By treating near misses as seriously as you would an actual accident (investigating, trying to uncover the direct, underlying and root causes), you are going some way towards minimising the risk of an accidental happening in the future.

It’s not pro-active though.

It’s reactive because there was an undesired event that happened.

If you want to be pro-active, don’t focus on trying to prevent accidents by looking at near misses. Instead, focus on preventing the near misses.

But there’s the problem.

Because what you need to devote time, effort and energy to in order to prevent near misses are the undesired conditions, circumstances, situations and behaviours that exist all around us every day in the workplace.

They’re not always easy to spot. And even when you’ve figured out what you need to be looking for, you need a functional system in place to ensure that they are subject to due consideration on an appropriate frequency.

This involves conducting such activities as:

• audits
• spot checks
• inspections
• …and so on

It’s hard, difficult work. All-too-often, it gets pushed down the priority list by other, more urgent tasks (we’re all busy).

Big mistake though! Because pro-actively seeking to identify those undesired conditions is one of the most important things you can do to make a real impact on the health and safety of yourself and others.