Why is near miss reporting important in manufacturing?
A near miss is an unforeseen event that had the potential to cause harm, whether illness, injury or damage, but ultimately did not. This can include specific workplace conditions or employee behaviour and can relate to people, property or productivity in the workplace.
Reporting near misses, even though no damage was caused, is important because it encourages proactive safety management. When you report on accidents or injuries, the damage has been done, so any corrective steps you take will be in reaction to what has already happened. By reporting near misses, you can identify and mitigate risks before they become a danger. In manufacturing, proactive safety management not only helps to keep your teams safe on the shop floor but also saves you time and money by protecting your productivity and output.
How can you use near miss data to drive proactive improvements?
Accident prevention should be your top priority. Making effective use of your near miss data is key to enhancing safety management across your facility. As well as controlling hazards before they cause real danger, near miss reporting is a great way to motivate and engage your employees with health and safety. By encouraging more accurate and timely reporting, your teams can have greater ownership over their safety responsibilities and play an active role in protecting their and their colleagues’ wellbeing.
Your employees are the people who can provide you with the best safety data. Their ‘on-the-ground’ perspective can highlight hazards and risks that may otherwise be missed, uncovering valuable information and insights that can help inform safety processes and proactive initiatives. When your teams see that their reports have been listened to and acted upon, they will continue to feel valued and empowered to report near misses. This way, your approach safety management can become more consistent and proactive over time. Read our blog to learn more about the difference between reactive and proactive safety management.
How can you improve near miss reporting in your facilities?
Good near miss reporting, carried out by an engaged and proactive workforce, is an integral part of your manufacturing facility’s safety management approach and it key to helping reduce the likelihood of accidents. But what steps can you take to establish and maintain this good practice?
Here are some recommendations that you can implement to engage your employees and improve your near miss reporting across your manufacturing facilities:
1. Set realistic KPIs
The simplest way to engage your employees in near miss reporting is to make it accessible and achievable. Think about the current state of your safety culture: are some teams already engaged? Does consistency vary across particular areas of your company? Where is good safety practice already happening and how can you build on this? Start with the positives and approach safety management from a constructive perspective, rather than looking for blame.
For example, you might set a target number of near miss reports (or good spots / positive safety observations) for a team to make per person, per year. Depending on the size of your company, this might be 10 or 50, but make sure this number is realistic. Other KPIs to consider include lowering the time it takes to respond to a near miss report or improving your accident frequency rate, reflecting the effectiveness of the corrective steps you have taken to reduce risks. By setting realistic and positive KPIs, your teams will be able to quickly understand what is expected of them and be more motivated to contribute to improving safety in your workplace.
2. Make near miss reporting easy with easy-to-use systems and apps
Even if your teams have clear and realistic expectations to meet, they still need the right tools in place to help them achieve these KPIs.
Imagine you are working in your production facility and you have to walk from one end to the other to grab a near miss slip, fill it out and post it. This manual effort, not to mention lost productivity time, isn’t going to engage your staff. Corrective actions won’t be seen or responded to immediately meaning the risk of an accident is still present. You also won’t know if your report has been seen or acted upon. That’s hardly inspiring you to report more near misses!
This is where digital software comes in. With Notify Technology’s near miss reporting app, you can remove the need for manual, paper-based processes and complicated spreadsheets. With Notify’s app, your teams can log a near miss report at any time from their mobile or from a centralised tablet device, even if you have no internet or signal in your facility. They can upload photos as supporting evidence, share their location with our GPS maps, and even use the speech-to-text function to make reporting even more accessible. What’s more is that Safety Leaders and Managers can then see these reports in real time, with automated notifications and a centralised dashboard, allowing them to see and action all their near miss data in one place.
Notify also allows you to assign corrective actions and follow-up tasks to specific team members at the click of a button. When everyone can see who is responsible for what and where, you can encourage accountability and ensure that everyone can play a part in keeping their workplace safe.
3. Open communication (closing the feedback loop)
We know that the topic of health and safety is often looked at negatively. Some employees may even feel reluctant to report near misses if they feel that they will be blamed or that their report won’t be taken seriously. You can help overcome these fears and boost employee confidence by keeping communication channels open.
When employees make a near miss report, make sure that you acknowledge their findings and respond to the situation speedily. Even if there are changes that will take time to fully put in place, ensure that your teams know what steps are being taken, who is involved and when they can expect things to happen. The aim is to close the feedback loop and make sure your employees know that their contributions are important, even if (especially if!) they are not the ones taking the corrective action.
4. Demonstrate improvements based on near miss data
Once you have taken action in response to a near miss report, don’t forget to record and monitor the impact it has had. Did a gap in workers’ knowledge lead to new training being implemented? Did you purchase new equipment to make part of your manufacturing process safer and more efficient? Maybe an upgrade to existing machinery meant that new weekly checks had to be put in place. Whatever changes have been made, make sure to share them with your wider team. Show how specific near miss reporting led to new information coming to light that directly influenced a decision around what training should be delivered or equipment should be upgraded. When your teams can see the real-life impact of their reporting, they are more likely to continue to play a proactive role in safety management.
How has Notify helped organisations improve their near miss reporting?
Thanks to Notify’s incident reporting software, many organisations in the manufacturing sector have been able to improve their near miss reporting and reduce accidents in their workplace.
Epta UK designs, manufactures, installs and maintains commercial refrigeration systems for major UK supermarket chains, including Morrisons, the Co-op, Aldi and Tesco. Before working with Notify, Epta relied on a manual paper system and an off-site engineering team to report and deal with near misses. Once they started using Notify’s free Incident Management mobile app, they were able to speed up and simplify their near miss reporting system, generating 100 times more data to help shape their safety policies and reduce accidents.
“Notify is a great system for helping to increase the number of near misses and to reduce the number of accidents occurring in a workplace,” said Nigel Donoghue, Epta UK’s Health, Safety and Environmental Manager for UK operations. “It’s a very quick, easy and simple system to use and it saves me and the business a lot of time.”
Aceleron Energy also saw an increase in their near miss reporting after working with Notify. Based in Birmingham, UK, Aceleron Energy aims to be the world leader in differentiated, circular economy energy storage technology. Their approach to safety was more reactive than proactive, relying on Word- or Excel-based risk assessments. Before Notify, they had no system for recording near misses or positive observations from their team.
With Notify’s software, including the Incident Reporting app, Aceleron simplified its reporting process. Now it’s easier for employees to make reports and share information, Aceleron have seen ten times more near miss reports being submitted and a more proactive safety culture as a result.
“Notify has transformed our approach to health and safety at Aceleron,” said Barrie Diffin, Director of Operations. “…we have seen a significant increase in near misses reported, allowing us to make minor improvements and reduce the likelihood of accidents. The ease of reporting and the positive culture it has built have benefited our employees, wider stakeholders and partners.”
Want to improve near miss reporting across your manufacturing facilities? Try Notify for free