Published 5 Sep 2023
What is an Employee Incident Report?
An employee incident report is a form that is used to document and report instances of accidents, injuries, illness, property damage, exposure to hazardous substances, and any other incidents that occur in the workplace. It contains crucial information that details major events, especially when employees are involved. This report is also used for recording employee policy violations and misuse of company property.
In this article
- Why Should You Use It to Report An Incident?
- When Should You Use It?
- What is Included in the Form?
- How to Write the Report?
- Employee Incident Reporting App
- Download Free & Customizable Employee Incident Report Templates
Why Should You Use It to Report An Incident?
The number of workers injured in the workplace remains unchanged. Around 2.8 full-time employees per 100 workers are injured for the year 2019 according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS). While OSHA stated that for every 100,000 workers, 3.5 full-time employees died while at work in 2019. 20% of the fatalities came from the construction industry. Employee incident report forms can help lessen these incidents from happening and prevent a person from becoming just another statistic.
Documentation of events such as employee incidents is important to the business and its employees. The employees can utilize the incident report forms to express what happened in their own words and describe the situations surrounding incidents from their perspective. This helps employers gather information that can be used to help prevent similar incidents from occurring and take corrective actions to improve worksite safety.
Having an employee incident report ready can help a business mitigate the costly and negative impact of incidents. Insurance companies require businesses to have an incident audit for insurance claims while regulatory bodies will ensure that the business is complying with health and safety laws.
When Should You Use It?
An employee incident report form should be filled out immediately after the incident. This helps employees recall the events easier and ensures that the details are fresh and properly documented. Also, please note that all employers are required to notify OSHA of incidents within 8 hours if it resulted in fatalities and within 24 hours if it involved hospitalization, amputation, or eye loss.
What is Included in the Form?
An employee incident report form may include specific details that are required by law depending on the worksite location. Stay up to date with industry best practices and specific regulations by regularly checking government websites. OSHA listed down the top 10 safety violations with number 1 being fall protection. The organization’s website includes safety and compliance advisories to lessen these workplace risks that can lead to incidents.
How to Write the Report?
The employee incident report form has to be truthful, detailed, and relevant. Only include information that is important to keep it concise. Here are the steps on how to create your very own employee incident report form.
- Gather employee information such as name, job, date of report, and location.
- Include important reminders such as specific instructions.
- Write your job description.
- Input the date and time of the incident.
- Describe the incident or near miss in detail.
- Disclose whether there were injuries and damages to company property.
- Recall what caused the incident.
- Include pictures of the incident.
- Suggest what actions can prevent future incidents.
- Submit to your manager or supervisor.
Employee Incident Reporting App
Why use SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor)?
Paper-based employee incident forms can take more time to accomplish and have the risk of getting lost in the paper trail. Perform digital safety audits with safety tools such as SafetyCulture. This mobile and web-based application is simple, straightforward, and highly customizable to fit a business’ requirements. With SafetyCulture you can:
- Accomplish employee incident and injury report forms anywhere with just a few taps
- Attach media files such as pictures to help visualize the incident to your supervisor
- Not worry about files not saving because of its secured cloud syncing capabilities
- Organize record-keeping of reports that can be sent as web, PDF, or other file formats
- View analytics and insights that help create corrective action and prevent future incidents from recurring
Download Free & Customizable Employee Incident Report Templates
Near Miss Report
Use this near miss report form to capture a potential hazard or incident that has not resulted in any personal injury or property damage. It can be completed by anyone wishing to report a near miss. The report should capture whether the near miss was a result of an unsafe act, unsafe condition, unsafe equipment or unsafe use of equipment. Using SafetyCulture you can capture photo evidence with annotations of the surrounding environment or persons which led to the near miss being reported. A completed copy of the near miss report can be generated with SafetyCulture on-site and submitted to your relevant safety department. Browse more near miss report templates.
Workplace Incident Report
A workplace incident report is used to record any event in the organization that involves accident, injuries, or property damage. Use this template to document the type of incident that occurs in the workplace including near misses, sentinel events, adverse events, and no harm events. This would help the organization to keep track of the frequent causes of incidents to assess safety improvements in the workplace.
Accident Report Form Checklist
This accident report form is similar to the employee incident report template but includes additional information such as witness statements. This template is divided into more detailed sections including body part injured, nature of injury, equipment used, and asking what was the employee doing prior to the incident.
