Understanding accidents

Between 10 and 15% of all fatal accidents occur during maintenance activity and some 15 to 20% of all accidents are maintenance-related (ii).

Of course, maintenance right across industry is a routine activity. But for individual workers it often presents a deviation from everyday activity. As such, they find they’re using different tools and equipment, different personal protective equipment (PPE) and there’s often pressure to get equipment back up and running as quickly as possible. This can inadvertently breed conditions where accidents are significantly more likely than usual.

So who is most likely to suffer an accident? The overwhelming majority (85%) of PPE-related accidents injure men (iii). Between 2005 and 2010, out of 88 UK industry-wide fatalities across workers aged 16 to 24, 84 were male (iv). These are UK figures, but they are consistent with others spanning Europe, the US and Canada. There could be a number of reasons for this trend: 

•  Men are more likely to be involved in manual handling and heavy industrial jobs

•  Younger workers may have received less training and have less experience

•  More young workers are employed on a temporary or part-time basis

They are also possibly more likely to take risks and be reluctant to speak up about safety issues

When it comes to the nature of these injuries, almost half affect either workers’ hands or feet. This reflects the fact that hands are used in most industrial tasks (filling, carrying, cleaning, operating machinery etc) whereas feet come into contact with spills and are susceptible to having heavy items dropped on them.

PPE

There is still a disappointingly large number of employers who do not provide appropriate PPE. Where it is provided but not used by individual employees is typically due to one of three reasons: A poor safety culture fostered by the employer; the nature of the incident (e.g emergency or other time pressures); human factors such as tiredness, carelessness or social pressure

When it comes to human factors, the HSE identifies four basic types of failure:

•  A simple slip up during a frequently performed action

•  A lapse of attention or memory

•  A mistake in understanding how something works or an error of diagnosis or planning

•  A deliberate breach of rules and procedures.

Deliberate violations of the rules can take many forms. Key issues to look out for include: Cultural violations where rules are seen as no longer applying and are not enforced; situational violations that occur in specific situations (often where time, money or environment play a key role); exceptional violations when an individual tries to solve an unusual problem in new ways; tiredness-related violations brought on by long shifts; comfort-related violations where the right protection isn’t used because it is too hot or irritates the skin; social pressure.

You will probably never be able to create a 100% safe environment – especially where employees deliberately ignore safety procedures and equipment. But by focusing on a combination of culture, process and equipment, you should be able to minimise accidents and injuries throughout your organisation which will have a positive impact on the bottom line of your business.

Sources

(i)  HSE's At a Glance Guide to Health and Safety Statistics 2011/2012

(ii) Britishmetalforming.com CBM Metal Matters issue summer 2010

(iii) HSE Evidence base for identifying potential failures in the specification, use and maintenance of PPE at work

(iv) British Safety Council Factsheet 2: Why should an employer think about young workers?