Yes they sure are, I can think of one workplace in particular (who shall not be named) whose focus is still largely on this board and its displayed number.

As I teach my students in Level 1 H&S Rep courses, these type of boards/signs can be quite destructive in creating an open, transparent and trusting accident reporting culture in a workplace, especially where there is a reward associated with hitting a target of a certain amount of days with no LTI's etc. Is that vulnerable worker going to report that minor accident/injury or near miss if it means that his workmates are going to miss out on their morning tea shout, especially if that target is close to being achieved? In many cases no they won't. Thankfully for the vast majority of my clients this practice has been replaced with more positive reporting factors, i.e. the most new hazards reported, a target of training hours achieved, a programme of reviewing risk controls was completed and the like.

I have seen a couple of these boards, mainly in production environments. We want to encourage reporting, not put a negative light on it.

I have not seen these for a while but a company I worked for had one. I had a comment from a worker one day that made me take it down, he said " we do not report accidents as who wants to be that person that broke the record for the longest period without an accident"

Goodhart's Law with a generalization by Marilyn Strathern

• When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

From here - Goodhart's Law

It would be extremely unfair (and very twitter like :wink: ) to place all companies who have ever displayed these signs in the same bracket.

In isolation, these signs will not drive down reporting, but when coupled with a poor safety culture, they undoubtedly will.
I'm hoping that the tweet will go on to explain that removing the signs is not the answer to this problem.

I have still seen some of these around. If companies are still using them I would challenge them to put up proactive measures instead. Measures like how many corrective actions have been closed out on time and effectively. What percentage of completed audits they have against their requirement? How many improvement opportunities have been identified? How many improvement opportunities have been implemented? These also have the benefit of being uplifting to employees. They see the good they are doing and are more inclined to report more opportunities where as the higher the hours go the less reporting occurs as no-one wants to be responsible for resetting the clock to zero.

Seen 'em.
Hate 'em.
Refuse to play the game when anyone mentions 'em.

Haven't heard one comment from the floor or coal face that supports them as a pro-active, culture-building tool. In fact the only people who seem to think they are a good idea are usually middle-age, upper management types who thought a sign they saw at a factory one time looked great... yes, generalising :)

Useful pic here:

Outstanding pic! A velociraptor in every H&S office?

What exactly does a zero, or low incident report number tell us?
If safety is defined by the absence of the risk of harm, zero incidents isn't evidence there is no risk present, just as our last 50 rolls of the dice that didn't turn up snake-eyes doesn't tell us anything about the chances of rolling snake-eyes on the 51st roll.

If safety is defined by the absence of the risk of harm — Riki Brown

There are many definitions of what safety is.
I prefer Todd Conklin -
“safety is not the absence of accidents, safety is the presence of defenses.” ... We should focus more on the positive steps we take to prevent injuries and illnesses and focus less on the accidents themselves.

safety is the presence of defenses. — KeithH

Perhaps that is a more fitting definition for workplace safety, as the risks are often still present but minimised to an 'acceptable level'. Therefore it is the presence of defences that provide us safety.
Cheers Keith

Yessir - Velociraptor = definite STKY
(Stuff That'll Kill You :) )

As one previous manager put it, why would we want to keep calling attention to our failures??

When the measure becomes the target is ceases to be a good measure - Goodharts Law.

Oh gawd, I thought these were an artefact from a bygone era!

Have a board advertising the number of days the company (PCBU) and the management (officers) with involvement by the workers to create a safe place of work, great,
or
Is the board advertising the failure of the PCBU to create a safe place of work, the failure of the management to establish positive procedures and the failure of workers to implement functional safe work practices.