From Safety 2015: Near-Miss Reporting: Applying Behavioral Science to Optimizing Safety Culture

In their Safety 2015 presentation, "Near-Miss Reporting: Applying Behavioral Science to Optimizing Safety Culture," Aubrey Daniels International senior vice presidents Judy Agnew, Ph.D., and David Uhl explored optimal near-miss reporting.

They offered best practices for effective near-miss reporting such as:

• Make near-miss reporting systems quick and easy to use.
• Positively reinforce near-miss reporting.
• Provide feedback as quickly as possible on how the near-miss report helped.
• Consolidate near-miss data to show trends, and make it useable for specific tasks or types of work.
• Celebrate good catches.
• Include management near-misses and acknowledge management missteps.
• Show correlation between near-miss reporting and improvements in safety.

An element of the presentation focused on the value of building reinforcement into near-miss reporting. Key elements of that include:

• Make immediate consequences positive.
• Minimize the work.
• Anonymity can jump start a process.
• Let people know it mattered.
• Make near-miss data accessible and useful.
• Include good catches.

This session was recorded during Safety 2015 and is available for purchase on http://learn.asse.org.