I suggest no blame after to anyone who involved in accident or reporting unless it's potential fatality. Accident is Organizational Failure, not Individual’s. For instance: Employee got foreign object in his eyes because not wearing safety glasses. We ask why?, here in Mongolia (Asia), Mongolians got big chin and ergonomically most western safety glasses doesn’t fit properly. Then we ask Procurement why we purchase these glasses? Mostly they say “oh, it was cheaper or suppliers offered only it”, then, we ask supplier why? or say: who said we need cheaper glasses...
As you know, related to Swiss Cheese Model which was illustrated by James Reason in 1990 on his book “Human Error”, many layers of defense lie between hazards and accidents, there are flaws in each layer that, if aligned, can allow the accident to occur. So why we should blame only an employee?
Most of all, after blame, an employee and colleagues get a message from disciplinary action that “oh, shit, it’s better to hide the accident case”. No accident investigation = No opportunity to know where we are failing. If failure is not fixed, accident will be repeated. When accident is repeated, it sends a message to Community that “This company has something wrong” and family members start to convince employees that “please, leave your company before you get hurt, you’re valuable than your salary for us”.
At home, it is similar to if I shout to my daughter every time when she does something wrong, she will not do anything on my view and hide everything or run away from me. So I need to be sober, not mad in anger and think about why she does it; what influenced to her to do that. Children are behavior mirrors of their parents = Employees are behavior mirrors of their Leaders.
Blame free culture encourages reporting and removes fear to report.
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Ganjiguur Bukhbat
TheSafetyPoster.com
