Preparing for incidents:
While nobody likes to think about the possibility of workplace safety incidents, it is nonetheless essential that companies prepare sufficiently for them. How can we define safety incidents? Usually, a safety incident is an unplanned event that disrupts normal business operations. When a workplace safety incident, environmental incident, or health incident does occur, incident investigations must follow to determine the facts of the incident, identify root causes, and implement corrective actions that reduce risk. These aforementioned details must be clearly laid-out in incident reports. A failure to plan for incident management can result in serious legal difficulties due to non-compliance.
While incident management and implementing occupational safety can seem overwhelming, utilizing safety management software and incident reporting software can make this easier. Using this technology can result in streamlined workflows, better managing safety incident data collection (to create a total recordable incident rate), and implementing preventive actions before a workplace incident.
What is Safety Incident Management Software?
Incident management software and incident reporting software are software solutions that make incident management easier at workplaces. With this type of software and with the aid of an incident management program, companies can manage incidents, report incidents (as well as classify them by type), gather incident data, view historical incident reports, and produce incident reports. It should be noted that whenever workplace incidents or work-related injuries do occur, companies are required to undergo an incident reporting process (as per regulatory requirements).
As mentioned, this process includes gathering incident data, managing incident reports, and implementing corrective actions. Importantly, once these corrective actions are implemented, companies must track corrective actions to solve the designated problems.
However, incident management software brings far more benefits than just producing an incident report or aiding data collection. With incident reporting software, your company can truly benefit from root cause analysis and timely alerts; with features such as these, your organization can stop potential incidents and control hazards before they occur. We will discuss these benefits below, but let’s first discuss the types of incident reporting software.
Different Types of Safety Incident Management Software
There are many EHS incident management software types, but we will only briefly mention four of them. First, safety audit software is an incident reporting software that helps organizations conduct audits and ensure that any inspections meet the legal requirements. The second type of incident reporting software is titled OHS safety management software. This software helps businesses comply with health and safety requirements and can serve as the foundation for implementing a health and safety program at the company.
The third type of software is incidents reporting software; this type of software allows employees to register incidents and provide incident details to create an incident report wherever they are. Finally, injury management software is an incident management solution vital for assisting injured employees to recover. This ensures a speedier return to work for the employee and the sharing of essential information between management, stakeholders, and insurers.
Now that we have discussed the different types of incident reporting software, we can discuss how this software can benefit your company.
Key Benefits of Using Software for Reporting Safety Incidents
Effortless Compliance
It is no mystery that compliance with state and federal regulations can be a nightmare. Compliance management, however, no longer has to be viewed like this with incident reporting software. Most software solutions will have up-to-date compliance within their workflow. Additionally, EHS incident management software will automatically determine whether any inputted EHS incident data is OSHA reportable. Should EHS incidents be reported to OSHA, incident software can generate the required OSHA logs in seconds.
Stop Incidents Before They Happen
Preventing EHS incidents before they occur is a top priority for most organizations. However, identifying risks and hazards is far more straightforward with incident reporting software. Incident software can spot and detail potential risks in minutes instead of hours or even days.
Additionally, incident software can also be used for root cause analysis when a workplace incident does occur. Root cause analysis is best understood as a methodology for identifying the root causes (or core reasons) of an incident instead of mere contributing or proximate causes. With root cause analysis, you can ensure that your company will identify the most critical causes of incidents or near misses, thereby preventing future incidents before they occur.
No Need to Worry About Liability
Should your organization fail to investigate incidents or near misses in a timely or fair manner, you might be forced to pay fines imposed by regulatory bodies. Your organization will no longer need to worry about liability with incident software, however. Each incident report will contain a detailed timeline of when the incident occurred, the incident type, how it was resolved/reported, and the preventive actions taken to ensure continued safety performance. All of this data will be stored and retrieved effortlessly, thereby minimizing the risk of liability.
