Near Misses are an Opportunity to Learn.  They are an important leading indicator.  If left un-examined, they can create an environment that is ripe for serious injuries.  That is a lagging indicator that you will see once it is too late.

How to Learn from a Near Miss

• Report all Near Misses to a Joint Health and Safety Committee.
• Report serious incidents to the applicable organizations that oversee worker safety.
• Investigate Near Misses to the same degree as serious incidents.

Moving Forward

• Review the findings of the investigation and determine what controls should be put in place.
• Discuss the incident and what need to change openly during safety meetings
• Safety bulletins keep the lessons learned from a near miss part of the safety culture.

After a near-miss incident people understandably say, “Thankfully no one was hurt.” But next time, the slightest change in conditions could lead to an injury or worse.

Things to do not get better if people do not have the foresight and take the time to learn from mistakes.

Above all, this process should not place blame.  The goal is to find areas of improvement.  In other words, make the company’s safety culture stronger than it was before the incident.

Wombat Software wants to provide companies with tools to put this process into action.

Here are some of our ideas

• Make it easy for workers to report incidents.
• After that, the applicable people are sent automated notifications to ensure that there is follow up.
• Link Corrective Actions to the incident. Therefore, the entire process is reviewed from start to finish.
• Leading and Lagging Indicator Dashboards are an easy-to-use resource to help ensure that companies can be proactive versus reactive when it comes to safety.

We are eager to hear your ideas.  Near Misses are an opportunity to learn.  Above all, we want to ensure that the companies have the information they need to create a safety culture where each and every Near Miss makes people safer.