What constitutes best practice in safety learning following workplace safety events? A Literature Review based on Social Constructionism

Learning from incidents is an important aspect of safety negotiation within the social construction framework. This paper examined different social construction frameworks, in which safety was negotiated and learned following occupational incidents. A literature search performed through the “Science Direct” database between November 2015 and April 2016, resulted in 13 publications represented 8 nationalities and 6 industries. Thirteen social construction frameworks were extracted and thereafter were classified in six strategies; incident review meetings (2 studies), incident reporting systems (2 studies), incentives- based systems (2 studies), database systems (5 studies), cultural and behavioural setting frameworks (1 study each). Such different frameworks can be utilised in different industries to improve workplace safety and decrease future incidents, by utilising facilitators and overcoming barriers. It would be interesting to see the impact on workplace safety learning and its cost effectiveness when a firm adopts those strategies integrated into one framework.