Intelex, a company specializing in the development of EHS and quality software, recently published an insight report entitled “The Five Things you Need to Know about Incident Management and Reporting“.  The report provides information on the legal obligations to report serious injuries and fatalities, best practices for incident reporting and management, and how incident reporting and management can be linked to operational excellence.

In the introduction of the report, the cause of the Titanic disaster is discussed.  It report states that the average person would cite an iceberg as the cause of the ship’s sinking.  In contrast, a risk or safety manager would respond that the tragedy was caused by a series of events – management failures, poor-quality construction, employee errors/lack of training, poor planning, and either the failure to track incidents or the inability to analyze incident data in a meaningful way – that ended with the sinking of the ship.

EHS incidents can be painful for injured employees, the environment, and an organization’s bottom line, but incident management and reporting doesn’t have to be a pain point if done correctly.