in translation or forgotten about completely. When it comes to risk management, this can lead to serious consequences: and fast.

Make communication a priority. Ensure all safety provisions are properly communicated to everyone in the company. If you have risk management responsibilities, you should have a direct line to everyone, and regularly be communicating important updates regarding COVID and beyond to keep everyone in the loop.

The new world of risk management

There’s been a lot of talk about the ‘new normal’, which goes for risk management. Constantly identifying and mitigating risks has never been an easy job, and it’s only gotten harder thanks to the pandemic.

I have 20 years of experience in risk management, helping safety managers, supervisors and businesses keep people safe. If you need health and safety support during this strange time, don’t hesitate to reach out via the contact options below.

The Human Factor – Managing Risky Behaviour at Work

In recent decades, health and safety has become a top priority for business globally, in construction and beyond.

While this is great news, health and safety managers risk getting lost in risk assessments and legislation, overlooking the biggest risk of all: the human factor.

What is the human factor?

Humans are inherently unpredictable. Though by nature, we generally like routine, it is impossible to predict how anyone might react to a situation, and nowhere is this more obvious than at work.

Human behaviour can impact health and safety in multiple ways, and no matter how many safety measures you put in place, you can’t entirely mitigate risk because of this unpredictability.

Whether it is a worker overlooking or ignoring the rules to get the job done faster, or a manager cutting corners to save a few quid, or simple ignorance, human behaviour is a tricky obstacle to well thought out and comprehensive safety measures.

Most health and safety provisions are often little more than common sense, but this means they rely on employees making use of their own common sense to be effective. When workers ignore common sense and take risks, all your safety measures go out the window.

Why do people take risks?

There are a few triggers of risky behaviour in the workplace.

Immaturity

Every workplace has its own unique type of banter. While there’s nothing wrong with good-natured ribbing, it can sometimes get out of hand without firm boundaries.

Immature behaviour can quickly lead to injuries, especially on modern construction sites where there are plenty of risks to human health, no matter how many provisions you put in place.

People often blame health and safety for ‘killing fun’ in the workplace, but that’s far from the truth. There’s a place for banter and jokes at work, but not to the extent that people are put at risk.

Management should support HSE managers in setting firm boundaries to keep everyone safe, allowing for a lighthearted culture that does not encourage risky behaviour.

Lack of Training or Communication

Often, risky behaviour on-site is just poor training. What seems like unsafe behaviour may come down to the fact that there are gaps in the employee’s training, and they’re filling those gaps as best they can.

When making safety provisions, you should always ensure that employee training is a top priority to minimise the possibility of risky behaviour. No worker should ever be doing a job for which they are not trained and equipped.

Lack of Communication

Risk assessments are all well and good, but no use to employees if the correct course of action is not communicated to them. Workers may seem to be ignoring the provisions put in place when they don’t even know they’re there in reality.

Lines of communication should be open at all times, with employees and contractors kept up to date on safety provisions.

Leadership

As mentioned above, the push for cost and time savings is a big reason people put themselves at risk in the workplace. However, this type of behaviour is often triggered by pressures from above. If upper management encourages employees to put themselves at risk to benefit the company, then the issue runs far deeper than employee behaviour.

Conversely, weak leadership can often be as bad as actively bad leadership. For example, when risky behaviour is ignored, other workers may wonder why they’re bothering. When people are left to get away with ignoring the rules, there’s no incentive to improve.

Safety managers, supervisors, and forepersons need to have the power to step in when they witness poor behaviour. On the other hand, there also needs to be some reinforcement for those following the rules and striving for safety: it’s a balancing act where those in charge need to be prepared to react and respond accordingly.

Safety Approach

Awareness is all well and good, but it very rarely leads to changed behaviour on its own. Awareness campaigns need to be followed up with active behaviour management and achievable goals.

It’s important to look beyond just punishing the bad behaviour and actually set targets which entice everyone to improve. Simply telling your employees to be aware, or be careful, isn’t enough.

Ultimately, your approach to safety should be dynamic and ongoing, encouraging employees to change their behaviour and always strive for better.

The solution

It’s impossible to predict human behaviour at work fully, but this does not mean it’s impossible to improve it with behaviour management.

By working closely with your employees, setting firm boundaries, and implementing ongoing incentives to improve, you can manage this behaviour and minimise risks.

