How to report an incident: What does good incident reporting look like?

When it comes to incidents, a common misconception is that you need to report incidents to HazardCo immediately. This is not the case. Reporting to HazardCo can often happen later once details of the incident have been established. The only time an incident should be reported immediately is when it falls under the criteria of being a notifiable incident, which means it needs to be reported to the Regulator (WorkSafe/SafeWork). 

The HazardCo Safety Advisory team assesses all incidents that get reported via the ‘Report an Incident’ function on the HazardCo App. If the incident is notifiable to the Regulator, we will contact you to provide support, determine further details and ensure that the appropriate steps have been taken. 

Reporting an incident on the HazardCo App

1. Go to ‘Report an Incident’ on the HazardCo App to create a new record
2. Select the site location where the incident occurred 
3. Select the date that the incident occurred on
4. List the people that were involved in the incident
5. Select the type of incident (near miss, injury, illness, other, incident)
6. Select the treatment received (first aid, medical centre, hospital, unsure, none)
7. Describe what happened: This is where you enter initial information about the incident. List the facts that are known so far. Such as :
   • what job or activity was being performed at the time. 
   • What plant, equipment or tools were being used
   • What went wrong
   • What was the injury or damage (or the potential)
   • What happened immediately after the incident

Below is an example of an incident report that could be improved upon and what good reporting looks like.

Initial incident report Description
Geoff hurt his leg. 

What’s wrong with it?
This tells us nothing about Geoff’s injury, how he is or how it happened.

What does good reporting look like
Geoff hurt his leg whilst carrying timber planks around the site by himself. The load he was carrying was awkward and there were star pickets uncapped near where he was walking. Geoff scraped his leg on one of the uncapped start pickets and dropped the timber. He suffered a graze to the back of his right leg. Geoff was checked over by Bob, a first aider. The grace was cleaned and a band-aid was applied to his graze. Geoff rested for a few minutes and was able to return to work.

What’s good about it?
See how good reporting tells us everything that we need to know about the incident, only includes the facts, and can still be done in a quick and easy way. The summary provided key information such as:

• What Geoff was doing prior/during the incident
• What went wrong 
• What injury was sustained
• What occured after the incident and if applicable, what the treatment was

Need Help?
Reach out to HazardCo and speak to one of our expert Health and Safety Advisors if you have any questions or need support for incidents or near misses on your site. You can contact us on 1800 954 702.