Incident management is one of the key tasks of an EHS Manager. But is this something that you worry about? Does it keep you awake at night?

The consequences of getting it wrong can be very severe….and are usually quite visible ending up with a fine or a court case. It is certain that your directors will want to see evidence that everything was handled correctly. Worse still, how would you feel if there was a serious injury and you knew that it could have been prevented…if only…

This webinar gives practical advice to help you manage incidents better and more easily. It is split into 3 parts:

• firstly Edward Debrah will talk about the theory of incident management;

• then Alison Hinde will give a demo on how the Proactively system can help with easy reporting and automated workflows to let you collect and analyse data efficiently;

• finally we respond to questions from our guests on what matters most in their situations.

If you do not have time to watch the full webinar, there is also a short recording that just covers the demo.

Because incident management is not a paper exercise, at the end of this blog post we look at the devastating impact that incidents have on peoples lives with a real life example from Louise Adamson.

An introduction to Incident Management

Edward Debrah, Chair of IOSH Ghana and founder of ED Consulting, helps companies introduce the right controls to reduce accidents and also to develop effective emergency response plans.

In the first part of this webinar, Edward shares with us a practical approach to what you should be thinking about when designing your incident management systems:

• What causes incidents
• What to do if you have an incident
• How to learn from incidents and stop them happening again

But how can we trust that our systems are working well? How do we know that we are getting all the relevant information about incidents and near misses that we need? It is only with accurate and timely information that we can understand what is causing incidents at our workplace and take the right action to stop them happening again.

Simple digitisation gives you better control

In the second part of the webinar, Alison Hinde, CEO Proactively, leads us through a scenario using Proactively. Tom Jones has had an accident, and we follow through the various stages :

• Incident reporting done quickly, directly from the workplace using the mobile App
• Notifications to find out about incidents and take the necessary actions
• Sending feedback to the reporter, so they know you are listening and care
• Investigation to find the cause, so you can stop similar incidents in the future
• Assigning and tracking actions so you trust that it has been done without having to spend time chasing
• Checking that the action is effective and the area is now safe

This workflow gives good control and follows guidance from ISO systems.

The goal of Continual Improvement

Incident management aims to make the workplace safer and reduce the number of incidents in the future. During the demo we see how realtime data comes into the Proactively dashboard letting you:

• Measure performance – How many incidents happen each month, where and to whom?
• Spot trends – what is making the situation better or worse?
• Identify causes

You may also choose to ask questions giving data on:

• Total number of days lost, which could lead to a cost of incidents
• Number of Recordable / Reportable incidents and Days Away or Lost Time Incidents, which will help with Corporate Reporting, sending information to the regulator and benchmarking against similar organisations.

Resources are always limited, whether it is your time or your budget. It is so important to focus on the right things. Collecting good, accurate information will help you make these decisions in a transparent way. It will give you confidence that you are doing the right things and help you explain your reasoning to others in your organisation (and in the worst case to an insurance company or a regulator).

View the webinar

This first video shows the whole webinar. Thank you to our guests who asked about 20 minutes of thought provoking questions at the end.

However, if you do not have time for the complete webinar, it is certainly worth watching the second video which show just the Proactively demo.

The Proactively demo on Incident Management

The devastation of getting it wrong

I would like to finish this blog post by sharing a video from my friend, Louise Adamson.

Louise tells the story of her brother, Michael, who was an electrician. Michael was just 26 years old, engaged to be married, when he left home one morning and didn’t return. He died in an entirely preventable electrical incident. Louise now makes every effort to increase awareness so that no-one else has to go through the agony that her family suffered. She works with the health and safety charity Scottish Hazards. Find out more at www.michaels-story.net

This story brings back to us the reality that incident prevention is not a paper exercise. It is of extreme importance and the consequences of getting it wrong are devastating.

Please get in touch if you would like to learn more about Incident Management from Edward, or find out how Proactively could help you benefit from simple digitisation in your company.