Last updated 09/12/2021.
What is an incident report
An incident report is a formal recording of the facts related to a workplace accident, injury, or near-miss. Its primary purpose is to uncover the circumstances and conditions that led to the event in order to prevent future incidents.
Incident reports can be logged in both the Groundleader mobile app and the main website. Incidents are best reported as soon as possible after they happen while the details are still fresh in the reporter’s mind. Logged incidents are followed up by a user in the administrator role who should determine any action necessary to prevent the same incident happening again. Once the required action has been taken the incident can be marked as resolved.
Logging an incident
Using the main Groundleader website
The incident reporting page is reached by selecting the ‘Incident reporting’ button in the ‘Staff & Subbies’ section of the main menu. This page lists all existing incident reports, new reports can be created by selecting the ‘Create incident report’ button.
For reasons of integrity an incident report cannot be edited once it has been saved. Users in the administrator role will be given the option to follow-up a report as soon as it is saved. How to follow-up a report is explained later in this document.
Using the mobile app
Incidents can be logged in the Groundleader mobile app by selecting the ‘Log an incident’ button in the apps main select team page. It is possible to take photos as part of the incident report if desired. If the app has no internet connection an incident report can still be logged, it will be stored the next time the app is ‘synched’ with the Groundleader server.
Incident categories
When following up an incident report it needs to be properly categorised. Each report needs to be linked to one or more ‘broad categories’, an ‘activity’ and an ‘incident type’.
Broad category: Each incident report must be set to at least one of the three possible broad categories: safety, quality and environmental.
Activity: Each incident must be linked to one activity, for example cutting grass or spraying.
Incident Type: Each incident must be linked to one incident type, the options to choose from will change depending on the currently selected broad category and incident type. For example, a safety incident with the grass cutting activity could have ‘manual handling’ as the incident type, a quality grass cutting incident could have ‘damage to property’ as the incident type.
Manage incident types and activities
Groundleader includes many default incident types and activities to use when following up incidents. It is possible to add more or edit the existing ones if required. The page for managing activities and activity types can be reached by selecting the ‘Manage incident types/activities’ button near the top of the incident reporting page.
This page lists all the currently stored incident types, a new incident type can be added by selecting the ‘New incident type’ button. An existing incident type can be edited by selecting it from the list.
Incident type form
Each incident type needs the following:
- A unique name.
- To be set to one of the broad categories (safety, quality or environmental)
- To be set to all incident activities the type applies to, at least one.
Incident activities
Stored incident activities are shown by selecting the ‘Manage incident activities’ button near the top of the incident types and activities page. Existing activities can be edited, and new ones can be added. Each activity only needs to have a name set.
Following up an incident
Incident reports go through three stages between being created and being resolved, the status of each incident is shown in the table on the incident reporting page.
New: This incident report has been logged but has not yet been followed up.
Unresolved: The incident report has been followed up but has not been resolved.
Resolved: The incident has been resolved.
Incident reports need to be followed up to see what action needs to be taken to prevent it from happening again. Only users in the administrator role can follow up or set an incident report as resolved.
A ‘new’ incident report is followed up by selecting it from the list and filling out the required fields.
The original report details are shown at the top of the page while it is followed up.
One or more broad categories should be selected as applicable to the incident.
If the safety broad category is selected the ‘safety severity’ also needs to be set. If the quality or environmental broad category is selected, the ‘fail severity’ needs to be set. These severity ratings are used when running reports on followed up incident reports to show how many of each severity are raised each year.
The incident types available to select depend on the selected broad category and activity. Managing incident types and activities has already been covered in this document.
The ‘alerted by’ input is for setting how the incident was raised.
If the incident report is in anyway linked to a customer currently stored in Groundleader their name or ID can be entered here.
Action importance, urgency, and difficulty. These fields should be set with respect to how important, urgent, and difficult it will be to perform the actions required to resolve this incident. Theses three values are multiplied together to give each incident a priority rating. Unresolved incidents in the list on this page are ordered by this priority value.
Customer and staff feedback dates can be set if appropriate.
Selecting the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the form will update the incident with the entered ‘follow up’ details.
Resolving an incident
When all the actions required to resolve an incident have been carried out it should be set to resolved.
To resolve an incident, it should be selected from the list on this page. The follow up information should be checked to be filled out correctly and the resolved date entered. Having the resolved date filled in is what lets Groundleader know the incident has been resolved.
Run reports on your reports
Groundleader can produce reports in spreadsheet form showing how many incidents of each severity type were raised each year. These reports are downloaded by selecting the ‘Reporting’ button near the top of the incident reporting page. There is a downloadable report for each broad category (safety, quality and environmental).