intervention for the promotion of supervisor's incidents reporting process: the case of a steel company

ABSTRACT

The analysis of incidents is one way of increasing safety in workplaces. In this approach, the process of preparing exact and scientific report is a critical step. The aim of this paper was to describe an intervention supporting the improvement of supervisors' participation to report all occurred incidents. In this study, Future Workshop method was used with 44 supervisors in TAB Steel Company, Tabriz, Iran. In each subject, 11 supervisors were participated in four small groups, which they normally worked. In the Critique phase, the 4 teams reported 126 problems in the incident report process. During the fantasy phase, the teams produced 727 suggestions to solve the problems. Then, the supervisors made decisions on 35 commitments to change their incident reporting behaviors. Finally, in the implementation phase the number of reported incidents increased by 79.4% during the 1-year follow-up period. The discussion method used in Japan, Finland, and Sweden was also successfully implemented in Iran, and the process raised a great number of problems and suggestions related to supervisor's incident reporting process. Creating and maintaining the proper communicational canals among supervisors and the managers of safety and health unit are the suggestions, which have been presented to increase the amount of partnership