Near Miss Reporting

Streamline your near miss reporting procedures and enhance employee engagement with Certainty’s robust system for data collection, real-time corrective and preventative action management, and comprehensive reporting.

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The Challenge

Encouraging front-line workers to fully understand and embrace the importance of reporting near-miss incidents.

Often overlooked as mere close calls, many employees fail to grasp the true significance of near misses. As they help organizations identify areas of risk and prevent them from escalating into major incidents, frontline workers encounter near misses but refrain from reporting them due to a lack of understanding, and difficulty with the actual reporting process.

The Solution

Simplify the process of reporting near misses for your employees, ensuring minimal disruption to their regular workflows.

Create your digital near miss reporting forms

Eliminate the inefficiencies of printing, writing, inputting, and filing paper-based near miss reporting forms with Certainty’s all-in-one digital form solution. With truly multilingual capabilities, build your own unique near miss reporting forms to fit your organization’s specific needs – or use our ready-made templates that ensure OSHA and other safety regulatory compliance.

“Certainty Software is so flexible. We use it for BBS observations, near miss reporting and even quick risk prediction reporting. It really is a great tool.”

– Dominick Chorley, EHS Lead, Mondelez

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Collect data that will give you the greatest near miss insight.

Collecting data in your near miss reports has the power to prevent future near misses, and our advanced form input options can make this process even more effective. With our diverse library of data collection tools, including dropdown menus, scale ratings, image capture, file upload capabilities, time stamps, signature sing-offs, and much more, we empower you to create near miss reports that are not only accurate but also incredibly detailed.

“Certainty has changed the way we look at checklist-related improvement activities.“

– Nathan Wortz, IT Business Relationship Manager to EHS, Kellogg’s

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Streamline your near miss reporting processes

Create seamless workflows for your entire near miss reporting process using Certainty’s Checklist Workflow function. Eliminate delays at any stage of your near miss reporting processes by automatically assigning follow-up actions based on the completion of previous requirements. From inputting the report to obtaining final sign-offs, maintain a streamlined and accountable near miss reporting ecosystem.

“Certainty keeps things simple, which makes the entire product and process so easy to work with. The team is professional, reliable, and friendly. They are also patient and understanding, and always make the time to assist us.”

– John Peoples, Behavioral Safety Team Leader, Huntsman

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Fix the causes of your near misses immediately

Take swift action to eliminate the root causes of avoidable near misses with Certainty’s Action Management feature. With our customizable notification system, you’ll be instantly alerted whenever a near miss is reported. Dive deep into the cause of the incident and efficiently assign corrective and preventive actions to Users or User Groups to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Sustain your corrective action success with the highly detailed and customizable Action Workflows system.

“The ability of notifications is extremely useful to immediately alert senior management in high-risk situations to resolve any concerns quickly.”

– Daniel Girardi, Continuous Improvement Analyst, Longo’s

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Better monitor your near miss mitigation efforts

You’ll have access to a wide range of reporting options that can provide you with the valuable insights needed to make informed decisions and effortlessly gather information for regulatory reporting, including OSHA. By utilizing tools like Power BI, system reporting, customized reports, and adaptable dashboards, you can achieve comprehensive visibility into workplace safety.

“Certainty is flexible, solution-driven, user-friendly, and cost-effective.”

– David Rodriguez, East Coast Safety Director, Anning-Johnson Company

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The Features

Features to strengthen your near miss reporting and ensure workplace safety

Collect

  • Truly multilingual answer options that include text, radio buttons, drop-downs, checkboxes, a date picker, a signature, a star rating, bar & QR code readers, GPS locations, and more…
  • Conditional and repeatable questions to automate and standardize your Near Miss Reporting
  • Fill out your forms with photos, graphics, and documents for greater detail and insight
  • Allow input report data both online and offline
  • App access through major app platforms (iOS, Android, Windows)

Report

  • Track issues identified in your Near Miss Reports
  • Extensive and detailed audit reporting by inspection, user, site, region, question, and answer
  • Business Intelligence Analytics
  • Configure your dashboard to deliver optimal viewpoints of specific or all sites, users, etc.
  • Filterable system reporting
  • Report data analysis and analysis online, or export to PDF, Excel, or CSV formats.
  • Create customized reporting

Manage

  • Automated notifications, escalations, and actions
  • Centralized action delegation
  • Configure your action workflows
  • Customizable sites, organization structures, and site groups
  • Change history logs for the entire system
  • Implement and delegate your custom actions
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Used by hundreds of thousands to easily complete millions of accurate audits and inspections annually.

International Paper

Georgia Pacific

The safety supervisors at Georgia Pacific used to have to spend a lot of time locating individuals to obtain the findings of their safety audits, and they had to dedicate at least eight hours a week to compiling and organizing the reports. This was before they started utilizing Certainty. Gathering, compiling, and reporting the data took a great deal of time. It was a constant struggle that gave me headaches every week.

Learn how Certainty solved streamlined safety audits and inspections for Georgia Pacific.

Case Study

Spend time on prevention, not paperwork

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Near Miss Reporting: What it is and Why it’s Important

Injury Incident Pyramid

According to the U.S Department of Labor, there were 4,764 workplace fatalities in 2020. Transportation incidents, falls, slips, trips, contact with objects and equipment, and exposure to harmful substances were the leading causes of death. Near misses contribute significantly to workplace fatalities regardless of their minimal effects at the moment. For every 600 near misses, 30 property damage incidents occur, leading to approximately 10 serious bodily injuries, and finally leading to at least 1 fatality. Ready to learn more about Near Miss Reporting? let’s jump in.

