Accidents and incidents are something we’d rather not be having, they are time consuming, they cause disruption in normal business and of course they can have a massive impact on the person involved, their family, colleagues. It could also have significant impact on the business finances due to the associated hidden costs. But unfortunately, workplace accidents and incidents do occur and are something all employees and employers need to manage. In the UK there was 70,116 employee injuries reported under RIDDOR between 2016/17, however that is just the tip of the iceberg, as the number of injuries which occurred at work was 609,000 according to the Labour Force Survey in the same timeframe. This is not including that “mystery” incident/observation, the “near miss” – something that many companies embrace and use to drive improvements across their business.
Managing Accidents and Incidents
Going back to the process of how companies manage these, a common method for recording accidents and incidents in the workplace is through utilising an accident book or a never ending excel spreadsheet. These require the person(s) managing this to self-prompt or rely on others to self-prompt when the need arises to investigate, review, follow up and importantly take the necessary corrective action on the root cause, plus hopefully reviewing this action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. The result of this can often be that accidents and incidents are miss managed, but not through the want of trying, but through the process that you rely upon as a company. These processes rely on manual steps and human memory intervention and follow up, which comes with its own risks. There are many ways and means to improve this, not least the use of technology.
Many products exist in the marketplace that allow accidents and incidents to be managed and controlled in such a way that employers and employees can feel comfortable that the necessary information is being captured and acted upon. Furthermore, these can provide an auditable trace to any authority that asks, of how an incident was handled
At FQM we use the Mango QHSE Compliance Software solution, which removes the burden through an all-encompassing method of capturing accidents and incidents, including the supporting information which can be uploaded at the touch of a button, after all a picture tells a thousand words in many cases. This web-based software solution benefits from automated notifications going directly to the people that need to know, removing the time delay and information breakdown. The addition of key supporting documents educates the responsible person who determines if a detailed investigation is required and allows the process to be managed through a governed and auditable workflow. Ultimately, this results in clear documented evidence of the root cause and corrective action while maintaining an auditable trail of actions.
Mango QHSE Compliance Software
Mango also has an extensive reporting functionality giving the organisation the ability to run reports on accidents/incidents that have taken place in any given time frame, location, type and so much more. This can aid organisations in identifying trends in accidents/incidents and act to raise awareness to mitigate the potential for future events. The accident/incident module within Mango is customisable to terminology and categories appropriate to any organisation or industry, thus allowing integration with the current reporting methodology. An accident/incident can be raised by any employee either through the desktop web-based portal or on the move through the mango app on a mobile device. The further benefit of utilising Mango in capturing your accidents/incidents is the ability to link to other modules in Mango, for example to view the status/effectiveness of any corrective action raised within the improvement module or any associated risks raised from the event in the risk management module.
If you want to see how technology can help you in the management of your accidents and incidents, please get in touch with FQM Ltd to arrange a demonstration of the capabilities of the Mango QHSE Compliance software.