Workplace injuries are more common than many businesses realize, let alone anticipate. In fact, the International Labour Organization reports over 374 million work-related injuries each year (while nearly 3 million workers die from said accidents), all leading to lost productivity and potential legal complications for businesses.
The worst part is, if you mishandle an incident—whether it’s a minor slip or a serious injury—your company can suffer consequences beyond medical bills. Namely, workers who feel their safety isn’t a priority at their workplace are not likely to remain engaged and productive nor loyal to your company.
Likewise, unclear (or poorly executed) HR protocols can result all kinds of bad things for your business, including compliance violations, workers’ compensation disputes, and ultimately, reputational damage.
While no business wants to deal with lawsuits, regulatory fines, or employee turnover caused by a safety incident, it’s important to understand workplace accidents are often an inevitable part of some professions. Thankfully, dealing with it all can be simple and efficient if you have a well-structured response plan.
Here’s how to ensure your business is ready to respond effectively when incidents do occur.
Understanding Workplace Accidents vs. Incidents
Let’s get one thing clear (or at least clearer) first: what’s the difference between an accident and an incident?
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA):
- Accident: An unplanned event that results in injury, illness, or property damage.
- Incident: An unplanned event that had the potential to cause harm but didn’t.
As you can see, these two terms differ, but it’s obvious why they’re often treated interchangeably when businesses are establishing response protocols. We do the same in this post, for practical purposes. Besides, whether an event leads to injury or is a close call, what’s important is handling it properly so you can prevent future occurrences.
Steps-by-Step Guide on How to Handle Workplace Incidents Effectively
Develop and Communicate Clear Safety Policies
You want to start with a strong safety policy; but definitely don’t stop there. You also need to ensure employees actually understand and follow it.
How do you ensure this? With a clear policy that outlines the following things:
- General workplace safety expectations,
- Reporting procedures for accidents and near-misses,
- Emergency response steps,
- Specific guidelines tailored to high-risk job roles.
Another crucial step is to make safety policies a part of your onboarding. Likewise, you should conduct periodic training and ensure any updates are communicated promptly and clearly.
Establish an Emergency Response Plan
No one wants a workplace accident, but since they’re sometimes impossible to prevent (humans are not robots; besides, even robots make mistakes), you and your employees have to know exactly what to do.
Your emergency response plan should include:
- Designated emergency contacts: You should have a list of internal safety officers and external emergency responders.
- Immediate first aid procedures: Ideally, all employees should be trained in first aid, but if not, they should know who is trained so they know who to turn to. Also, everyone should know where medical supplies are located.
- Evacuation routes and meeting points: It’s absolutely essential for the workplace to have clearly marked exits and gathering areas for emergency situations.
- Incident reporting process: Finally, employees should understand when, how, and to whom they should report an incident.
We already mentioned the importance of periodic training, and we’d like to underline it again here. Regular drills and refresher training are crucial if you want the above-outlined steps to become your workforce’s second nature.
Provide Immediate Medical Attention and Secure the Area
If an accident has resulted in a serious injury – in fact, even if it seems like a minor one – it’s important to provide medical attention.
- For more serious injuries, it’s critical to call emergency services immediately.
- For minor injuries, you can administer first aid (or someone designated for this task) and then see whether further medical attention is necessary.
- You should also secure the accident site to prevent additional hazards and document the scene with photos if necessary.
Even if a non-serious incident occurs, we highly recommend advising your employees to report it. This is the only way to become aware of potential workplace hazards and have a chance are preventing future accidents.
Conduct a Detailed Incident Report
Speaking of reports, you want to make sure they’re thorough – not only will this help prevent future incidents, but it will also provide documentation in case of legal or insurance claims.
So what should your report include?
- Date, time, and location of the incident,
- Names of those involved and any witnesses,
- Detailed description of what happened,
- Any equipment or environmental factors that contributed,
- Actions taken immediately after the incident.
We also recommend having a standardized reporting set in place so you can simplify the process as well as ensure no critical details are ever missed.
File a Workers’ Compensation Claim (If Applicable)
What happens if an injury results in medical expenses or lost work time for your worker? In that case, you should assist them in filing a workers’ compensation claim. This process involves:
- Providing the employee with necessary claim forms,
- Gathering all supporting documentation (incident report, medical evaluations, witness statements),
- Submitting the claim to your insurance provider promptly.
We strongly recommend helping your injured employee file a claim here because – in addition to it simply being the right thing to do – if you don’t, your business can suffer serious legal complications and fines.
Conduct a Root Cause Investigation
While documenting and reporting an accident is vital, you also need to understand why said accident happened in the first place so similar things don’t occur in the future.
Consider:
- Work Environment Factors: Was there poor lighting, clutter, or faulty equipment?
- Procedural Issues: Were safety protocols ignored or unclear?
- Human Factors: Was fatigue, distraction, or improper training involved?
Once you’ve gained these important insights, you can proceed to the next step…
Implement Corrective and Preventive Actions
Understanding the cause of the incident is the first step toward making your workplace safer. The next thing to do is:
- Revise safety protocols if gaps are identified.
- Provide additional employee training if the issue stemmed from human error.
- Upgrade equipment or modify workspaces to eliminate hazards.
- Encourage employees to report near-misses to proactively address risks.
Maintain Transparent Communication with Employees
Even when you do everything right, you need to make sure you’re employees are aware their safety is taken seriously. This can only be done with open communication:
- Update the affected employee on the progress of their case
- Share findings from the investigation (without breaching confidentiality)
- Reinforce key safety messages in meetings and training sessions
Regularly Review and Update Safety Policies
Finally, since workplace safety is always changing – new risks are bound to emerge as industries evolve – it’s important to regularly review and update your policies to ensure they stay relevant.
Equally important is engaging your employees in this process by encouraging feedback. After all, who can get you more accurate insight into potential safety improvements than your workers?
To read more content like this, explore The Brand Hopper
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