Before we launched our Red Card/Yellow Card program, StartKleen was reporting 11 near misses company-wide in the span of six months. In the first month after launch, we reported 300. What changed wasn’t the number of unsafe behaviors on our floors. What changed was the reporting.

What 11 Reports in Six Months Actually Tells You

Eleven near-miss reports in six months across an entire company’s operations is not a number that reflects a safe workplace. It reflects a workplace where reporting wasn’t happening.

On any given shift, there are moments: someone climbs a piece of equipment that wasn’t designed to be climbed, someone starts a task without the right PPE, someone takes a shortcut because the standard approach doesn’t fit the space they’re working in. These moments happen in every manufacturing environment. The question is whether the organization has a system that surfaces them.

In facilities where crews carpool together and family members work side by side, the barriers to reporting are real. Pulling a card on a coworker can feel like a much bigger deal than the unsafe act itself. Whatever was keeping reporting low, the data was clear: 11 reports in six months meant we were missing almost everything. Before we could improve our safety outcomes, we needed a system that made reporting normal.

What the Data Actually Shows

Near-miss reporting and recordable injury rates move in opposite directions. The more frequently teams stop, recognize and discuss unsafe behaviors, the more likely it is that serious incidents get prevented. The correlation is documented across industries (according to OSHA’s voluntary near-miss reporting guidelines) and visible in StartKleen’s own plant data year over year.

When near-miss reports go up across our plants, recordables follow that curve down. Not immediately, but consistently. When reporting participation drops off, recordables climb back.

That correlation is what we show our management teams every Monday morning. Roughly 100 managers across StartKleen’s operations review last week’s Red Card/Yellow Card statistics together (StartKleen internal program data, 2023–2026): how many cards were issued, how many coaching minutes those cards generated and which plants are trending in the right direction.

It’s accountability backed by evidence that the conversations are working.

• 300 Near-miss reports in month one after Red Card/Yellow Card launch, up from 11 in the prior six months combined.
• 100 Managers review weekly near-miss data together every Monday morning across StartKleen’s operations.
• 2 Safety-related terminations in three years of running the program. Both were cases of continued, unresolvable risk to the employee’s own safety.

A Simple System That Creates Real Documentation

The Red Card/Yellow Card program runs on physical plastic cards and a mobile app called Start Clean that managers carry and use directly on the manufacturing floor.

When a manager observes an unsafe act or behavior, the process is direct:

Yellow Card: for unsafe acts or behaviors that require immediate correction. The manager stops the employee, moves to a space where a conversation can happen and conducts a two-minute coaching session. The employee answers four questions: Why am I being stopped? What was the unsafe act? What is the consequence? How can I protect myself? The manager logs the interaction in the app and the employee returns to work.

Red Card: for highly unsafe behaviors that could have catastrophic outcomes. The manager pulls the employee aside to the break room for a 15-minute one-on-one conversation, with the employee’s direct supervisor present. The employee answers the same four questions, the manager shares relevant safety training for that specific hazard and the employee returns to their duties.

Every card submitted generates a real-time report. Reagan Williams, StartKleen’s Safety Director, reviews every card that comes in each morning. That data builds a running picture of trends across all plants: which hazard categories keep appearing, which employees have had multiple infractions and which plants aren’t submitting reports at all, a signal that usually warrants a field visit.

What Happens When OSHA Pays Attention

The documented near-miss record changes the conversation with regulators. When OSHA visited one of StartKleen’s facilities, our Safety Director walked them through the Red Card/Yellow Card data: the near-miss trends, the coaching minutes and the real-time reporting structure.

For any auditor, client or regulator, a program that creates documented coaching records tied to near-miss trends tells a clear story: this operation is managing safety in real time, not reconstructing it after an incident. That’s a fundamentally different posture than pointing to annual training completions.

Beyond the regulatory context, the program has given StartKleen a safety record that reflects what’s actually happening on the floor, because it captures what’s happening on the floor every shift.

Why Near Misses Are an Asset, Not a Liability

A high near-miss reporting rate, paired with a structure that acts on that data, is one of the clearest indicators of a healthy safety culture. It means employees feel safe enough to report. It means managers are having the conversations. It means the organization is learning before something goes wrong instead of after.

In three years of running the Red Card/Yellow Card program, StartKleen has had two terminations related to safety behavior (StartKleen internal program data, 2023–2026). Both were cases where an employee’s continued behavior represented a genuine, unresolvable risk to their own safety. The program is designed to teach rather than punish. When employees understand that a card means a coaching conversation and not a disciplinary action, they stop being afraid of it. When they stop being afraid, the reporting numbers go up.

That’s the number that matters.

What This Means for Operations Like Yours

If you’re a food safety director or operations leader managing a large, diverse workforce, the safety culture challenge is a communication problem. You need a system that makes it easy, fast and low-stakes for managers to intervene in real time and that creates a documented record automatically.

The Red Card/Yellow Card framework does that in two minutes or fifteen, depending on the severity of what was observed. It doesn’t require a trip to HR, a long form or a meeting. It requires a card in a pocket and a phone with the app open.

Over time, the data it generates tells you exactly where to direct your resources: not based on what injuries have already happened, but based on where the warning signs are appearing right now. That’s the difference between acting after the fact and acting on what the floor is showing you today.