, MBA Student, Massey University

, Senior Lecturer

The dairy industry has the highest injury rate of all industries in New Zealand according to ACC statistics, which show that 334 working years were lost in the industry due to injury each year from 2008 to 2013. Learning from injury-causing incidents is important to prevent future injuries and should help to reduce injury rates. The new Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 emphasizes the importance of learning from incidents.

The aims of this case study were to:

• identify the “learning from incident process” that a large dairy farming group had in place; 
• examine how this process compared with a theoretical step-wise model of the learning process; 
• test a method developed by Drupsteen and Hasle (2014) for identifying barriers to learning from incidents, and; 
• identify the barriers in this dairy farming group.

The learning process was identified through a face-to-face semi-structured interview with the Health and Safety Manager and two focus group meetings i.e. with farm managers and with health and safety representatives.

Each group:

• identified the ‘learning from incident process’ from their own perspective; 
• identified where the process was working well and not so well; 
• why this was; and what could be done to improve it.

Comparison of the processes identified in the interview and focus-group meetings showed that there was a difference in detail and understanding of the process between, with no group or individual understanding the process in full. The ‘process of learning from incidents’ was similar to the theoretical model but some steps were missing or not fully performed. The barriers to learning from incidents were identified in several steps. The methodology was very effective in identifying differences in understandings, creating a common understanding of the process, identifying barriers in the learning process and opportunities for improvements and could be easily replicated in other industries.