Slips, Trips, and Falls: Even a Minor Accident Needs Reporting

Incident reporting for every little thing can certainly seem like a tedious task. While no one will deny the importance of making sure major injuries are documented, when it comes to minor incidents that don’t seem to result in any injury, all that paperwork feels like a waste of time.

This is often the case when it comes to slips, trips and falls at the workplace. Yet the truth is that incident reporting for slips, trips and falls, even those that leave workers looking and feeling fine, is just as important as when there’s a major injury.

Why Injury-Free Incidents Need Reporting

Around 25,000 of slips, trips, and fall accidents occur in the US every day according to the National Safety Council, with a high potential for major injury. But just because one worker slips or trips and somehow avoids hurting themselves doesn’t mean the next employee will be so lucky. That’s where incident reporting of slips, trips and falls come into play, even when there aren’t any injuries.

Manufacturing safety managers have a lot on their plates at every given moment. Unless they’re constantly walking the production floor they can’t possibly spot every slip-and-fall hazard out there, and that means that it’s often only until an incident report is filed that managers become aware of a possible problem.

Identifying areas or situations that led to a slip or a trip in the past paves the way for managers to take steps to rectify the problem, thus preventing further incidents in the future. This not only prevents additional accidents but reduces the chances of a worker suffering serious injury next time.

Protecting Your Business — And Your Workers

Meanwhile, there’s another reason why incident reporting is co crucial when it comes to slips, trips and falls. Incident reports are vital support documentation when it comes to making liability or workers’ compensation claims, as the details recorded in these incident reports are often used as evidence in the decision to pay out on these claims.

This protects a company’s interests in that it reduces workers claiming to have been injured severely on the job when, in fact, injuries were minor. It can also stand as a record of any contributory negligence on the part of an employee when it comes to responsibility for slips, trips and falls.

Conversely, it also helps to protect the rights of workers who legitimately suffered injuries through no fault of their own and who might desperately need the support that workers’ compensation claims can provide.

Reporting Slips, Trips, and Injuries with Incident Management Software

Slips, trips, and injuries happen even in the best environments. Mistakes happen. In some cases, there is no way to prevent these risks from occurring. However, a simple slip can be made much worse if your company does not properly report it and look for ways to avoid similar incidents in the future. That’s a lost opportunity. 

Incident management software can make it much easier for the organization to learn from each incident. It provides you with a foolproof solution for documenting what occurred so that you can move past the risk and learn from it.

What Are The Benefits of Incident Reporting Software?

This easy-to-use solution gives you the best possible avenue for not just gathering information, but creating an incident report that's comprehensive. Incident management software can offer numerous benefits including:

• Helping you through your own incident investigation to ensure all information is made available, organized and understood
  
  
• Creating the requirement to investigate based on the severity of the incident
  
  
• Helping you gather and store all relevant documentation and data in one place
  
  
• Allowing for the reporting of relevant investigative findings and associated details
  
  
• Providing a mechanism for the identification and assignment of corrective actions

Any type of business can benefit from the investment in this type of safety incident reporting software. The reasons are clear. As a business, you need to document all types of slips, trips, and falls whether they happen with your employees or your customers. More so, you need to meet all requirements for workers' compensation, insurance plans, and state laws. This differs from one state to the next as well as one industry to the next. Even if you have never had an incident at your location, you need effective software on hand to help you to minimize the risk of missing important data.

With the help of this type of software, your business can effectively:

• Determine what happened
  
  
• Loop in all management and involved personnel
  
  
• Create a detailed report of the findings
  
  
• Ensure all insurance companies and involved parties have the documentation necessary
  
  
• Determine the root causes
  
  
• Create safety solutions to minimize the likelihood of these types of workplace accidents happening in the future

Ultimately, as a safety professional, you want to take every step possible to reduce the number of incidents that happen on your property. With incident reporting software, you'll have the tools to gather information, store them, and use them to make better decisions in the future. It can pay for itself quickly by helping you to prevent future incidents.

Building a Safer Workplace

Incident reporting is an important facet of workplace safety. Even in instances where slips, trips, and falls don’t lead to any discernible injuries, these incidents need to be recorded to provide an avenue for improving safety in the future, to protect a company’s best interests, and to ensure that workers who are fairly entitled to compensation receive what they need in the event of an injury.