Does Your Incident Reporting Software Fail To Improve Safety?

By Author: incidentreportt
Total Articles: 12
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Every OHS Manager has an incident reporting system in place - the law demands it. But really, what difference is it making to your workplace safety?
The fact is that most incident reporting software is little more than a method of recording and storing incidents. An incident reporting system becomes truly useful as an OHS management tool only when it has the ability to actually improve safety practices. When your incident reporting software has inbuilt features that mandate safety-related changes within the workplace as part of it operational procedures, your system becomes proactive, rather just reactive.

What does a proactive system look like?

Your incident reporting software should provide you with more than the ability to report, record and track all incidents. It should enable you to reduce all risks associated with each incident. In order to achieve this, your incident reporting software will need to have the following features.

Automatic email distribution to keep all relevant people in the loop throughout the incident reporting cycle

Mandatory investigative features that assign investigators ...
... to determine the root cause

Mandatory corrective actions that ensure that the root cause is corrected before the incident reporting cycle is closed

Comprehensive graphical reports for all related statistics that enable you to view and understand vital information quickly

Online functionality to ensure ease of reporting across companies of any size and geographical spread

The safety goal of your incident reporting software

Reduce workplace risk. Nothing more. All other goals of your incident reporting software will be procedure based. While improving your reporting procedure is vital to a reliable and effective system, it is important for OHS Managers to separate procedural functionality from the software features that enable it to create a safer working environment.

It is very easy when considering software to make a purchasing decision based on ease of functionality, but at the end of the day it is the OHS Manager's role to implement systems and procedures that actively improve their employee's safety.

So where to now?
There aren't a lot of incident reporting software options on the market but what is out there is generally of a high quality. It is important to do the research in order to find the solution that best meets the needs of your particular organisation. Just keep in mind that what you are looking for is a solution that enables you to improve the safety of your workplace.

Try a Google search with the keywords, OHS incident reporting or OHS online incident reporting and you should find the results you're looking for.

Every company is different - different organisational structure, different safety-related language. Make sure your Incident report or Risk Management Systems provides the ability to customise to your company's specifics.