Looking for safety incident tracking software? It’s tough enough managing incidents in the workplace; having to do it without the right tools is just adding insult to injury. What you need is a robust safety incident-tracking software solution. Luckily, we’ve got something you’ll be interested in to help.

Safety incident tracking software is an application designed for documenting, reporting, analyzing, and storing information about workplace accidents and incidents. The more robust solutions simultaneously provide features like automation that aid in the efficiency and precision of workflows.

Let’s look at the incident investigation process and how safety incident tracking software solves several issues with the process. We’ll start with the investigative process and the importance of preventive mitigation practices, and we’ll talk about what to expect from the OSHA and other government bodies (depending on your country of operation).

So, if you’re ready to improve your safety incident tracking processes and get some great insights into process improvement and digital implementation, let’s get into it. 

Incident Investigation Steps and Stages

Some claim that the investigative process for workplace incidents is simple. They aren’t wrong, but they often forget some vital aspects of the incident investigation and response that must not be overlooked.

Here are the eight steps and stages of an effective incident investigation:

1. Incident Emergency Response
2. Incident Disclosure
3. Observe and Document
4. Collect Witness Observations and Information
5. Analyze Prerequisite Occurrences and Causality
6. Implement Corrective Actions and Procedures
7. Follow Up With Affected Parties
8. Train/Refresh Team Members

Incident Emergency Response

When an incident occurs in the workplace, team members must take the proper steps to ensure the safety of everyone involved. One essential step is initial emergency response, which involves taking quick and effective action to secure the scene, prevent further injury, and begin the investigation.

As part of the emergency response, emergency responders should be called to the scene immediately, as needed.

Incident Disclosure

Disclosing incident occurrences to upper management after the initial emergency response is essential for a few reasons. First, it ensures that those in charge are aware of the situation and can begin taking steps to mitigate any potential further damage. Second, it begins the process of tracking and documenting the incident so that your team can conduct a complete analysis at a later date. Third, it allows management to assist in incident response and mitigation.

Observe and Document

Safety responders should take immediate action when an incident occurs to prevent further injury or damage and then begin to document the scene. The documentation includes taking pictures, making notes of the conditions, and other situational observations.

All this information is vital to conducting a complete and accurate analysis of the incident. Without it, investigators could be missing key details that could lead to repeated incidents, further injury, or even fatalities.

Collect Witness Observations and Information

Witnesses to a workplace incident can provide valuable information to safety investigators. Their observations and testimonies can help determine the cause of the incident and identify potential safety hazards.

Gathering all witness contact information following an incident is essential. This allows safety investigators to follow up with witnesses for further information or clarification. Additionally, it is essential to interview witnesses as soon as possible after an incident occurs while their memory of the event remains fresh.

The importance of collecting witness testimony as fast as possible is nothing to brush aside. People tend to distort and even misinterpret events. The longer the event drifts into memory, the greater the distortion potential. That’s why 75% of DNA exoneration cases show faulty eyewitness testimony to be the leading cause of incorrect sentencing. (source)

Analysis of Prerequisite Occurrences and Causality

After collecting information from the incident scene, safety investigators can begin to piece together a picture of what happened before the event. This analysis looks at all prerequisite occurrences, safety hazards, and causal factors that contributed to the incident.

Prerequisite occurrences are conditions or events that must be present for an incident to occur. For example, suppose a refrigerated area has a door opened to a warm environment. Condensation will build up on the floor, making it slippery.

A safety hazard is any potential source of harm or adverse health effect on a person or persons. For example, a safety hazard could be a loose piece of machinery that poses a risk of entrapment.

Causal factors are those conditions or events that directly lead to the incident. For example, a machine breaks down, and a guarding cage fails, causing a worker to get struck by a broken, flying machine part.

Implement Corrective Actions and Procedures

Once safety investigators have completed their analysis of an incident, it is essential to implement corrective actions and procedures to prevent further incidents. This stage of the incident tracking process usually falls to upper management or a health and safety committee responsible for ensuring that everyone follows safety protocols and mitigates safety hazards.

It is essential to note that corrective actions and procedures should be based on the findings of the safety investigation. For example, if an incident occurs because someone did not adequately mitigate a safety hazard, the corrective action would be to ensure the proper prevention of all safety hazards in the future.

Safety incident tracking software can help your organization manage safety incidents better and prevent further incidents. Using a robust safety incident tracking solution, you should be able to track an incident from initial documentation to corrective action completion. 1st Reporting can help you with that.

Follow Up With Affected Parties

Following up with all affected parties is often neglected in incident procedures. Despite being a polite gesture, it is essential to administer further supportive management and prevent incident recurrence. Similarly, a professional and courteous follow-up process never hurts in terms of liability.

Train/Refresh Team Members

The last and often most essential aspect of any investigative process dealing with workplace incidents is the training or refresher training that follows an incident occurrence. There are only two aspects to training and retraining following an incident.

1. Training for newly discovered/created workplace hazards.
2. Refresher training for long-standing hazards in the workplace.

Whether your incident falls into category 1 or 2, it’s still wise to provide training (fresh or refresher) to your team members. This stage is vital because it should increase knowledge and hazard awareness in your team.

