Near Miss

What a near miss is

Near miss (الحالات الوشيكة, also called الحوادث الوشيكة) is an unintended event at work that could have ended in an injury, damage to equipment or a loss, but ended in none of them. A tool falls from a high shelf and nobody is underneath. An employee slips on a wet floor and recovers before falling. A forklift comes close to a walkway and touches no one. The event happened and the harm did not, and what separated the two may have been a passing circumstance and not a deliberate precaution.

The term belongs to workplace prevention. Its subject is what actually happened without causing harm, and its value is that it brings hazardous conditions to light before they produce an injury. The definition covers the management concept only. It does not set out a legal ruling, and it does not describe a procedure prescribed by any particular body.

How a near miss differs from neighbouring safety concepts

A near miss sits beside several concepts in workplace safety. The line between them runs along one axis: did harm occur, and is the concept looking forward or backward?

• The injury that happened. A work injury is an event in which a person was harmed. A near miss involves no harm, so it does not enter the count of injuries.
• The counting indicator. The occupational injury rate counts recorded injuries against a measure of exposure, so it measures what happened. Near misses can be examined alongside it, because they show what nearly happened and so never entered the count.
• The severity measure. Lost workdays measure the length of absence after an injury that occurred. A near miss injured no one, so it has no place in that measure.
• The advance estimate. Occupational risk assessment is a method that looks ahead: it anticipates hazards before they occur and ranks them. A near miss is a signal that looks backward, an event that did happen, and it may adjust what the assessment assumed about a hazard.

The near miss therefore sits between estimation and counting. Estimation supposes what could happen, counting records what happened and caused harm, and a near miss shows that what was supposed did occur, without harm.

Why near misses are examined

Their value rests on a simple idea: the cause that produced a near miss may produce an injury another time. A tool does not fall because a person is underneath it. It falls because of an unsecured shelf, an excess load or a wrong arrangement, and those causes exist whether or not anyone walks past. What changes the outcome is timing.

The indicators therefore help at different moments. An injury indicator arrives after the harm, while a near miss arrives before it, and it may allow the establishment to address the cause without anyone paying for the knowledge. This is a reasonable hypothesis and not a uniform rule. Recording near misses does not by itself guarantee the absence of injuries. It gives the establishment information that would not reach it without a record.

What counts as a near miss and what does not

The practical boundary is that the event contains an actual occurrence that could have led to harm. Two questions separate cases: did something actually happen, and could harm have followed from it?

• Counts. An object falls and nobody is hurt. A person slips without falling. An electrical short touches no one. Moving equipment collides and is stopped before it strikes a person.
• Does not count. The mere observation of an existing danger in which no event occurred, such as an exposed wire that nobody touched. A danger that has been observed is reported and addressed, and it is not a near miss, although reporting it is useful.
• Does not count. An event in which harm occurred, even slight harm. It belongs with injuries even if the harm is small.

An establishment may need a written rule on where the boundary lies, with examples from its own work, because employees differ in how they judge what nearly happened. What one worker regards as nothing, a colleague may regard as worth reporting, and the reverse can also be true.

How a near miss is recorded

A short form that takes minutes to complete is enough, because a heavy form may reduce the number of cases recorded. The fields a form may contain include:

• The date, the location and the activity under way when the event occurred.
• A description of what happened in a sentence or two.
• What could have happened had the timing been different.
• The conditions that contributed, such as poor lighting, a wet floor or a hurried way of working.
• What was done immediately to make the site safe.
• Who follows up on the remedy, and by when.

The purpose of the fields is to turn an event into a piece of information that can be compared with others. The reporter’s name can be left optional where the culture of the establishment calls for it, since if giving a name leads to blame, reporting may stop. Where the establishment has one, a health and safety officer may review the records, and where it has a committee, the patterns may be brought to the safety committee. What follows an incident in which harm or a stoppage occurred, an examination of what happened and why, is taken up in Incident Investigation.

