Incident reporting is nothing new.  But, if it’s your first experience with this sort of thing, it can seem more than a little intimidating.  Let’s start by laying down the groundwork by defining what exactly the report entails, and then later, we’ll discuss why it’s so essential for your business.

The Incident Report Defined

Depending on the industry, an incident report may have slightly different meanings.  For example, Wikipedia defines an incident report as a form filled out to document an unusual event at a facility, such as an injury.  The definition and examples given can be found within the healthcare industry, and the focus is on injury in the facility.  The description states that another term for an incident report is an accident report.

Let’s look at another industry and how it perceives the definition.  With law enforcement agencies, two reports are quite common – a police report and an incident report.  We’ll go more in-depth into the difference later in this article. Still, in a nutshell – an incident report is any non-criminal occurrence like a cat up a tree, a no-fault car accident, or weather-related property damage, to name a few examples.

Incident reporting for business carries a more complex definition that includes multiple types of situations.

A business may have policies in place to complete an incident report for any number of reasons, including the following list of examples.

• Employee accident
• Product damage
• Equipment breakdown
• Facility maintenance issues
• Employee behavior
• Disaster response

What Is The Purpose Of An Incident Report?

When it comes to incident reporting, many businesses’ main concerns include (not in any particular order):

• Liability
• Expense Mitigation
• Accident Prevention
• Occurrence Documentation
• Loss Prevention
• Strategic Management
• Legal Responsibility
• Ethical Responsibility

Liability

When an incident occurs on a business facility’s premises, the business has a certain level of responsibility to maintain a safe environment. For example, suppose a client slips and falls on a walkway just outside the business entrance. In that case, the business may be liable if improperly completed property maintenance is to blame.

When a situation occurs where a company may be at fault, an incident report is invaluable to a) document the incident for authorities, b) ensure implementation of proper corrective action, c) provide documentation for required training or disciplinary action, as the case may be.

Expense Mitigation

Incident reports are a way for businesses to mitigate expenses. By documenting incidents, business managers can ascertain their nature and build preventive strategies to avoid future costs caused by a repeat occurrence.

Accident Prevention

Similar to expense mitigation, the act of preventing accidents focuses on the injury and damage portions of an occurrence.  Employee injury and accidents cost an excessive amount of money.  According to Injury Facts of the National Safety Council, the cost to society and business in 2018 for workplace injuries was $170.8 billion US.  You read that right, a staggering amount. 

That’s the monetary reason why preventing accidents is crucial.  But more importantly, the 156 million workers who were injured or the poor souls of the 4,493 preventable deaths (2018) deserved to have appropriate policies for preventing workplace incidents in place.

Occurrence Documentation

With all of the injuries and deaths in workplaces each year, all incidents must be reported and documented.

In this way, accidents and injuries may be preventable through proper management of documented incidents.

A concise and organized incident reporting process is vital in managing these situations. We’ll discuss that further later in the article.

Loss Prevention

It isn’t just injuries and accidents that are reportable in an incident report.  Incident reports are also valuable to a business when it comes to loss prevention.

Documenting theft is vital in the legal fight against its occurrence.  Any retail business will tell you that having an appropriately reported shoplifting incident will aid in the thief’s criminal charge. 

Larger businesses that utilize insurance for losses will most certainly require an adequately filled-out incident reporting form.

Strategic Management

As a manager, you know that strategic focus is vital to your operation’s success. This includes a properly organized and documented incident reporting process.

Managing multiple employees requires a strategic mindset where incidents and occurrences are dealt with swiftly and for the betterment of all involved.

Managing facilities or even multiple facilities also requires an organized incident reporting process.  Imagine trying to manage 20 properties as a property management firm.  The number of facility maintenance requests and occurrences alone would likely be more than the average property manager can keep organized without a well-placed incident reporting structure.

Legal Responsibility

Not to leave this highly essential purpose of the incident report until the end of the list on purpose, but businesses’ legal responsibility to report incidents and injuries is vital to any company’s proper operations.

