As we mentioned in the last newsletter, reporting an incident is an important part of an effective occupational health and safety programme, as it aids in identifying work-related health and safety hazards, risks, and dangers. By identifying these specific risks, measures can be taken to minimise the likelihood of them happening again in the future.
It is important that the incident is reported in a systematic and orderly fashion. Furthermore, the sooner the incident is reported, the sooner it can be addressed. Therefore, we suggest making use of an incident reporting template, which will contain similar questions for each incident, whether it be sentinel events, near misses, adverse events, or no-harm events. The point is that, no matter the event, it must be recorded.
Incident management system
An incident management system is the effective and systematic use of all resources available to an organisation to respond to an incident, mitigate its impact, and understand its cause, thereby helping to prevent a recurrence. It is a combination of people’s efforts in utilising processes and tools to manage incidents.
People: This involves not only the company’s safety officers but all employees and stakeholders. To respond to an incident, the incident needs to be made known or reported first. Anyone in the organisation who experienced or witnessed an incident should immediately report it to the proper authority in order to get the appropriate response and for the incident to be properly documented.
Process: The incident management process involves the following steps to be followed whenever an incident occurs: incident reporting, corrective action, investigation and analysis, and incident closure.
Tools: This includes incident reporting tools like an incident report form (see the sample form), an incident management checklist, or an incident report app that helps immediately capture incident details and assign corrective action for swift response.
What information to gather for an incident report:
When gathering information for an incident report, the person responsible for reporting should ask for the following:
The incident report can also include photos to help provide better context on the type and severity of the incident.
Did you know?
Strat Environment takes noise ‘pollution’ very seriously, given the fact that worldwide it affects approximately 250 million workers and 1.06 million workers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Find out more here about Noise pollution: https://www.stratenvironment.co.za/monitoring-and-controlling-noise-in-the-workplace-to-protect-worker-hearing-and-wellbeing/