I firmly believe health and safety is just simple common sense. Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses to help manage their human factor and maximise safety wherever possible. If you think I might help you, why not get in touch via the contact options below.

How can you motivate your workers to wear PPE

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is a vital part of many tasks in construction and beyond. The human body is not naturally equipped for many of the tasks we undertake at work. Using PPE means we can carry out these tasks without exposing ourselves to unnecessary risk.

Though employers should make an effort to minimise and mitigate risks as much as possible, sometimes the use of PPE is unavoidable.

In every developed country globally, including the UK, businesses are legally required to provide the correct PPE, and workers are expected to wear it and make use of it. Despite this, too many workers neglect to use it at all. The question is, why? And what can you do to tackle it?

What does the law say?

The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Act 1994 states: ‘Every employer shall ensure that suitable personal protective equipment is provided to his employees who may be exposed to a risk to their health or safety while at work except where and to the extent that such risk has been adequately controlled by other means which are equally or more effective.’

It’s a quite clear cut that employers have a responsibility to provide that PPE where needed, alongside identifying and mitigating risks with other methods such as safety equipment and risk assessments. But are workers legally required to wear it?

The Health and Safety at Work Act states that workers are required to:

Take reasonable care of their own health and safety, as well as that of others.
Cooperate with employers on health and safety
Correctly use work items provided by their employer.
Not interfere with any equipment provided.

The law is clear then. But well-intentioned legislation very rarely survives contact with the day to day without solid health and safety management. All the world legislation can’t force someone to put a hard hat on if it’s not properly enforced.

Why don’t people wear PPE?

As we all know, humans can be unpredictable. Each person will respond differently to guidelines, and this includes PPE. Some people will do everything they can to avoid wearing them.

Justifications for not wearing PPE can include:

Comfort: hard hats aren’t exactly designed with comfort in mind
Necessity: do they really need to wear it for that job?
It’s restrictive: they’ll get the job done quicker this way…
They haven’t worn it up until now, and they’re fine, look!
They forgot. Whoops.

There are a thousand imaginative excuses for not wearing PPE, but very few wash.

Ultimately, the wearing (or not wearing) of PPE comes down to human behaviour and workplace culture. As a manager, you respond to workers neglecting to wear PPE will have a serious impact.

What can you do about it?

A common response to discovering a worker without PPE is to punish them. You provided the equipment, and they know they’re supposed to be wearing it. You may have a strike system in place, which will lead to eventual dismissal.

Of course, they could legitimately have forgotten to wear it. Assuming this is the first offence, you might be inclined to let it slide.

Conversely, some businesses might have a very relaxed attitude to PPE. An ‘oh well, don’t do it again’ attitude might seem appealing but can quickly lead to a cascade of similar offences. If there’s no consequences, or incentive to wear PPE, why bother?

There are many ways in which to respond, but these are all reactionary, rather than preventative. It might be worth asking yourself: ‘what can I do to encourage my workers to wear their PPE?’

Awareness is all well and good, but in reality, most people know they should be wearing PPE. They have likely been told to wear it in countless newsletters, on signage, and in toolbox talks. If you are still seeing people not wearing PPE, examine why these methods are not affecting the behaviour you want.

It’s a behaviour thing

I firmly believe behaviour management is one of the keys to safer working environments. Investigate further to identify why it made sense at that moment for that particular worker not to wear their PPE. Is it lack of training? Is the equipment unsuitable? Is this a wider issue which can be tackled by adjusting health and safety provisions? By identifying the root cause, you can implement a more effective solution.

This might be better training or rewards for meeting ongoing, dynamic targets. PPE usage will naturally increase as your employees strive to meet these targets and improve their behaviour. The carrot is often more effective than the stick.

Of course, some people can’t be helped and always do things their way no matter what you do, leaving the stick as the only option. But by making all efforts to check whether this is a wider culture issue, you can implement the right provisions to change worker behaviour, and prevent risky attitudes from taking root.

Sometimes, you can be too close to a problem. An outside point of view, such as that of a consultant, can be incredibly beneficial. I have helped hundreds of businesses identify the causes of improper behaviour at work, improve their safety culture, and protect their workers. Can I help you? Get in touch via the contact options below.