It doesn’t matter how many safety precautions you take as an employer or how often you train your employees to work safely, sooner or later, someone is going to make a mistake and end up in an accident causing injury and damage to the company property. This is not a big deal especially when you are sure that it’s not your fault your employee met with an accident. The important thing after any sort of accident is to get the details as soon as possible and write them down. Usually for reporting incidents and accidents in workplaces, organizations hire unbiased staff members who can honestly report the incident with all the details without putting blame on anyone. The document they use for this purpose is known as the incident report. As the name suggests, it includes the date on which the accident happened, the place where it occurred, the name of the person(s) involved in the incident, damage caused to the property and human injuries, and most importantly, why the incident happened and how to prevent it in the future. When so many important elements are involved in the record-keeping, it’s better to use an incident report template.
Key Elements of an Incident Report:
- Specific date of the incident
- Complete description of the incident
- Location of the incident
- Explanation of the damages after the incident
- Complete details of the people involved
- Confirm company policies for the prevention of the incident
- Conclusion about preventing the incident from happening again
Free Incident Report Templates:
Here is a preview of an Accident Report Template to help you record such incidents with perfection.
Benefits of using Incident Report Template:
Usually, when an incident happens, no one has the time or the patience to think straight and that’s the time when irrational or wrong decisions are made. One of the biggest challenges for today’s corporate world is to deal with employee claims and lawsuits. It’s possible that you have trained your employees well and there are necessary precautions for ensuring their safety but sooner or later, an employee is met with an accident and he blames the employer for not providing a safe environment for work. In most cases, as soon as the incident occurs, everyone starts drawing their own conclusion and no one bothers to actually report the incident and record all the crucial information on paper. This is where the incident report template comes in handy as it has all the required sections and portions and the writer just needs to add the relevant information and details in the template.
Along with the benefit of quickly grabbing the template and instantly preparing the incident report, there is the added bonus of not missing an important section which is crucial from a legal perspective. As discussed above under stress, humans tend not to perform well and they forget important information which can create a huge liability when preparing incident reports. If the mistake was made by the employee, it’s important to record the steps he took intentionally that caused the incident. If the negligence was done by the employer or the company, the reporter should clearly mention the lack of safety precautions or protection measurements that is solely the fault of the employer. Another huge benefit of using an incident report template is that if a workplace faces regular incidents among employees and workers, it’s important to use the same format of the incident report every time there is an accident and that is only possible when you use a readymade format instead of creating the incident report from scratch.
Free Incident Report Forms
Here are some ready-to-use Free Incident Report Forms in MS Word format for your quick assistance.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Incident Reports
For starters, it is important to note that incident report templates are useful for recording issues that happen abruptly, health and safety policy violations, injuries at work among other issues that disrupt the operations of a place. Correctly filled they offer a legal protection, good communication and basis to address an occurrence. However, some organizations either use the wrong templates with poor structures or simply fill in the templates with no seriousness. Such mistakes also reduce the validity of the report and, consequently, impact investigations, cause delays in response or lead to unnecessary exposure and liability of the organization. So, what is the point of preparing an incident report that is clear, accurate and actionable if very basic mistakes exist in the same?
Overlooking Critical Details
Failing to record vital details is among the most common, hence aggressive, mistakes made when compiling an incident report. All incident reports have to address the following major questions: what happens, how it happens, where it happens, who makes it happen and when it happens. It is common for templates to lack sufficient detail, or for users to believe that skipping some sections is acceptable. Such omissions can cause misunderstandings and limit the range of meaning, which in turn hinders the comprehension of the full picture by managers, auditors, or even lawyers responsible for quantifying risks. Each part of a template needs to be looked at as a required ingredient with clear guidance on what information is required and how each section should be completed.
Using Generic or Outdated Templates
Another often-made mistake is the persistent use of generic or outdated templates that are not aligned with organizational expectations or industry trends. A template that does not include fields for present-day issues such as escalation of cybersecurity situations, mental health-related challenges or disturbance of workplaces through digital means; can cause under-reporting and lead to incomplete documentation. Incident report templates should be periodically assessed and modified to cope with the evolving work, safety and legislative environments. This will ensure that the organization is ready and able to respond to and report any type of incident.
Failing to Maintain Neutral and Objective Language
Prejudice or exaggerated opinions as expressed in incident reports are not unusual or less of a problem. The reports are expected to be phrased in an objective manner and, along these lines, limited to what is objectively observed rather than what is believed, assumed or who is blamed. The incident report has the potential of being used in an internal probe or a court case, which means that any aggressive or conjectural wording will jeopardize the report in its entirety. A well-designed format should ensure reporting is based on facts and should provide room for the introduction of witness statements or indications, diverging observation from interpretation.
Ignoring Authorization and Review Procedures
Ultimately, poorly reviewed, unacknowledged, and unauthenticated incident report fails to be credible and trustworthy. The approval and verification of all the data included in the report as well as actions to be taken are facilitated and maintained through the observance of this process. Underestimating the importance of this stage can lead to under addressed questions and returns of mistakes made before. Such loopholes can be eliminated to increase the effectiveness, reliability, and the actual business value of incident report writing.