Observations and incidents

Observations

An observation is a report of a safety or a near-miss event as witnessed by an employee. When an observation is reported, the safety administrator or facility-safety manager must evaluate it and either generate it into an incident or close it.

The Employee Observations Log displays observations that you have reported. You can edit records that are in New status. If a record has been promoted beyond New status, you can edit it only if you have been assigned to investigate it. You can also use the Employee Observations Log to find observations for which your input is requested. An investigator may ask you to complete an input request during the process of determining whether an observation should generate an incident.

Incidents

An incident is an observation record that has been generated as a safety incident or a near-miss incident. Incidents contain information about employees and non-employees who were injured or impacted by an incident. The information in an incident record is used for OSHA reports and for other, non-regulatory reports.

As an employee, you might be assigned to perform follow-up tasks to address the cause of an incident.

Investigations

When an employee is assigned to investigate an observation, a notification is sent to that employee. The Employee Investigation Log lists all safety records that have been assigned to an employee to investigate.