Reasons for Accident Investigation Reporting Training

Workplace accidents can happen for any reason, and despite the hard work you put in to prevent them, they can undoubtedly occur. When a workplace accident occurs, the company owners must investigate to understand the root cause of the accident.

Investigating an accident allows the company to prevent similar accidents from happening in the future. A reasonable investigation aims to establish events that should have occurred and compare them with what happened.

After investigating the root cause of the accident, the management identifies the unsafe acts and conditions and gives recommendations about the corrective actions.

Benefits of Incident Investigation

Incident investigation is a process of tracking, investigating, and reporting the incident. In the investigation process, the company can either hire staff from outside or use the assistance of the company’s trained staff.

Training staff inside the company for incident investigation can benefit the company in numerous ways. Let us discuss a few benefits a company can get through the incident investigation.

Identification of the Hazards

When you investigate and report an incident, you get a heads up and help the management identify the potential deficiencies in your workplace. Moreover, you find out about the problem areas that need fixing. The incident report also helps identify and prevent adverse situations from becoming significant issues.

Increase in Workplace Safety Measures

Through incident investigation, you focus on identifying the root causes of the potential issues. Moreover, you also encourage your employees to increase their health and safety morale. Incident investigation helps you teach your employees to become cooperative in implementing safety precautions.

Frequency of Incidents Reduce

The incident investigation provides feedback about the causal factors that became the reason for the accident happening. Addressing these factors allows the company to reduce the frequency of similar incidents occurring in the future.

Incident Reporting Helps You Save Money

When an organization promptly completes incident reporting and investigation, they save a considerable cost. A study conducted in 2001 shows that the expenses of a claim reported five weeks after the injury were about 45% more expensive than the incident reporting. It shows that the incident reporting program is much cheaper than the cost of an incident. Therefore, taking precautionary measures after an accident saves you a lot of money in the long run.

Steps of Accident Investigation

When an accident occurs in the organization, the first step that the management should take is to report the incident to a designated person. The next most important step is to provide first aid to the injured people during the accident. After that, you can ask for the help of the incident investigation team.

Following are a few general steps the incident investigation team performs after the accident.

1. The team assesses the incident scene and makes it safe for further investigation.
2. Interact with the witnesses of the accident and interviews them.
3. Analyze the data gathered from the site and identify the accident’s root cause.
4. Report the findings and give recommendations to prevent the accident from happening.

After the investigation, the organization performs a few actions, which are as follows.

1. The organization develops a plan to take corrective actions in the future
2. Implements the plan made
3. Evaluate the impact of the plan and the corrective actions taken.
4. Ensures that the preventive measures get improved over time.

An essential thing that the organization and the investigation team must understand is that they should not waste much time. After the incident, they should immediately begin an investigation to observe the conditions in the original condition. To begin the investigation, the investigation team must have a few tools, including paper and a pencil, recording devices, a camera, tape measures, etc., in hand.

Bottom Line

The accident investigation courses allow the organizations to comply with their duties of investigating and reporting the incident. Titan University offers Accident Investigation and Reporting course which is best for SSHO, Project Manager, Superintendent working on Government Construction projects.

Moreover, these courses also help the organization identify the root cause of the accident. You can teach the employees about taking preventive measures through the accident investigation courses.

An accident investigation course allows people to perform the accident investigation job professionally. In this course, a person learns about accident investigation policies and procedures. Moreover, they also learn about the treatment of personal injuries using the first aid box. Another thing they learn is the investigation techniques and the OSHA reporting requirements.