October 2007

NEAR MISSES: A RISK MANAGEMENT RED FLAG

A “near miss” is an accident waiting to happen. For example:

• An employee trips over an extension cord that lies across the floor, but avoids a fall by grabbing the corner of a desk.
• An outward-opening door nearly hits a worker, who jumps back just in time.
• Instead of using a ladder, an employee puts a box on top of a drum, but once up loses his balance and falls. He’s a little shaken up, but not hurt.

When things like this happen, most employees, and often supervisors, feel relieved that nobody was hurt and simply get back to work. But that’s a big mistake! Someone — the employee who had the near miss or someone else — is very likely to be injured eventually by that very same hazard.

Use near misses as training opportunities. After every incident, call a safety meeting and talk about what happened, what could’ve happened, and how to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Say a worker slips on a slick surface and almost, but not quite, falls. Use a safety meeting on housekeeping to focus on each employee’s responsibility for correcting a hazard, when possible, or reporting them when they can’t be fixed. An ounce of prevention ...