Communication is Key

It’s essential to communicate when an incident or near miss occurs. You must not only communicate the incident or near miss but also the root causes and corrective actions associated with the incident or near miss.

You need to communicate those corrective actions to not only the employee who was injured but also to the organization or the employees that are applicable to that task where that employee was injured. If you implement corrective actions for an injury and then only communicate those corrective actions with the employee that got injured, that is the only employee who it affects & it minimally benefits the company.

But what about other employees who do the same or similar tasks? They need to be aware of the injury! They need to know what occurred, and the corrective actions to make sure that it doesn’t occur again. When you also communicate to the employees with similar or the same tasks, you are allowing the company’s safety culture to continuously improve. The goal is to communicate the corrective actions to all applicable persons so that all employees can implement them, not just the one who was injured.

For example, if a supervisor catches an employee sticking their hand in a moving machine to try to unjam it, the supervisor should not just talk to that employee and go over corrective actions with them. They also need to share that unsafe act and share the corrective actions of that unsafe act with the rest of the employees in that task group to ensure that they are aware of the hazards and what corrective actions that are now put in place to prevent the unsafe act. This allows continuous safety improvement of the facility and not just an individual.