Take workplace accidents, for example.  In 2018, in the United States, the construction industry dominated the statistics for fatal work injuries with 950 deaths.

Each workplace where one of these tragic accidents occurred had to file multiple forms, incident reports, and the like to avoid massive government fines and possible legal ramifications for non-compliance.

Let’s take a look at US businesses that work with consumer products as an example.  According to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, companies that deal with products must immediately report the following with civil or even criminal penalties for insubordination:

• Defective products that might pose a substantial or unreasonable risk of injury, serious injury, or death to consumers.
• Products failing to comply with safety standards, regulations, rules, or bans under the CPSA or statutes enforced by the CPSC.
• Any occurrence where a child chokes on a toy or part of a toy or game, whether medical treatment is provided.
• Individual lawsuits (applying to manufacturers and importers)

Ethical Responsibility

Aside from the legal ramifications of insubordinate reporting, businesses have an ethical responsibility to document incidents. Whether it be a client accident or a product failure, incident reporting can help prevent injuries to both people and property. Thus, proper incident documentation is an ethical imperative for businesses.

What Is An Example Of An Incident?

With all this talk of incidents, one ought to note that there are multiple examples of what may constitute an incident.  As well, some incidents will be industry-specific.  For example, a restaurant may have a dropped plate incident type to report in its incident reporting program.  It could deal with situations where wait staff might drop a ceramic plate of food en route to the client’s table. 

Although this occurrence may not seem like a big deal, several possible scenarios could quickly escalate into a grave situation.  What if another client gets up to go to the washroom and slips on some spilled food?  And they fall and hit their head on the corner of a table as they fall.  Now, a seemingly simple occurrence of dropping a plate of food could result in serious injury.

As part of a strategic plan to avoid injury and prevent accidents, the wait staff might be required to fill out a quick form documenting the incident. If procedures are in place to report and quickly resolve the occurrence, then possible further accidents could easily be avoided.

Some further clarification of incident types may help any who aren’t clear on what one should be filing an incident report.  The following is a list of suggested examples of incidents that businesses ought to consider including in their reporting program.

• Injuries and accidents
• Near misses
• Property or equipment damage or new risks
• Events requiring organization awareness for preventive action, such as security concerns
• Health and safety concerns
• Employee misconduct

What Is Included In An Incident Report?

When filing an incident report, one must become a sort of incident detective.  The information should be considered a legal document and deserves the utmost seriousness and precision.

Filling out the incident report accurately, factually, and to the best of one’s ability is vital to a successful reporting process. The following are some of the essential information that ought to be included in an incident report form.

• Affected People – Fairly straightforward, all individuals affected by the incident.
• Impacted Business Unit – If a part of a production process needs to close or divert, this ought to be noted in the report.
• Description of Injuries and Severity – A vital aspect of the report is noting how a person or persons were physically affected and its severity.  Canadian businesses will be familiar with this process with the Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CSST) in Quebec,  WSIB in Ontario, or WorkSafeBC in British Columbia, for example.  In the United States, each state also has its reporting agencies, such as the Workers’ Compensation Board in New York or the Department of Industrial Relations in California.
• General Information
  • Date/Time – One should record two dates and times.  First are the date and time of the incident.  Next are the date and time that the report completion occurred.
  • Event Description – A complete and comprehensive description of the event or events that transpired.
  • Environmental Conditions – A description of all local conditions in the area where the incident occurred.  For example, for slips and falls – was the floor slippery or icy, for example.
• Witnesses – In this report, one should find the names and statements of witnesses of the occurrence.
• Administrative Resolutions – The steps completed to control or resolve the issue immediately.  It is vital in the case of an accident where injury or worse is involved.  In many cases, the supervisor or manager on duty may face liability if no resolution to control risk is undertaken.
• Damages to Property, Facility, or Equipment—It stands to reason that all damages should be carefully noted and even photographed. Including them in the detailed reports can clarify incident costs and the cost of resolution and provide insurance companies with information if required.
• Manager/Supervisor Name & Title—One of the final and essential elements of the incident report is the sign-off. That is, the managing person who is filing the report should sign and date the I.R. with their full name and title within the company. This shows that a responsible authority person has completed the incident report and allows interested parties to contact them for further information if required.

