Accident Investigations

An important part of the reporting process is accident/injury investigation. When an employee experiences an accident, no matter how minor, the company is being told that something in the Loss Control Program is weak and initiative must be taken to correct this weakness before a serious accident occurs.

What Is An Accident?

An accident is an unplanned (nobody wants to get hurt); uncontrolled (once you’ve had the accident, there is not much you can do to control the end results); and unexpected (if you expected to get hurt doing something, you wouldn’t do it) event that causes damage, injury, waste or inefficiency.

Why Investigate Accidents?

We investigate accidents to find the cause, not to fix the blame. If we know what really caused or contributed to causing the accident, we may be able to prevent it from happening again. Also, if the injured person knows he or she caused or contributed to causing the accident, then they probably won’t do the same thing again.

Be sure to check out the Supervisor’s Guide to Accident Investigation