Observation and incident reporting

Observations are reports of safety or near-miss accounts as witnessed by an employee. When an observation is reported, the Safety Administrator or Facility Safety Manager must evaluate it. They convert the observation to an incident or they close it.

Incidents are observation records that have been closed or validated by a Safety Admin or Facility Safety Manager. Validated observations are generated as a safety incident or near-miss incident. The process to complete the incident record includes reporting information about injuries or impacts to employees and non-employees. OSHA and for non-regulatory reports also require the incident date and time, location, follow-up tasks, and cause assessment.

We refer to safety and near-miss observations collectively as "observations".

We refer to safety and near-miss incidents collectively as "incidents".

Near misses

Near misses are situations or events that did not cause harm to people. They are instances that may recur in the future and cause possible injuries if they are not prevented. For example, a near miss can be reported if an employee did not wear safety goggles, or if unsafe practices were used when operating machinery. The user interface for near misses is similar to that displayed for safety incidents.

Investigations

Any employee can be assigned to investigate an observation or incident report. Assignments are made by a Safety Administrator or Facility Safety Manager.

  • The aim of investigating an observation is to determine whether it should be elevated to an incident. An investigator can report findings and recommendations about the assigned observation but cannot edit the information that was entered by the original reporter.
  • The aim of investigating an incident is to determine the causes and to assign corrective and follow-up tasks. An investigator has full access to update any details of a safety-incident record. Investigators can request more observations, create employee and non-employee cases, and more.

Investigators can close the observation or incident during a session in which they are signed in as Employee.