The British Glass Manufacturers’ Confederation has developed free new guidance for ‘Incident and Near Miss Reporting’ in order to help businesses gain an understanding about ‘near misses’ and how to monitor and act upon these events.
Completed by the British Glass Health and Safety Steering Group, the guidance aims to introduce the concept of near misses and provide assistance to organisations looking to implement a reporting system into their workplaces.
The guidance has clear definitions to clarify understanding of different types of incident and raise awareness of the benefits and value of appropriate reporting systems.
Jenni Staves, Health and Safety Manager at British Glass, commented: “The guidance we have developed helps our members to go above and beyond what is required by law to stop accidents before they happen.
“It also contributes to the continuous improvement of health and safety performance across all other organisations.”
Information is provided for employees, in terms of understanding what a near miss is and the benefits of reporting it.
For employers, there is advice with respect to implementing a basic system; encouraging reporting; managing reports received and calculating estimates for the number of reports to be expected; assessing and prioritising issues; and communicating outcomes to staff.
Staves continued: “The aim was to put together a document which can be applied to workplaces not only in the glass industry but wider industry and providing, for example, definitions of key terms and concepts used in health and safety, which there is often confusion around.
“We hope that companies will find this a useful starting point if they are just setting up a health and safety reporting system, or a useful benchmark against which to judge existing systems."
To read the guidance in full, it can be downloaded from the British Glass website: http://www.britglass.org.uk/publications/incident-and-near-miss-reporting-guidance
