Despite the best will in the world, there’s been an incident at your workplace. What now?

Ensure all people are safe and if necessary, emergency services called. Then it’s the boring bit.

• If you have not already reported the accident you need to do so. (Internally reported as per your own procedures and in the case of the Regulation; Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR). Don’t forget, in the case of major injuries (and death) the accident must be reported by telephone immediately and then followed up in writing within 10 days. See RIDDOR website.
• Next, you need to invest a couple of hours getting some good understanding of what has occurred. This doesn’t mean downloading information from the internet. While there is no shortage of information about what’s required, you need someone who can interpret it and tell you what this means for you. This can be internal or external depending on the company’s situation. You are really trying to avoid a reoccurrence and keep all concerned safe.
• You need to develop a response and implement it. Depending on your situation, you may be capable of doing this yourself or delegating it to a staff member. Or you may need to get an external person to run it for you.
  When something goes wrong in a workplace the repercussions can be ongoing ; as well as the immediate problem that needs to be resolved, you also need to be mindful that other staff may be distressed and will be judging you as an employer based on your response.

So with your business’ reputation demanding that you respond quickly and appropriately, the logical thing to do is to take advice from someone who’s an expert in the area who also has a firm grasp of where you’re coming from as a business person and an employer.

So in a nutshell:-

1. Ensure all safe
2. If it’s reportable, do it
3. Put in short term measures to start work again
4. Review risk assessment
5. Review long term or medium term controls
6. Accidents are an unplanned, uncontrolled event, so do we try and plan and control our workplace; well we have a duty to do just that.

Be safe

Peter Hodgson