Repetition of similar incidents - need for continuous reminder

When we read or hear about accidents or incidents, immediately, we remember or feel that a similar one happened earlier somewhere, either in our premises or outside. 

Generally, there's nothing new that caused the incident. We only do not follow what is already known. This calls for continuous reminder and thus retraining of persons.

And, HR department faces the problem of not getting the participants inspite of training calendar and listing of employees for training. This is because of not relieving these listed persons by respective incharges for various reasons like production or other jobs, or participants themselves not having interest

I feel that pay rise and promotions should be linked to attendance in training programmes as well as passing the exams conducted at the end of training. 

Also, action should be taken on persons found  responsible for incidents in the form of pay cut, collecting or recovering the loss suffered and initiating legal proceedings. 

This may look absurd, but without accountability and responsibility, we will continue to see occurrence of incidents for which root cause are already known. They happen only because someone ignored and failed to take precautions.

Accountability for safety

In an article in Safety Center on accountability for safety, Bob Lapidus, Safety Management Specialist gave following five steps.

1. Create written safety policies and procedures
2. Train employees on the safety policies and procedures
3. Provide all the necessary equipment to do the assigned work
4. Hold everyone accountable for compliance
5. Both supervisors and employees provide feedback as to how work is being done Corrective action is taken as necessary

Accountability means, in his words, praising when correct things done and correcting when things are done the improperly. It should not be like knee jerk reaction to punish people when something goes wrong.
While writing safety policy and safety procedures, I feel, it should be written by involving all concerned employees. If it is written by manager or consultant in his office without interaction and active participation of employees, the ownership for the document will not exist with the concerned shopfloor employees and it is likely that they may not like to read and follow.
 

Who is responsible for accidents or incidents in an organization?

When some accident or incident occurs, immediately some committee will be constituted to fix the accoutability and normally a worker or immediate supervisor or officer at junior level will be held responsible. But what about the managers or occupier of the company.
People are in limelight and showered accolades for achieving best production. At that time none of the shopfloor level employees will be recognized for the production levels.
Only when some failure or breakdown takesplace, then shopfloor persons will be questioned and punished. From this, we can see that punishments are for shopfloor employees and rewards and recognition are for managers. During delibration of investigation committees, the committee chairman will also be biased because somewhere else he is a manager or senior executive and will be of the opinion that he need not know what is happening at shopfloor and thus is not responsible.
But, Yes. He is responsible for achieving peak production levels. Or, for reducing the costs by process modifications.
But, No for accidents or reducing costs by stopping safety systems or bringing down the level of functioning of safety gear. Such is the appraisal system. Factories Act 1948 clearly holds the occupier of the company responsible for all activites though it exempts him provided he proves sufficiently that accident took place inspite of taking all efforts.