The Safety Pyramid

The injury incident pyramid, which was first created in 1931 by William Heinrich and later modified by Frank Bird in 1966 noted that an increase in risks presents leads to an increase in workplace injuries and deaths.

What is a Near Miss?

Also called a close call, narrow escape, or near hit, a near miss is an unplanned event that does not cause harm but does have the potential to create injury, illness, or damage. In addition to the threat to human safety, near misses do not damage but have the potential to harm the safety of the environment, property, operations, and equipment.

Why is Near Miss Reporting Important?

Generally, the importance of near miss reporting is it improves safety management and procedures, improves employee morale, and generates cost savings for the enterprise. Three key reasons why near miss reporting is important are:

Improves Workplace Safety Culture

A strong safety culture within the workplace improves general safety. When employees notice management’s strong focus on maintaining a healthy safety program through continuous improvement, they tend to follow and mirror these behaviors.

Employees are supported to speak up when observing a near miss, finding preventative and corrective actions, or uncovering a root cause of a near miss event when there is a safe reporting culture. Instead of acting hesitantly about the aftermath of reporting near-miss events, employees will tend to be more involved in safety discussions and offer new management insights.

Reduces Workplace Incidents

The importance of near miss reporting is that it reduces the risk of progressing and becoming a minor or serious injury, or a fatality in the future. As near miss reporting is collected, analyzed, and acted upon, deeper leading indicators and root causes can be uncovered. Ultimately, the chain of events of potential minor, severe, and fatal workplace accidents can be better identified.

Near miss reporting offers a greater proactive approach to safety management programs and provides clues as to the possible seriousness of a future injury or damage.

It Saves Time and Money

Near miss reporting builds towards preventing fatal incidents from occurring by analyzing and acting on the potential severity of a near miss event. With near miss reporting, businesses can save time and money that would otherwise be spent on employees missing work, compensation claims, property damages, and injury reporting.

Do Near Misses Need to be Reported?

In compliance with OSHA standards, it is recommended that all near miss events be immediately reported by employees to their supervisors. By doing so, employees can complete a near miss report with their most recent recollection of the event and ultimately sooner prevent the event from reoccurring.

Near Misses should be reported to the job site’s Health and Safety Supervisor. Employees can also report a near miss event to their direct supervisor or other management personnel.

A major challenge with near miss reporting is employees recognizing when a near miss event occurred. Many times, employees will notice a close call, but quickly brush it off without communicating what happened to their supervisor. With near miss training, employees can recognize near miss events and report them.

The challenges of near miss reporting are identifying the near miss and collecting accurate information about the incident in a timely manner. While these events are unique, the ability to collect consistent and comparable data in real-time poses a major challenge to effectively developing preventative actions.

Left unaddressed, near misses can reoccur at any moment. After reporting on a near miss, a hurdle for many businesses is the difficulty to generate immediate reports on the event which can be slowed down by the reporting process. With substantial damages at stake, the ability to deliver report results in real time is a challenge for businesses.

Gathering information and compiling reports are necessary for near miss mitigation – but it doesn’t offer the specific corrective actions the firm needs to take to improve workplace safety. This is a huge challenge for businesses as they are unsure whether they are making the correct actions to prevent turning a future near miss into a serious injury.

How to Improve Near Miss Reporting

Employee participation in reporting near misses is the cornerstone of a successful near miss reporting system. When staff involved in an incident are encouraged to report it, the company’s safety program and culture will significantly improve and reduce the number of injuries and fatalities.

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Tactics to increase near miss reporting include:

Don’t punish

It’s important to establish a safety culture where employees who report or are involved in a near miss event are not punished for their actions. When employees are disciplined for near misses, morale can decline, and the business can be interpreted as more focused on financials rather than individual employee safety.

Be careful with offering incentives for incident reporting as this could harm the dynamic of your safety culture amongst employees.

Add to Routine Safety Talks

Consider adding topics of near misses to your next routine safety discussions – such as at your team’s Toolbox Talk. Adding these to your team’s regular safety discussions maintains the normal flow of the workplace while still improving employee understanding and buy-in. Ultimately, this produces better observing and reporting near misses.

Train employees on Near Misses/Near Miss Reporting

Dedicate time to training employees on the reporting form location(s) and the reporting process of a near miss event. It’s important to also contribute safety training to identifying what a near miss is, and the importance that reporting on it has for everyone’s safety to reduce future incidents.

Make it easy for employees to report Near Misses

Ensure that your staff has the necessary tools to support consistent and accurate information gathering in real-time when reporting on a near miss report. Employees may choose not to report near misses if they perceive that reporting will require a lengthy or complicated process. Switching from paper report building to a digital solution not only streamlines the reporting process, but the analyzing and action formulating stages as well.

How to Improve Near Miss Reporting

Consider using a near miss checklist after your next near miss incident to help efficiently compile reference data for your firm’s incident review procedures. Using the near miss checklist acts as a fact sheet where the most relevant and accurate data like date, time, location, and observations are at your team’s disposal during the review process.

The goal of the near miss investigation checklist is to identify the root cause of a near miss event so that similar incidents can be prevented as well as to learn from the event itself. Implementing preventative actions to minimize the chances of the near miss reoccurring can be determined when using the incident investigation checklist.

There are software solutions that can make your next near miss report more effective and ultimately improve your safety program. These services offer real-time data gathering and report building which allow your team to discover the right solutions, as quickly as possible. On the job floor or at the scene of the near miss, your staff can accurately complete their next near miss report and prevent future serious injuries or damage.

You may also be interested in:

Incident Reporting: A Key Component Of An Effective Safety Management Program

Safety Observation: Five Steps To Reduce Workplace Risk

Solutions for near miss reporting