When incidents occur, relying on anecdotal evidence and recollections is not a sufficient means of reporting. Organizations strive to achieve a level of reporting where incidents and near misses are captured and measured accurately.
The incident forms may vary in length and design for:
Near Misses
Minor Incidents
Off the Job Incidents
Incidents
Each form can be tailored to exactly fit with your:
Regulatory Jurisdictions
Industry
Working Environment
Job levels, Teams, Roles and Processes
Escalation Rules and Thresholds
Typically, we do not strive to remove paper completely from the process. There is still a place for vehicle based blank paper forms to capture details like license plate numbers etc. - as long as those notes are disposable once the electronic form is filled out. Digital cameras can supplement a form by attaching one or more photos of the incident. In some cases, scanned police or similar paperwork can be attached to the incident form in PDF format.
The above forms are not fixed; they are designed to unfold based on user inputs. For instance, the incident reporter only sees fields related to injuries if people were seen to be injured.
Incident Investigation
Following the submission of a new Incident, the appropriate investigator is notified by email that an Incident is waiting in their queue. They will then continue the process and append their input and findings on the form. Investigators can edit and improve on the Reporter's inputs but the original, and all subsequent, versions of the report are available as part of the audit trail. The investigator will be involved in defining the Direct Causes of the incident and then expanding those to reach a Root Cause from your organization's customized hierarchy of unsafe acts and conditions.
Your internal process may stipulate that senior or EHS investigators are also involved with incidents above a certain severity or profile. These rules can be defined as part of the workflow for each of your incident types.