A hypothetical example with figures

Take a hypothetical establishment with three sites that recorded 20 near misses in one quarter. The figures by site were as follows:

• First site: 12 cases and 240 workers, which is 12 ÷ 240 × 100 = 5.0 cases per 100 workers.
• Second site: 6 cases and 200 workers, which is 6 ÷ 200 × 100 = 3.0 cases per 100 workers.
• Third site: 2 cases and 160 workers, which is 2 ÷ 160 × 100 = 1.25 cases per 100 workers.

The total is 12 + 6 + 2 = 20 cases among 240 + 200 + 160 = 600 workers, so the rate for the establishment is 20 ÷ 600 × 100 ≈ 3.33 cases per 100 workers.

The figures need careful handling. The first site may be more hazardous than the other two, or it may be more inclined to report, and the figures alone do not separate the two explanations. Likewise, the figure for the third site may mean that conditions there are calmer, or it may mean that its workers do not report. Which is true can be known only by visiting the site and talking to the workers. Now suppose that 14 of the 20 cases were closed during the quarter with a documented remedy. The closure ratio is 14 ÷ 20 × 100 = 70%, and 6 cases remain open. The figures are hypothetical and are set out to illustrate; they do not represent an establishment or a study.

What near misses look like in different settings

The form a near miss takes varies with the kind of work. These are hypothetical examples, given to illustrate:

• An office. A cable runs across a corridor, an employee trips over it without falling, and the cable is rearranged after the report.
• A warehouse. A tall pallet tilts as it is lifted and is lowered before it falls. It turns out that the load was not distributed evenly on the lift.
• A kitchen. Oil spills on the floor of a passage and a worker slips in it without falling. The spill had no warning sign.
• A construction site. A small tool falls from a height into an area where nobody happened to be at that moment.

The examples have in common that each event has a cause that can be addressed, and that the outcome was safe through timing and not through design. Each can be recorded with the same fields, and comparing them may reveal a pattern that no single event shows.

What keeps reporting going

A near miss can be seen only if the person who witnessed it reports it. That ties the concept to the culture of the establishment and not to the form alone. If a report is answered with blame for the reporter or a colleague, workers may learn to stay silent. If it is answered with a remedy for the cause and thanks to the reporter, reporting may recur. Psychological safety deals with this question.

For that reason it helps to design the form so that it asks about the event and its conditions and not about who made the mistake. The outcome of a report is also given back to the person who made it, so that the reporter sees that reporting produced something. Otherwise reporting may stop after a few cases.

How near misses are misused

• Turning their number into a target that is rewarded when it falls. A lower number of recorded cases may mean greater safety, and it may mean that reporting has stopped. Linking an evaluation or a reward to a fall in the number may push people toward silence and not toward prevention.
• Counting them as a success. A higher number may point to greater awareness of reporting, but it may also point to a more hazardous setting. The number alone does not settle the matter.
• Recording them and leaving them. A growing register with no remedy may teach workers that reporting has no effect, since it documents what was known and not addressed.
• Confusing them with an injury. No harm occurred in a near miss. Someone who treats a near miss as an injury may raise the injury count in the indicator, and the comparison is distorted.
• Addressing the symptom and not the cause. Hanging a warning sign after a tool falls may leave untouched the unsecured shelf that dropped it.

How near misses are used to improve work

The benefit begins by grouping cases into categories that reveal a pattern: where it happened, the type of activity, the hour of the shift and the apparent cause. If several cases recur in one corridor or around one activity, there may be a common cause at that point that merits examination. What is found is carried into the occupational risk assessment, so that the ranking of hazards is adjusted to what appeared in practice.

For each case the establishment assigns a remedy, an owner and a review date, and closes the case after checking that the cause has gone. Closed cases are revisited after a period, because a remedy that looked sufficient may move the hazard to another place.

The concept remains a tool for examining and not a tool for judging. It points the establishment to places in the arrangement of work that merit attention before harm occurs, and what the establishment decides afterwards rests on that examination and on what the workers who witnessed the event say.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.