What Should You Not Include In An Incident Report?

As mentioned, several elements are essential to an incident report. However, some things are not included in the report.

Emotions have no place in the report other than to describe people’s reactions to an event from a third-party perspective and only if necessary.  A manager often may be upset with an employee, especially if the incident is an employee misconduct situation.  And these feelings can be transferred to ‘saying the wrong thing’ on the report.  Reports ought to be filled out by an impartial party, preferably in a management role.

Personal opinions can sometimes creep into a report as well.  When a manager sees an employee or other at fault, sometimes they may assume blame without knowing all the facts.  After all, if obstructions block attributes from the initial view, it might be easy to point a finger initially.  However, some factors are frequently not immediately apparent.  For this reason, the report completion ought to be in a factual, formal manner where opinions and assumptions are omitted.

The Incident Reporting Process For Business

Having a decent enough incident report template or templates and calling it a process isn’t what a business owner ought to do.  A procedure should be set in place for incident reporting.  Depending on the type of business, industry, and business operations, there may be several methods documented.

What Are The Main Stages Of Incident Reporting?

The incident report process can be broken down into a pre-stage, followed by six primary incident report stages.

The Incident

Fairly self-explanatory, the entire process is set in motion by a potential incident.

Stage 1 – Incident Initial Disclosure

The first stage is the disclosure of an occurrence to a person in a supervisory role.  Whether it’s a hospital, a construction site, or a fleet of service personnel, if there is an incident, the first line is the supervisor, who first acknowledges a situation.

Stage 2 – Immediate Actions

In the case of an injured person or dangerous machinery that needs to be immediately powered down, the priority is the emergency response to mitigate immediate danger and help those who have been injured.

Stage 3 – Reporting Completion

Once the immediate dust has settled and quick or emergency actions have been taken, the individual in a supervisory role needs to fill out an incident report or reports. Depending on the nature of the incident, the report may include multiple forms.

Stage 4 – Incident Report Transmission

If a work injury occurs, the proper authorities must be notified within their locally specified time constraint. For example, in Arkansas, Form N must be immediately filled out and provided to the injured employee and submitted to the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission.

Stage 5 – Corrective Action

Typically, corrective and preventive actions are required following the incident. In equipment or facility breakdown, the steps are apparent—fix said equipment or facility. In the case of a misconduct incident, the corrective action may not be as cut and dry. However, there should be some form of action in any incident to prevent a repeat incident and educate those involved about any new processes or procedural changes.

Stage 6 – Incident Follow Up

Lastly, after all five other stages are completed, the incident follow-up may be as simple as reaching out to an injured employee to find out how they are doing, reaching out to clients or other potentially involved non-employee persons, or following up with any subsequent documents, forms, or actions that may be required given the incident’s particulars.

When Should You Complete An Incident Report?

Incident reports are best completed when a situation occurs where a person is at risk of injury or has been injured, there is a public complaint, employee misconduct, or any other case where a person, property, or equipment is at stake.

Depending on your industry, company, and business model, this could mean many potential situations.  In terms of construction, for example, it may mean worker injury or even a close call.  Any time a problem occurs where preventive or corrective action could benefit and potentially avoid harm or other adverse situations is an excellent time to file an incident report.

Depending on how proactive a company is, some may even have preventive incident reporting procedures in place to address corrective actions before incidents occur. This is quite typical in industries such as facility or property maintenance and management.

What Type Of Incidents Should Be Disclosed?

As mentioned above, incidents ought to be disclosed any time a person, equipment, or property is at risk of being injured or damaged. Situations that have impaired a person, property, or equipment should always be disclosed.

