Why are people not reporting incidents?
First of hopefully many conversations with Dave Whitefield, Andrew Thornhill and Matthew Thorne
We need to anchor to learning rather than reaction and blame………….
What we aren’t seeing in “incident reporting systems” is the trust, culture and language….things that cant be “systematised”…………
3 Small Chat Rooms #1 Final.mp4 from Matthew Thorne on Vimeo.
Matt Thorne
Executive Director at Risk Diversity
Risk Diversity coaches and mentors Companies and People to understand Leadership, Culture and Risk, helping them to humanise and harmonise their systems.
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KWA MARTIN ACHUO says
Some people do not report incidents for the following reasons
– They might be implicated in these incident and do not want to,be accountable
– Some line supervisors do not want to take out time to investigate incidents and so run away from their responsibilities by not reporting incidents.
– Some officers do not have the courage to report incidents.
– Some ignore
– Some lack the means
Matthew Thorne says
Hi KWA Martin Achuo
So the question then changes, how do we hold on to this information so we can learn from it. How can we promote trust in an organisation? How do we stop punishment as the trajectory?
frank says
Great video Matt, Dave & Andrew,
We have a saying in North America, Name, Blame Shame & retrain which summarizes the anchoring of language in the process. As Dave states the forms drive the response, because “A good incident report has no blank lines” and I must fill in that corrective action!
From a systems perspective I routinely ask, how many of your corrective actions resulted in policy, procedure or specification changes? Most companies are in the high 90% because they are trying to move away from individual blame but can’t quite make the connection to the groupspace and how that impacts decision making.
Looking forward to seeing more snippet’s gentlemen!
Frank
Matthew Thorne says
Thanks for the support Frank. Look out next Friday when we will drop the next.
Rob Long says
Great video fellows. You nailed some of the key issues at a micro level in organisations.
At a macro level the whole industry is anchored to zero, all associations, global safety etc. Such pervasive symbolism, language and its priming set the scene for managers to unconsciously frame the problem as numbers, individuals and demonising injury. Indeed, when counting injury becomes the definition of safety, then harm itself becomes demonsised.
At a curriculum level everything in safety fosters anti-learning and so no wonder the culture of safety doesn’t work in promoting learning. Indeed, whenever I do a language audit in organisations the word ‘learning’ never features as an association with safety. Similarly, language of care, trust, openness, conversation or helping.
We’re not likely going to change much unless the macro stuff is addressed too. But with no ethic of risk, you won’t see anything visionary coming from the likes of the AIHS or NSCA or the Regulator.
For those who are listening and watching your video, then the next question is, what can we do? and of course as you know, there are many things you can do that work.
However, this involves moving away from fear of laving current systems and sub-cultures and embracing methods that safety orthodoxy is fearful of.
Keep up the good work and videos.
Matthew Thorne says
Thanks Rob. We really feel the need to communicate to others out there what the issues are and that they are not alone in experiencing them.
Rob Long says
I’m pretty sure that the majority are now outside of orthodoxy and the associations, as they don’t serve members or give them anything much. They certainly provide no vision nor have the capability to provide one.