Reasons for underreporting incidents – Stats
Why don’t workers report hazards? Some great insight into this question in a 2010 paper. Over a decade after the research was conducted, I wonder if psychological safety has improved, and the reasons have changed?
Probst and Estrada’s 2010 study of under-reporting of incidents and hazards remains one of the more comprehensive studies exploring the reasons why hazards go unreported. The research explored the factors shaping whether workers report a hazard or incident. Fear of blame, loss of incentives, organizational culture, and poor psychological safety were some of the main reasons workers do not report concerns.
Reasons for under-reporting
| I took care of the problem myself | 73.8% |
| I did not want to go through the follow-up interviews and questions | 69.0% |
| I did not think anything would be done to fix the problem | 51.2% |
| I did not think it was that important | 47.5% |
| I thought it would make work unpleasant | 41.5% |
| I did not want to the one to break the company's accident-free record | 37.5% |
| I thought it would affect my crew's safety scorecard | 37.2% |
Consequences of reporting
| Your group lost scorecard points | 37.3% |
| You were blamed for the incident | 23.9% |
| You were blamed for ending the company's accident-free record | 21.7% |
| People gossiped about you in an unkind or negative way | 19.7% |
| You were unfairly disciplined | 18.6% |
| You were mistreated in some other way | 11.6% |
| You wvre given an unfair performance evaluation | 11.4% |
| You were given less favorable duties | 10.0% |
Note: Numbers could add to greater than 100% since multiple responses were permitted during the research