Incident reports are part of the risk management tools used to describe and evaluate the circumstances that led to an event that potentially put the well-being of employees or company assets at risk. Documentation is used both in construction and in office activities with the aim of preventing similar cases from happening in the future.
In addition to playing an important role in improving safety conditions and monitoring the company's assets, incident reports are one of the supporting documentation required by insurance when accidents occur. They are also used by lawyers to continue legal procedures to assist the company and employees during disputes.
Therefore, a well-prepared and detailed incident report is essential for effective quality management of business processes.
What is an incident?
From a management point of view, an incident is an unexpected occurrence that can pose threats to health or put a company's assets at risk – they are also called “near misses”, as the event itself did not cause major losses.
Whenever the incident results in injury or damage to equipment and private property, it is treated as an “accident”. In this order of ideas, all accidents are incidents.
While different economic activities seek to comply with specific occupational and health services (OHS) standards, both incidents and accidents have a very similar reporting structure, whether the event occurred on a construction site or in an office.
What is the structure of an Incident Report?
The first part of an incident report is the introduction or executive summary. The document begins by mentioning the international and national standards to which the report complies. Additionally, the purpose, scope and definition of the terminology used to describe the events appear at the beginning of the document.
If there are multiple versions of the report, the reference codes should be displayed before entering in a table next to the names and companies of the process owners and supervisors.
The context of the incident is described after the introduction. In this section, the location where the event takes place is carefully described, including the location, dates, approximate response time, liability of workers and, if so, the third parties involved.
The third part of the report is investigation and analysis. Here, the results of interviews with implicated workers provide an additional basis to proceed with a deeper assessment of the causes.
The physical and mental state of the employees involved must also be mentioned. This way, it is easier to know whether the causes of the incident were due to the company's lack of security measures or other factors.
For example, if the worker who suffered the incident was not feeling well that day, the final assessment and conclusions should include actions to be taken to encourage workers to communicate their health limitations that could harm the results of their work or lead to to accidents.
To close the report, there are a series of recommendations on how to prevent similar events and show the results of the incident assessment.
The key point of the recommendation is to explain in an understandable way and in accordance with the standards mentioned in the introduction, the corrective actions to be taken and the expected deadline to implement solutions.
5 elements of a good incident report
Identifying the “how”, “when”, “where” and “who” of the incident are important elements of a good report – and all companies are more likely to emphasize these hallmarks during document development.
However, there are five extra elements that every process owner should consider adding to create a share-worthy, functional, and actionable document.
Visual information is much easier to follow than long, dense paragraphs and tables of contents. After the introduction, a good incident report typically displays a process workflow presenting each of the key steps taken to build the document and define corrective actions.
The level of detail of the workflow depends on the requirements of the risk management area, or the severity of the incident. The main tasks to mention in the workflow include incident notification, identification of those responsible, interviews, investigation and analysis, conclusion, sharing of learnings and implementation.
Facts in chronological order
The more descriptive the report, the easier it will be to create a mental picture of the events. With a clear picture of the incident, practical solutions are provided in the document and implementing these solutions becomes less stressful for everyone involved.
Incident reports should begin by mentioning the subjects, exact location (with coordinates of relatives where possible) and how the events unfold as close to reality as possible.
Taking statements should begin immediately after the incident – when memories are fresh. Although this may sometimes seem unnecessary for small incidents, there are small details that may not seem notable some time after the incident, so they go unnoticed and unrecorded – which can affect the outcome of the report.
Witnesses and teams
A good incident report often has a section solely to describe the roles of the workers involved in the incident, the team responding to the emergency, and the process owners. By knowing who the responsible professionals and workers involved are, potential problems with confidential information can be avoided.
Likewise, it is also important to have information about the company hierarchy. Through understanding the chain of command, problems with top-down or bottom-up controls and reporting are identifiable to discover whether the incident stemmed from misinterpretation.
Photos and sketches
Images of the location in question facilitate understanding and assessment of the possible causes of the incident. Images help process owners get a visual history of the workspace configuration and how it could pose a danger to employees – or whether the incident was caused by human error.
Photos must contain reference points, and must have a footnote with important observations and a description of the objects contained in them.
Sketches are a great way to complement images. In sketches it is possible to display reference points, show distances and generally offer a more accurate description of the location.
Outlines are useful for building a broader picture of the workplace. They can also simplify the information offered in the image. This way, many distracting or unrelated elements in the image are ignored and it is easy to focus on the elements that actually caused the accident.
Actionable suggestions
Actionable suggestions are descriptive and straightforward. They provide quick context and instructions on how to prevent future incidents.
Advice given at the conclusion of the report should include an overview of the causes of the incident, the risks to which employees were exposed, the personnel responsible for assessing the case and a specific action to be taken. In other words, if the incident was caused by the configuration of material positions in a warehouse, actionable suggestions would relate to seeking out a professional to change the way goods are stored.
If corrective measures are taken immediately, a new section in the report may be added with the deadline, guidelines, photos and factors considered to change the configuration of the space, or any action taken.
