Half of workers avoid incident reporting
Under-reporting and under-trained
A global safety charity is calling for clear incident reporting protocols to be made available to all workers, after its latest report found that only half (51%) of global workers who had experienced harm at work in the past two years, reported the incident.
Lloyd's Register Foundation (LR Foundation) is an independent global charity that supports research, education, and innovation to make the world a safer place, focusing on the biggest safety challenges in areas like maritime, infrastructure, and digital systems. Founded in 2012, it owns the commercial company Lloyd's Register and uses profits from its activities to fund projects and partnerships that advance high technical standards for the safety of life and property.
Engineering safer workplaces: Global trends in occupational safety and health
LR Foundation findings have been detailed in Engineering safer workplaces: Global trends in occupational safety and health – which is based on data from their World Risk Poll (a study of worry about, and harm from, risks to people’s safety). The data was collected by global analytics firm Gallup, who conducted 147,000 interviews in 142 countries and territories around the world.
The rates of incident reporting are consistent across demographic groups. There is little difference at a global level between genders, levels of education, or in-country income levels. Significantly, however, the type of employment does appear to make a far greater difference.
On a global scale, the reporting of workplace harm when it occurs, is more common among those in stable forms of employment, such as full-time employment for an organisation (57%), than those part-time (49%) or self-employed (47%). This supports previous research, detailed in the report, which shows how temporary workers are more fearful of reprisals if they report instances of workplace harm.
Health & Safety Training
Despite being an important part of recognising hazards and controlling risks in the workplace, the report also found that almost two thirds (62%) of those currently in the workforce around the world have never received occupational safety and health (OSH) training about risks associated with their work. Just under a third (30%) said they had received OSH training within the last two years.
The Czech Republic and Latvia are the countries with the highest proportion of workers trained in the last two years (both 77%). At the other end of the scale, Senegal had the lowest proportion at just 11%.
According to the data, people employed full-time by an organisation are around twice as likely to have had recent workplace safety training (41%) as those employed part-time (23%).
How Arinite helps
Arinite provides its clients with occupational health & safety training, and incident investigation. Most workplace incidents are reasonably straightforward to investigate, and your own managers should be competent to draw conclusions and formulate preventative plans. For those trickier incidents, Arinite has skilled experts to assist – but investigations can only be undertaken if your staff report the incident!
Contact us
Arinite clients appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment.
Our team of global, locally based health and safety and fire safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple.
If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our office +44 (0) 207 947 9581 or type an enquiry to: https://www.arinite.com/contact-us/.
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