When they do, it’s important to have a well-defined incident management process in place. 

Health and safety incident management is the process of identifying, preventing, responding to, recording, and analysing incidents in the workplace. A robust incident management process can help to reduce the number of accidents, minimise the impact of accidents that occur, and learn from past incidents to prevent them from happening again. 

There are six key steps in the incident management process: 

1. Preparation: Ensure that the organisation can comprehensively respond to an incident at a moment’s notice. This includes having a clear incident management plan in place, as well as training employees on how to report and respond to incidents.
2. Identification: Identify that an incident has occurred. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to be aware of the signs of an incident, such as injuries, property damage, or environmental hazards. 
3. Containment: Contain the incident. This means taking steps to prevent the incident from spreading or causing further damage. For example, if an accident has caused a fire, the priority would be to extinguish the fire. 
4. Eradication: Eradicate the incident. This means taking steps to remove the cause of the incident and prevent it from recurring. For example, if an accident was caused by a faulty piece of equipment, the equipment would need to be repaired or replaced. 
5. Recovery: Recover from the incident. This means taking steps to get the workplace back to normal, such as repairing damage and cleaning up. 
6. Lessons learned: The final step in the incident management process is to learn from the incident. This means analysing the incident to determine what went wrong and how it can be prevented from recurring.

Additional tips for effective health and safety incident management: 

• Ensure that everyone in the organisation knows about the incident management plan and how to report incidents. 
• Create a culture of safety where employees feel comfortable reporting incidents, however minor. 
• Invest in training for employees on how to identify and respond to hazards. 
• Use technology to automate the incident management process and make it easier to track and report on incidents. 

• Review the incident management plan regularly and make changes as needed. 

Health and safety incident management is an essential part of any workplace. By having a well-defined incident management process in place, you can help to protect employees, property, and the environment. 

The iProtectU health and safety software provides: 

• An inspection and Audit App which allows for safety inspection of the workplace and associated report 
• eLearning on incident management 

• Scheduling functionality for managers to send eLearning, risk assessments and documents out to all staff via the software with tracks completion and compliance 
• Risk assessment templates covering a multitude of subjects 
• Management system to document control the policy on incident management 
• Method Statement module for the creation of work activity working instructions 
• Legal register that provides legislation guidance on incident management 

• Incident investigation module that tracks incidents both with an app and via desktop 
• Hazard observation app where staff can report and record any concerns to the organisation 
• Asset management App ensuring assets are recorded in the software