Why Near-Miss Reports Are Not Made: Blame Culture and How to Fix It

When near-miss events go unreported, accident warning signs are lost. Read why employees stay silent, how blame culture works and how to increase reporting.

A forklift takes a corner too fast, a worker steps back at the last moment and nothing happens. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, work carries on and the incident is forgotten. Yet that was one of the most valuable warnings the organisation ever received for free. Near-miss events are incidents that did not result in injury, damage or loss but could have. Each one is a rehearsal for the next accident. Yet in many workplaces these events are either never reported or are reported only on paper, so that a form has been filled in. In this article, for employers, OHS specialists and production managers, I look at why employees stay silent, how a blame culture kills reporting and the psychological conditions for keeping a reporting system alive.

What Is a Near-Miss Event and Why Is It So Valuable?

A near miss is an event in which a hazard materialised but, thanks to luck, coincidence or a last-minute intervention, did not turn into harm. A falling piece of material that hits no one, a sliding ladder caught at the last moment, a wrongly labelled chemical noticed before it was used: these are of this kind.

The value of these events comes from this: serious accidents are usually preceded by small incidents and near misses that have happened many times before. The same hazard, the same conditions and the same shortcuts appear again and again, until one day the luck runs out. Near-miss reporting allows an organisation to see this chain before an accident happens.

The scale of workplace accidents in Turkey shows how much these signals are needed. According to SGK (Social Security Institution) data, 766,039 workplace accidents and 1,931 deaths were recorded in 2025; around 41% of the accidents took place in the manufacturing sector (SGK, 2026). Behind every single accident there are most likely warnings that were noticed earlier but never spoken.

Legislation also gives near-miss events a special place. Under Article 12 of the Occupational Health and Safety Risk Assessment Regulation, the risk assessment is renewed not only at set intervals but also when a workplace accident, an occupational disease or a near-miss event occurs. In other words, an unreported near miss also means a risk assessment that is not being updated.

Why Are Near-Miss Reports Not Made?

However well designed the reporting form is, whether an employee will fill it in is a psychological decision. The most common reasons encountered on the shop floor are as follows:

• Fear of being blamed: The thought "If I say something, I'll be seen as careless" or "my foreman will get me into trouble". This is the strongest factor preventing reporting.
• Worry about betraying a colleague: If a colleague caused the incident, reporting may be perceived as "snitching". This worry is especially marked in factories with strong team solidarity.
• The thought "nothing actually happened": Because there was no harm, the event is seen as unimportant. The human mind tends to underestimate the risk of an event that ended well.
• The belief that it is pointless: If nothing changed after earlier reports, the employee will not go to the trouble again.
• Bonus and target pressure: Rewards tied to the number of accident-free days or team bonuses can encourage hiding incidents.
• Time and bureaucracy: Long forms are a serious obstacle for an employee who has difficulty reading and writing or who is on a busy shift.
• Job insecurity: Subcontracted, temporary or probationary employees keep quiet out of fear of losing their jobs.

Turkey's current working conditions strengthen these barriers further. According to Gallup's 2026 report, only 23% of employees in Turkey think this is a good time to find a job, and 66% report intense daily stress (Gallup, 2026). For an employee who is afraid of losing their job, under economic pressure and already tense, the risk of being seen as "the person who causes trouble" is the biggest wall in front of reporting. This is why securing the reporting system is not only an OHS arrangement but also an exercise in building trust.

What these reasons have in common is this: the employee sees the cost of reporting to themselves as higher than the benefit of reporting. Increasing reporting is possible by changing this balance.

Blame Culture: The Source of Silence

Blame culture is an environment in which the first reflex when an incident occurs is to find and punish the person responsible. In this culture, investigation reports usually close with the sentence "employee carelessness" or "failure to follow instructions". In the short term this approach appears to bring order; in the long term it drives information underground.

The signs of a blame culture are as follows:

• The first question in incident meetings is "who did it?"
• The employee who made a report is later seen as someone who causes trouble
• A tacit agreement among managers to keep small incidents off the record
• Disciplinary penalties being raised before the incident has been investigated
• The number of reports staying "suspiciously" low for years

Research on psychological safety offers an important framework here. In Edmondson's study of 51 teams in a manufacturing company, learning behaviours were found to be higher in teams whose members believed it was safe to take interpersonal risks (Edmondson, 1999). Reporting an error is exactly this kind of interpersonal risk. In European workplaces, too, the biggest difficulty in managing psychosocial risks was reported as "reluctance to openly discuss these issues", at 59% (EU-OSHA, 2025).

A factory with a low number of reports is not safe; more often than not, it is just silent.

Just Culture: No-Blame Does Not Mean No Responsibility

A no-blame approach does not mean that no one will be held responsible for any behaviour. The concept of "just culture", often used in the safety field, distinguishes between human error, at-risk behaviour and deliberate serious violation.

• Human error: An unintentional mistake made as a result of fatigue, distraction or misunderstanding. Response: improve the system, equipment or process and support the employee.
• At-risk behaviour: Choosing a shortcut without being aware of the risk or because "everyone does it". Response: understand why the shortcut became attractive; coaching and training.
• Reckless behaviour: Knowingly taking a serious risk. Response: accountability and, where necessary, disciplinary action.

When this distinction is explained clearly to employees, it becomes clear that the great majority of the mistakes they make will not be punished, and that only deliberate serious violations will be sanctioned. This clarity creates the trust needed for reporting.