Safety incident tracking software like 1st Reporting can offer more than just a digital reporting platform. Included in the software is an area where you can upload company training documents. Similarly, you can create a custom form within the app for your team members to sign and complete upon verifying the completion of their training materials review. It allows you to transform your incident tracking software into a robust training and training tracking platform!

The Importance of Near Miss and Hazard Analysis Reporting

Workplace incident reporting is essential for safety, but not only serious incidents need to be tracked. Near-miss incidents (which don’t result in injury) and hazard analysis reports also need to be analyzed to identify potential safety hazards before they can turn into serious accidents.

A safety hazard is any potential danger that could result in an accident or injury. A hazard analysis report documents the results of an investigation into a safety hazard. This report is then used to help create corrective actions and procedures to prevent further incidents.

A near-miss incident is defined as an event that has the potential to cause harm but doesn’t result in any injury or damage. Near-miss incidents are often warning signs that a safety hazard is present and needs to be addressed.

While immediate reporting of severe accidents and injuries is necessary, near-miss incidents and safety hazard analysis reports can often be overlooked. However, tracking these types of safety incidents is essential to prevent future recurrences.

A robust safety incident tracking solution will have no issues handling multiple types of incidents, including near-miss reports or hazard analysis. One of the top ways we can improve hazard analysis is by a software platform like 1st. It can generate automated reports based on incident types and other factors.

Innovative reporting platforms can help identify trends in a fraction of the time it takes a person. 1st Reporting’s built-in report-generating features can shave hours or days off of complex analysis.

What You Need To Know About OSHA Reporting and Management

Most countries have a government division to oversee legislation regarding workplace injury documentation and standards. In the UK, it’s the Health and Safety Executive. In Canada, the provincial government manages (for example, in Ontario, it’s the Ministry of Labour, Training, and Skills Development). In the US, it’s the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

According to OSHA’s recordkeeping information, a business must manage its incident documentation as follows:

1. Employers of more than ten people must keep a record of serious work-related injuries and illnesses.
2. You must maintain the abovementioned records at the workplace for a minimum of 5 years.
3. You must report fatalities to OSHA within 8 hours.
4. Severe injuries such as amputation, loss of an eye, or hospitalization must be reported to OSHA within 24 hours.

Failure to comply with these regulations can lead to severe consequences for a business. That’s why a consistent, secure, and trustworthy platform like 1st becomes invaluable.

Features of EHS and Safety Incident Management Software 

When it comes to safety incident management, having the right tools is essential. A good safety incident management software will offer a range of features, including:

• The ability to track and manage incidents, near-misses, hazard analysis, and many other types of reports
• The ability to generate detailed reports on all kinds of safety incidents
• The ability to record data to a statement, such as audio, visual, or video observations
• Customizable templates
• Create dynamic workflows that change with the responses provided
• Generate reports to aid in incident trend analysis and future incident occurrence probability

Here are a few key points about the top features of today’s incident tracking software.

Mobile Application Use For Incident Tracking

For the most efficient reporting experience, incident reporting software must run on a mobile device and capture data even when the device does not have an internet connection.

Although 1st Reporting is a cloud-based solution that requires no internet connection, the application still works excellently for incident documentation.

The software will store the responders’ data locally on their devices until a stable internet connection is established. Once established, the software will upload the collected data to the cloud servers, where you will easily find you can download older reports.

Property, Equipment, and People Related Incidents (and So Much More)

Utilizing custom forms is great, but sometimes, we want to have things done for us. That’s where our extensive library of pre-built reports, checklists, and templates will aid you well. Implementation of the software is much easier with a pre-built set of incident report templates at your disposal.

Integration

Did you know that 1st Reporting integrates with the Teams environment? So, not only will the incident tracking software help you manage your incidents using Android, iOS, desktops, or laptops, but now it will work with Microsoft Teams, too. It’s just getting more accessible and easier to use the best incident reporting platform in your organization.

Automation And Customization

When you document incidents within your organization, you need adaptive solutions that are tailored to your particular situation. After all, no two businesses are the same, so why should your solutions be?

Customizing your workflow with a template editor is crucial for any software tracking solution. It would be best if you didn’t have to fit a solution. It should fit you – and that’s the idea behind the 1st Reporting customizable templates. We can help you set up and adapt any of our existing templates – or start fresh with a fully custom template of your own. Either way, our app delivers results – your way!

As if customization weren’t a good enough feature, we decided to use technology to your advantage—with automation to improve your workflow.

Imagine this scenario – a company has two processes for personal injury: one process for team members and one method for the public. An incident occurs, and someone slips and falls. 27% of the nonfatal work injuries resulting in time off in 2019 were due to slips and falls. (source)

Imagine that the above scenario has a lot of young staff. This staff is great on intelligent devices but a little short on attention and may not remember the exact steps to take in an emergency. So, the company uses 1st Reporting to set up a dynamic incident report workflow. The workflow prompts the team member and will dynamically switch from team member injury workflow to public injury workflow, depending on the team member’s inputs. There’s no need to worry about staff taking the wrong course of action when we can use dynamic templates and checklists to guide them along the proper path.

Is that something your paper-printed checklists can do? No? We didn’t think so.