Disclosure should also include employee misconduct incidents and any complaints that warrant management’s attention (public complaints about facility safety, for example). Security events often included in incident reports are essential for many businesses. They might consist of cases of vandalism, theft, or other criminal activity.

There are many different types of incidents that could occur that might warrant an incident report.  As you can imagine, each industry may have its particular events that need reporting. 

How Do You Write An Incident Report? At Work?

Writing an incident report for yourself at home might not be a bad idea in specific situations. Naturally, a small cut from a knife in the kitchen when preparing a meal does not warrant an incident report unless the person who got cut is a hired cook. In most instances, incident reports are not a requirement in the home. 

However, what if some city workers are working and dumping garbage on your front lawn?  It might be a good time to fill out your incident report to document the situation and bring it to management’s attention for corrective action. 

Typically incident reports and reporting are completed at a place of business.

As outlined earlier, there are vital elements to include in an incident report. Let’s quickly recap what you’ll need. 

Data To Collect For The Incident Report

• Date, time, and location of the incident
• Nature of the occurrence (the type of incident)
• Names and titles of those involved, including witnesses
• Precursive information (if applicable)
• Description of the incident as it occurred, including details regarding surroundings
• Identifiable equipment involved (machinery, tools, PPE, products)
• Immediate actions are taken to treat injuries, limit risks, and prevent further injury (employee received first-aid, machinery locked out, etc.)
• Damages to equipment, property, or the like

What Makes A Good Incident Report?

A good incident report is concise, accurate, unbiased, and descriptive. It should also make analysis and resolution as straightforward as possible.

Consider the post-report analysis as a person in a position of decision-making management.  If you had to analyze the report so you could institute resolutions for corrective action and prevention, then what would you want to investigate?

An incident report that paints a picture of events so that you can easily ‘see the event’ in your mind from reading it is excellent and well written. But if the report is either non-existent or missing critical information, it can lead to many problems and potentially some pretty hefty costs.

Costs And Benefits Of Business Incident Reporting

With injuries in the workplace driving costs so high that a small business could be crippled or even bankrupted from a single accident, it pays to have a stable reporting process.

Take the construction industry, for example.  This industry is no stranger to accidents, with 21.1% of the worker fatalities of 2018 (OSHA). And unfortunately, this means it is also no stranger to severe injury or even death on the job.

As one can no doubt imagine, death on a small construction project can be life-altering for those involved. But if found negligent, it could mean civil or even criminal penalties for a small, medium, or even large corporation or sole proprietorship.

So, how can the average business protect itself from this heinous situation? It is smart to run a business by having processes and procedures to limit exposure to dangers and a preventive attitude to incident reporting.

Many successful businesses and corporations have tiered reporting systems in place to identify hazards and other potential incidents before they happen.  This form of ‘pre-incident reporting’ is not only a proactive measure that saves companies millions, but it also saves lives.

What Are The Costs Of Incident Reporting?

Incident reporting may seem like yet another pile of red tape that management has to wade through daily.  However, it shouldn’t be that way.  Many companies that have multi-tiered reporting solutions use templates to help control the flow of reports. 

For example, a retail company (retail accounted for 14% of injuries in 2018)may have an incident report related directly to facilities and property. They might also have another report dealing with equipment breakdowns and failures and yet another account for worker injury or accident.

The costs to set up templates, have them printed, train staff, and implement daily operations may seem staggering.  But the actual expense is doing nothing.  When found negligent, individual managers, owners, and supervisors might all find themselves under the authorities’ microscope.  Negligence is not an excuse that holds up in court, so what are the actual costs of incident reporting?  Whatever they add up to, they are a fraction of what they could be if a company does nothing.

What Are The Benefits Of Incident Reporting?

There are FOUR main benefits of incident reporting for businesses. 

A workplace has so many facets to operations that situations that impede operations mean a loss of revenue. Aside from the obvious fact that no one wants anyone to get hurt or fall ill, the costs associated with the workplace are astronomical.