Suppose that in a warehouse a shelf was about to collapse, an employee noticed and reported it, and the investigation found that the shelf's load limit was not marked. In a blame culture, the question becomes "who overloaded the shelf?" In a just culture, the question becomes "why was the limit not visible, and why did overloading become necessary?" The second question prevents the same error from being repeated on other shelves. What is more, the employee who made the report sees that in this process it is the problem, not themselves, that is being addressed, and speaks up again next time. The other employees on the team hear about this experience too; one person's positive experience can influence the reporting behaviour of dozens. The reverse is also true: the story of a single employee who was reprimanded for reporting spreads quickly through a factory and can undo months of effort.

The Psychological Conditions for Reporting: What Should Employees See?

For employees to report near-miss events regularly, several psychological conditions need to be present together:

1. Safety: Believing that the report will not harm them. An anonymous reporting option can be the first step in building this trust.
2. Ease: The report taking no more than a few minutes. Options such as a short form, the possibility of verbal reporting, noting it in the shift meeting or reporting via a QR code.
3. Meaning: Seeing that the report makes a difference. A short response to every report and an announcement saying "thanks to your report, this has changed".
4. Recognition: Reporting being seen as a sign of loyalty and responsibility. Thanking the employee who made the report, even sharing the most useful reports of the month.
5. Leadership by example: Supervisors and managers openly sharing their own mistakes and the incidents they narrowly escaped.

When one of these conditions is missing, the system weakens. The "meaning" condition in particular is often neglected: forms that go into the reporting box with no response soon become a meaningless ritual in the eyes of employees.

Steps Employers and OHS Specialists Can Take

Concrete steps organisations can take to revive a near-miss system are as follows:

• Make the policy written and explicit: Announce clearly that no disciplinary action will be taken for reports made in good faith, and that only deliberate serious violations will be considered.
• Review accident-free-day bonuses: Consider tying rewards not to the number of accidents but to contributions in the form of reports, suggestions and improvements.
• Simplify the form: What happened, where, when, and what do you suggest? Four questions are often enough.
• Set a response time: Respond to every report within a reasonable time; share the measure taken on the notice board and in the shift meeting.
• Run investigations with a systems focus: Get to the root cause by asking "why?" several times; planning, equipment, maintenance or workload often emerge.
• Train supervisors: The person who gives the first reaction to an employee who has made a report is usually the supervisor. The difference between "why weren't you careful?" and "I'm glad you said something, can you tell me what happened?" determines whether the next report will be made.
• Include subcontracted workers: Make sure all employees, regardless of contract type, have access to the reporting system.
• Record psychosocial factors too: In incident investigations, treat fatigue, time pressure, long shifts and communication problems as a separate heading.

As a practical example, consider the five-minute safety talk at the start of a shift. The supervisor briefly describes a report received on the previous shift and the measure taken, then asks "is there anything we need to watch out for today?" This small ritual shows again every day that reporting has a visible result, and gives employees who find writing difficult an opportunity to report verbally. What is said is noted briefly by the supervisor so that no signal is lost at shift change.

Some of these steps are the responsibility of the OHS unit, some of production management and some of HR. Work taken on by a single unit generally does not spread to the shop floor.

How to Get Started in Your Organisation

1. Needs analysis: Start by comparing accident and near-miss records over the last two years. If there are very few near-miss reports relative to the number of accidents, the system is most likely not working. Then hold short, anonymous interviews or surveys with employees from different shifts and levels of seniority: the answers to the question "If you had a narrow escape, would you report it? Why?" reveal the barriers directly. This work can also be carried out together with a psychosocial risk assessment process.

2. Programme: Based on the analysis, the policy text, reporting method and feedback process are redesigned. Training for managers and supervisors is at the centre of this stage: how to respond to a report, no-blame investigation and managing difficult conversations are worked on with practical cases. In the World Health Organization's guidelines on mental health at work, training for managers is among the recommendations with the strongest evidence (WHO, 2022). I discuss the wider framework of the subject in the article on safety culture at work; for in-house training and consultancy options, see the corporate services page.

3. Measurement: You can track the monthly number of near-miss reports, the proportion of reports that receive a response, response time, the number of measures implemented and the trust score in employee surveys. An increase in the number of reports in the first months is a sign that the system has started to work; it should not be read as "incidents have increased". Over time the type of reports changes, recurring hazards decrease and a significant share of reports take the form of suggestions.

In workplaces where a reporting culture is established, employees begin to feel that safety is not an inspection carried out on them but something they are doing together. This feeling also nourishes commitment to the organisation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is reporting near-miss events a legal requirement?

The Risk Assessment Regulation provides for the risk assessment to be renewed when a near-miss event occurs. This makes it necessary for the employer to set up a system that lets them learn of these events. For the details of the reporting process, support should be obtained from your OHS specialist and the current legislation.

Won't an anonymous reporting system be misused?

There is a possibility of misuse in every system; however, experience shows that an anonymous option increases reporting, especially in the early stages. As trust builds, employees begin to report under their own names. Anonymous reports should be used to examine conditions, not individuals.

Shouldn't employees avoid disciplinary penalties when they report?

Reports made in good faith and unintentional errors should not be punished. In cases where risk is taken deliberately and seriously, people can be held to account. Defining this distinction clearly in advance and applying it consistently protects both fairness and trust in reporting.

When is the number of reports considered sufficient?

There is no fixed number. What matters is that reports arrive regularly, that they come from different departments and shifts, and that each one receives a response. A very low number of reports relative to the number of accidents is a sign that the system has gone silent.

• #near miss
• #workplace safety
• #blame culture
• #incident reporting

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Eda Erkan Alapala

Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.

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