Stay Organized And Solve Problems Faster
A crucial feature of incident software is its centralized system of data sharing and management. When an incident does occur, the amount of data required to construct an incident report is substantial. In the absence of a centralized platform, incident reporting will take longer than necessary. With incident reporting software, all your users will have access to the reporting process, meaning that collaboration between departments (often in multiple locations) needed to formulate incident reports is seamless and effortless. Thus, a centralized platform for sharing necessary information can solve incident reporting faster.
Enhanced Productivity
A centralized platform for data-sharing increases employee productivity as vital information can be shared quickly, therefore resolving tasks faster. However, because so much time is saved with a centralized platform, employees can quickly focus on revenue-producing tasks instead of simply spending hours searching for information for accident and incident reporting.
Develop the Relation of Trust with Your Team
Cultivating and developing the trust of your team takes time and a considerable amount of work. One way to ensure continuous improvement in trust development is by instituting a robust health administration/health and safety program at the workplace. When this program is supported by incident reporting software, you can prioritize the safety of the team. Not only does this software make reporting and resolving incidents easier, with such features as root cause analysis, but your team can also be further assured that accidents or personal injury will not occur again.
How Much Does incident Management Software Cost?
The cost of incident software is usually priced on a per user per month basis. Here are the following price ranges: $5-$8 per user/month; $8-$17 per user/month; and $17+ per user/month.
Which incident management tool/solution is right for your company?
When purchasing this type of software, there are several considerations your company must keep in mind. Firstly, whichever software solution you are buying, it is vital to integrate the software with existing software solutions. Secondly, always keep the end-user(s) in mind! If the purchased technology is cumbersome or difficult to use, employee uptake will be slow; consequently, your company will not reap the full benefits of incident reporting software!
What Features Can You Expect In an Incident Reporting and Management Software?
Report incidents
In addition to reporting EHS incidents, management and employees can use incident reporting software to classify incident types. Incident types include environmental incidents, vehicle incidents/vehicle accidents, and near misses. In the case of vehicle accidents/vehicle incidents, employees can upload pictures of the affected vehicles by using their mobile devices. Conveniently, businesses can also add their own custom reporting fields. When a company gathers enough data, it can track incidents and incident rates more effectively. With this data on hand, organizations can also take proactive steps to reduce operational risk.
As employees will use a mobile device will upload safety incident data, employees can input data wherever they are! Even if your employees do not have an internet connection, they can input data for it to be uploaded when they have an internet connection.
Automated Workflow
Businesses can also use incident reporting software to automate incident management workflows. Essentially, this means that your organization will have an automated and pre-set structure for resolving safety incidents when they do occur. Automated workflow saves time, as the right person will be quickly assigned the required tasks; automated workflow also enables the escalation of serious incidents. Whether the incident is serious or not, automated workflow ensures that the right people will be informed at the right time.
Timely Alerts
Relevant employees throughout the entire organization will receive automatic notifications about new safety incidents that require subsequent investigation. With instant notifications, your company will never fall behind on the vital work of incident investigations and follow-up preventive actions. In addition, as employees complete more tasks, management will be automatically notified. Again, this contributes to ensuring that no deadlines are missed, and that necessary safety management tasks are being completed.
Real-Time View
Management, employees, and other internal stakeholders will have a real-time view of the entire incident management process. From the moment an incident is reported, stakeholders can see how the incident is being managed, how the incident will be resolved, and monitor how follow-up preventive actions will reduce risk and promote safe behaviors in the workplace. Additionally, management and stakeholders are granted robust analytics features, such as dashboards. With these dashboards, safety performance and indicators are closely monitored by management; as a result, safety professionals can quickly address any lagging indicators.
Wrapping Up!
While there are many incident management software options, one organization your company should consult with is the NonStop Group, a market leader in the field of incident reporting software.
Consult with the NonStop Group:
The NonStop Group has a wealth of experience in helping clients involved in the oil & gas industry, manufacturing, transportation, and logistics industry. When the NonStop Group have helped their clients in the oil and gas industry, operational accidents were lowered by 76%, a testiment to how software can improve safety outcomes at your company. Should you want these results at your company, be sure to contact the NonStop Group today!
