What Does
Hazards Reported Mean?
“Hazards reported” (HazRep) is a term that refers to workplace hazards that have been reported to a person responsible for workplace safety, as opposed to hazards that have been identified by a worker but not formally reported. The reporting of a hazard to a responsible person is important in controlling the amount of safety risk present in a given workplace, as not all hazards are obvious or observable to employers or persons responsible for workplace safety.
Hazard reporting is related to workplace safety culture and the willingness of employers to address safety issues. Employees may decide not to report hazards if they do not feel that doing so would accomplish anything or if they worry that it could result in negative consequences, such as informal punishment by their employer. Many organizations use anonymous hazard reporting systems to mitigate this issue.
Whether a hazard has been reported can have significant legal consequences in the event of a safety incident. A hazard that is reported but that goes unaddressed may indicate to a safety authority that an employer willingly allowed workers to operate in unsafe conditions.
Safeopedia Explains Hazards Reported
The extent to which hazard reporting is integrated into a workplace's formal safety policies varies by occupation and industry. Hazard reporting is heavily emphasized within workplaces that have complex safety environments, such as the aviation industry, where there is an expectation that hazards will be discovered during the work process.
Issues that count as reported hazards include both hazards that have yet to cause an issue, as well as those related to safety incidents, such as a particular incident involving an unsafe behavior. The purpose of a formal hazards reporting system is not simply to provoke responses to each individual instance of a safety incident; the intent is that it would build a record of hazardous situations that enables the identification of patterns that can be used to provide insights into the cause of hazards.
Hazard reports focusing on safety incidents, near misses, and accidents are often used to facilitate lesson-learning about how to avoid future safety incidents. The lesson-learning process commonly includes a debriefing stage in which the individuals who reported or were impacted by the hazard are given an overview of the corrective measures that have been taken. Debriefings ensure that lessons learned are passed on to a wider group of people and let workers know that their safety concerns are being taken seriously.
The hazard reporting process may be accessible to all employees, or it may be limited to specific persons, depending on whether the reporting is occurring as part of a safety audit or as part of a company's regular safety policies. Many employers make use of software-driven hazard reporting systems that provide a "central location" for reporting hazards. Software-based reporting systems allow the workplace hazards to be addressed through a semi-automated process that provides employees and employers alike with visibility into how workplace hazards are being managed.