Investigating Workplace Incidents: A Step-by-Step Approach
Don’t beat yourself up if an accident happens at your workplace – it happens, and that’s why you have a plan (or are creating one).
When an incident or near-miss happens, your role as employer is to launch an investigation and submit a report (or series of reports) to WorkSafeBC. The goal isn’t to assign blame; instead, it’s to determine why an incident happened and take steps to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.
For some incidents, you are required to launch an investigation immediately. These include:
- Serious injury or death of a worker
- Injury requiring medical treatment
- Potential for serious harm (even if the injury is minor, or there is no injury)
- Psychological trauma
- Fail or collapse of a major structure
- Major release of hazardous substances
- Dangerous incident involving explosives
- Diving incident (defined in the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Regulation)
- Blasting incident causing personal injury
Stages of workplace investigations
There are four stages in workplace investigations, each potentially needing its own report:
- Preliminary investigation. This is when you identify unsafe conditions or behaviours that must be fixed before work can resume safely. This investigation and report must be completed and submitted to WorkSafeBC within 48 hours of the incident.
- Interim corrective actions. From the time the incident happened to the conclusion of the investigation, employers are responsible for taking all actions necessary to prevent the incident from happening again. Corrective actions might include closing the worksite or reassigning workers to other duties. Your conclusions and actions should be captured in a report.
- Full investigation. You must complete the investigation, and submit the accompanying report to WorkSafeBC, within 30 days of the incident. This report should clearly identify the factors that led to the incident.
- Final corrective actions. The last step is preparing a report that describes the unsafe conditions leading to the incident, what corrective action is necessary, and steps you’ll take to implement those actions.
Each of these reports should be shared with your Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) or posted visibly in the workplace. Be sure to leave out any personal details, to protect the privacy of those involved. For less complex incidents, you might not need to submit as many reports.
Submitting Reports
You have several options for submitting your report(s) to WorkSafeBC:
- Online, through the WorkSafeBC reporting tool
- Using WorkSafeBC’s fillable PDF, or your own reporting template, and uploading the report
- Faxing the report to 604.276.3247 (toll-free 1.866.240.1434)
- Mailing the report c/o WorkSafeBC to PO Box 5350 Stn. Terminal, Vancouver, BC V6B 5L5
Workplace incidents may happen and your goal is to reduce them to zero. What matters is learning from the experience and taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again!
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