- Published 19 Mar 2025
- Last Modified 19 Mar 2025
- 7 min
Understanding Near Misses & Near Miss Reporting
What is a near miss? Near misses don’t harm anyone, but they are serious and must be documented so that they can be learned from. Learn all about near miss reporting here.
Near miss reporting lets you document and learn from close calls at work: cases where a hazard didn’t harm you but came very near to doing so. Reporting near misses at work is essential for preventing similar safety incidents in which you might not be so lucky.
This guide will explain the near miss definition, stress the importance of near miss reporting, and show you how to improve near miss reporting so you can be aware of all the safety events at your workplace.
What is a Near Miss?
What is the technical term for a near miss? The definition of a near miss is an unexpected event that came close to harming personnel or property but did not. Near misses demonstrate safety hazards that are present: hazards that either aren’t being safely avoided as planned or haven’t been identified yet in a risk assessment.
Accidents, Incidents and Near Misses
Given this near miss meaning, how do they differ from safety accidents and incidents? ‘Accidents’ and ‘incidents’ can be interchangeable in practice, but the terms have some nuance.
An incident is, quite simply and literally, something that happened. Near misses and accidents are both incidents.
An accident is an event that does cause physical harm or illness to a person, or damage to property. Accidents are what near misses demonstrate could have happened with slightly different circumstances.
By practising near miss reporting and acting on near miss data, you can prevent near miss incidents from recurring in the form of actual, harmful accidents.
Near Miss Examples
With this near miss definition, here are some near miss examples:
- A heavy object falls from shelving and comes close to hitting someone.
- Someone slips on a puddle of leaked fluid but regains their balance and doesn’t fall.
- A visitor enters an area without proper PPE because of inadequate signage and visitor training.
- High-pressure fluids expel suddenly from damaged piping, nearly injuring a nearby worker.
- A worker carrying a long spade turns around without warning and nearly hits a co-worker.
- An electrician forgets to deactivate power but remembers just before attempting to work on live cables.
- Someone operates equipment without training, though no accidents happen.
- A worker narrowly dodges being pinned or struck by a closing heavy door.
In all these cases, you would hope someone notices the danger that was avoided and takes steps to report it.
Reporting Near Misses
Although near misses don’t hurt anyone, near miss reporting is no less important. Near misses give you safety lessons and opportunities to improve your safety practices without the financial and reputational damages of safety accidents.
Importance of Reporting Near Misses
Why is it important to report accidents and near misses? Here are some of the benefits near miss reporting brings:
Identifying hazards: The more near miss reporting examples you have to review, the more unaddressed safety hazards at your worksite you identify. A near miss can be a stressful ‘wake up call’, but reporting and acting on it gives you peace of mind that you prevented something worse.
Planning for next time: Though preventing recurrence is ideal, analysing a near miss lets you make a response plan for addressing future similar incidents.
Improving practices: Near misses can reveal overall deficiencies in your company’s safety practices, letting you improve safety beyond just where the incident occurred. Near miss data also lets you prove that you’ve discovered and addressed risks and hazards at your site.
Showing your safety commitment: Experiencing a near miss can be harrowing, so seeing the incident reported and acted on demonstrates that the company cares about safety and wants to prevent the incident from recurring. Employees can also feel involved in the safety programme by being expected to participate in near miss reporting.
How to Report a Near Miss
Reporting a near miss involves the following steps:
Keep yourself safe: When a near miss incident occurs, first ensure that you and others in the area are fully safe from the hazard. Then, take steps to contain the area and fully remove lingering hazards and risks.
Record it: Use a near miss reporting form to log what happened while the details are fresh in your head.
Report it: Based on your near miss reporting procedure, report the incident and submit the form to your supervisor or the relevant health and safety representative.
From there it falls to the health and safety team:
Investigate: Analyse the incident to determine its source. Involve all relevant employees who witnessed it or regularly use the affected area or equipment. Be open-minded to causes the reporter may not have considered and try to find the risks at the root of the problem.
Remove the risk: Take actions to control the risk behind the incident. Use engineering, administrative or PPE controls as needed.
Inform and train: Proactively inform the relevant people about how the company is addressing this risk. Provide training, issue PPE, install guarding, and replace equipment to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Encouraging Reporting Near Misses
A successful system of reporting near misses at work requires participation from employees at all levels. The health and safety team needs to know about near miss incidents, but that only happens if staff feel the need to come forward with them. Here are some areas where you can encourage this:
Training
Include the near miss reporting procedure as part of every employee’s safety training. Make sure you explain:
- The near miss definition
- Awareness of risks and identifying hazards
- What to do when a near miss happens, including lockout tagout procedures
- What forms to fill out
- Whom to report these to
- How they may be involved in the investigation
- How this differs from reporting safety accidents
Also, make employees feel comfortable with following up with how near misses are being addressed. You want to show that you will indeed do something with the reports they submit.
Signage and Forms
Make near miss reporting forms simple to read and fill out. They also need to be easy to find and access at a worksite so that employees can quickly start the near miss reporting process when these incidents happen. Ensure your site’s safety signs include prominent labels displaying where important safety forms can be found.
Smartphone apps for near miss reporting can be even more convenient for employees, though this approach needs to consider data security, device management, and the safety concerns of using phones during work.
You can also use posters displayed in common areas to remind people of the seriousness of near misses, the importance of reporting them, and how to do it. These regular reminders can help near misses be a firm pillar of people’s safety understanding, right alongside PPE.
Safety-focused Culture
Employees need to understand and appreciate the importance of both accident and near miss reporting. Reporting near misses at work may seem to some staff as unimportant since no one was hurt. They may fear that they’ll be blamed for the incident or that their team will see the reporting as betrayal. People could see your safety system as having too much paperwork in general, or even an ineffective one where reported problems aren’t addressed.
To combat these attitudes, cultivate a company culture that values employee safety and their participation in it:
- Stress that near miss reporting isn’t about assigning blame, it’s about keeping people safe in the future.
- Be aware of and discourage team behaviour that ridicules people pointing out ‘small stuff’.
- Include the latest reported near misses and how they were acted on in regular safety updates so that people can see that this reporting drives results.
- And if incidents turn out to not be true near misses, make the reporter feel appreciated all the same for speaking up.
To further reinforce this culture every day, RS carries all the site safety equipment you need for marking hazards and mitigating accidents. Browse our selections today to never miss out on safety.
