Learning from near misses is crucial for health and safety.
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) reports that an average of 250 employees and self-employed people are killed each year because of accidents in the workplace.
A further 150,000 sustain major injuries or injuries that mean they are absent from work for more than three days. Over 2.3 million cases of ill health are caused or made worse by work.
According to the Labour Force Survey, over 40 million working days are lost through work-related injuries and ill health, at a cost to business of £2.5 billion, so learning from near misses most importantly can protect your workforce, but also minimise lost working days due to work related injuries and ill health.
What is a near miss?
The HSE, adheres to RIDDOR – the reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations 2013, and they term a near miss as,
- an incident that, while not causing harm, has the potential to cause injury or ill health, and
- a ‘dangerous occurrence.’ NB:- A dangerous occurrence (near miss) is an incident with a high potential to cause death or serious injury, but which happens relatively infrequently.
Who is responsible?
RIDDOR places the duty on employers, the self-employed and people in control of work premises (the Responsible Person) to report certain serious workplace accidents, occupational diseases and specified dangerous occurrences (near misses).
How to learn from near misses
The HSE recommends that businesses collect information about all near miss incidents as this enables the enforcing authorities to learn about the circumstances and their causes. It also provides valuable information which both regulators and business can use to help prevent accidents.
A step by step process to record accidents and near misses would be to,
- collect information
- analyse the information
- identify risk control measures
- implement an action plan to mitigate the likelihood of dangerous occurrences
How can Alphatec’s software solutions help?
Alphatec provide software solutions to high-risk industry sectors, like the construction sector. Our software solution ClaimControl for example, provides the very platform to collect and analyse information, offering insight to identify root cause. Also, ClaimControl integrates with Google Maps so that you can not only identify root cause but see a heat map and identify risk in specific locations too.
At Alphatec our aim is to provide solutions to your problems, continually enhancing systems to enable you to work smarter, safer and identify risk. Not sure which solution is right for your specific set of circumstances? Contact us to find out more.