Incident Management vs Incident Reporting: Building a Complete Safety Flow

A few minutes may be enough to report an incident, but what happens afterwards is what determines whether an organisation learns from it. Reporting documents what happened, while incident management covers the investigation, corrective action, follow-up and prevention.

Key Takeaways

• Incident reporting records an event, while incident management covers the wider response, from assessment and investigation through to corrective action and closure.
• Centralised incident management software can reduce duplicate records and make follow-up easier.
• The decisions that are made under RIDDOR should be based on up to date HSE guidance rather than software.
• An effective workflow makes it easy for employees to report incidents and clear for managers what to do next.

What's the difference between incident reporting and incident management?

Incident reporting is the act of recording an incident, while incident management is how an organisation responds, investigates, and learns from an incident. Reporting is thus a part of an incident management process.

Relevant information includes the location, time, participants and events of the incident. This information is the first step to getting to the next stage.

Examples of items that can be part of incident management include:

• First response and risk reduction.
• Investigating and gathering evidence.
• Root-cause analysis.
• Corrective and preventive actions.
• Responsibility and deadlines.
• Management review and lessons learnt.
• Complete any required regulatory reporting.
• Trend and closure analysis.