The First Benefit – Hazard Communication

The first and primary benefit of an efficient reporting program is relaying potential hazards to others. It allows management to act reactively in the moment rather than a delayed response and mitigates potentially worse incidents.

The Second Benefit – Procedural Reinforcement

In any company, reminding staff that a situation can occur at any moment and that a reactive process to handle said occurrence is present does several things.

1. Reinforces procedures within a company
2. It Reinforces managerial support of staff to drive company morale
3. Reinforces the need to constantly report without fail

The Third Benefit – Process Improvement

There are often opportunities in life for people, both employees and employers, to improve.  Life has a way of throwing us into situations where we are forced to make tough choices.  Having a robust incident reporting form process allows for the cases that warrant such reports to be appropriately analyzed to avoid future recurrences.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018, there were 2.8 million nonfatal workplace injuries or illnesses, which private industry employers reported.

As you already know, businesses must have or provide a means for employees to get workers’ compensation insurance in the US.  It covers expenses for employees while they are off work due to work-related injury or illness.  The consequences of not having this insurance in place can be devastatingly severe for a business.

The Fourth Benefit – Liability

But it isn’t just insurance a company needs to have in place to cover such dreadful situations as an employee incident where the injury is involved. There are other duties and responsibilities that employers must adhere to, according to Findlaw.  These include posting a notice of compliance with workers’ compensation laws, for one.  Employers must also have someone on staff at all times who can administer first aid and emergency medical response to fellow employees in case of emergency while waiting for emergency medical personnel to arrive.

Lastly, in addition to complying with requests for information from the workers’ compensation board, an incident report must also be sent to the WCB’s most accessible (nearest) office.

So, the benefit here is not facing the wrath of government authorities.  That’s a pretty significant benefit.

How Do I Limit My Company’s Incident Reporting Costs?

Limiting incident reporting costs begins with an efficient and streamlined system.  This system would include procedures that would be an efficient means of training staff if presented to staff in video format.  However, there may be associated costs in the process that are redundant or even, perhaps, unnecessary.

Take the use of manual incident reports as an example.  Suppose a company decides to organize its incident reporting processes into a multi-tiered system with different branches for different business aspects. In that case, one can imagine the cost of printing these multiple-format forms.

When multiple locations or facilities are involved, the costs of printing these incident report templates begin to be a burden for companies.

For service-based companies with fleets of service technicians, the daily use of paper, ink, and other associated printing costs become more than many businesses bargained for when it comes to their incident reporting forms. 

But before we discuss the best solutions for streamlining and moving your reporting processes into the modern era, let’s take a quick look at those different types of incident reports and forms with a few example incident report templates.

Should You Manually Write Incident Reports?

Manually writing incident reports is a smart idea if you have a tiny business with minimal employees. However, once your business reaches a certain threshold in size, manual incident reports become somewhat redundant. 

With many companies that run multiple facilities and locations, the manual report isn’t feasible. However, depending on the company’s structure, it may still be an essential part of the process.

For most larger companies, manually writing reports such as incident reports doesn’t make sense when we have digital communications. The new way of reporting is using a cloud-based system with multi-device access and web portal management.

With costs down and incident reports at your fingertips, manual writing makes no sense at this point. Not with cloud-based solutions like 1st Incident Reporting’s App & Web Software, which is reasonably priced. Maintaining your reporting budget is even more comfortable.

The Future Of Incident Reporting – The Cloud-Based Incident Report

Why 1st Incident Reporting’s Solution Is Right For Your Business

From property and facility management to construction sites and more, we’ve got the incident reporting software solution for your business.

Here are just a few of the features of our digital incident reporting solution:

• Multi-Device Access
• Web Portal Management
• Custom Incident Configuration
• Flexible Notifications
• Real-Time User Location Tracking
• Powerful Personalized Summary Reports
• 3rd Party Data Integrations

Frequently Asked Incident Reporting Questions