Incident Reporting

Effective incident reporting requires a positive safety culture and a well managed process. At Harris Scarfe incident reporting was limited and often had negative connotations. In order to understand the true state of safety the first step was ascertaining what was actually occurring. This required a few steps to be taken.

• Break down negative culture of reporting incidents through positive recognition – focus on risk management post incident rather than finding fault in the actions of the individual.
• Provide easy to use reporting tools that were accessible by the majority of the workforce – 24/7 online incident report supported by paper-based forms.
• Create a culture of free flowing information – easy to understand reports and information provided to all levels of the organisation following incidents, including immediate reports to site managers/regional managers and weekly reports to the executive level.
• Promote health and safety through awareness sessions, website launch and newsletters to every team members home.

The result, a 400% increase in incident reporting.

There are many incident reporting systems available, many of these systems are very effective and can be used for multiple functions, however the capital outlay is also significant. For a medium sized business OHS software can be difficult to justify. Implementing a simple online incident reporting system is not costly and can provide some significant benefits to an organisation who has previously relied on paperbased forms and spreadsheets. With previous web development experience and a limited investment of time I was able to implement a simple reporting system at Harris Scarfe at no additional cost to the business.

To view an example incident report form in word format that you can download and modify to suit your needs click here.