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Safety Reporting Systems: Building an Effective Employee Reporting Program

Effective safety reporting systems are both accurate in measuring the current state of safety and useful for making decisions to improve safety. The collection, analysis and reporting of safety data is an integral part of an effective safety management system. While incident-based safety reporting systems (accidents, injuries and fatalities) are essential for measuring and monitoring safety in the workplace, as a stand-alone reporting system they are not very effective for managing or preventing similar incidents because little is known or uncovered about the precursors to those events.

Employee Safety Reporting (ESR) is one of several safety reporting sources that get at the foundation of operational safety data, collecting and analyzing risk-based data before an incident occurs. If done well, an effective ESR program can yield a gold mine of actionable safety data for managing risk and for making data-driven risk based decisions. FTA’s Michael Coplen, Division Chief, Safety Policy and Promotion, will moderate this panel at the 2017 APTA Rail Conference with participation from Aloha Ley, Division Chief, Office of Safety Assurance and Risk Management, and representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Air Traffic Controllers Association.