In order to successfully prevent injuries, companies have to be proactive and anticipate incidents before they occur. Here are some tips on how to make your company more proactive:

Close Call Reporting

• Work with the crew to improve close call reporting. Close calls are incidents when something went wrong but there were no injuries or property damage. Often these incidents will cause someone to think: “Whew, that was close!” This close call information can be used to make improvements in your business that will help prevent all types of incidents.
• Create a workplace culture where sharing close call information is welcomed and rewarded. Over investigating or disciplining workers based on close call information will drastically reduce the number of reports that come in.
• Make close call reporting easy to do. Quick conversations with a supervisor, texts or short anonymous written reports are all easy ways to get the necessary information.

Communication

• Share information from close calls and incidents within your company. Better yet, share it with all the companies in your area so everyone benefits from the learning.
• The BC Forest Safety Council regularly receives Industry Safety Alerts from companies across the province. Send in the information from your close calls and investigations and the Council will share it on this website. These alerts can be anonymous. /safety_info/alerts_bulletins.html

Incident Investigation

• When investigating the cause of an incident, keep asking “why” questions to get beyond the obvious causes and to the root causes. Here’s a link to Safe Company investigation forms that will help guide companies to find the root causes. /node/2650
• Make investigation recommendations “SMART”
  • Specific – target a specific area for improvement
  • Measurable – identify how to tell when the action has been completed
  • Assignable – specify who will do it
  • Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources
  • Time-related – put in a deadline date
• Need help with an investigation? The BC Forest Safety Council is working with industry to provide investigation advice from Certified Incident Investigation Advisors. These highly trained advisors will be able to help answer questions and assist with complex investigations. Contact Gerard Messier at messier@bcforestsafe.org or 1-877-741-1060 for more information.

Constant Vigilance

• Aircraft carrier operations and nuclear power generation are examples of high risk industries that often have a very low number of incidents. Why? These organizations have an attitude that they are always one small step away from an incident occurring. This highly vigilant attitude battles complacency and helps all employees stay focused.