How To Investigate Workplace Incidents

How to investigate workplace incidents well comes down to refusing to stop at the first answer, which is almost always that somebody made a mistake.

Human error is a starting point, not a finding. Three questions push past it.

Why did that action make sense at the time? People rarely choose the unsafe option knowingly. Usually it was faster, the equipment was elsewhere, or the safe method does not work under real conditions.

What would have had to be true for this to be impossible? This moves you up the hierarchy of control toward elimination.

Has anything similar happened before? If yes, the previous corrective action failed, and that is the more important finding.

Investigations that end at retraining the individual usually recur.

Safe Work Australia publishes the risk management code. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations vary by state and territory.

See Sentrient’s incident reporting software and risk management system.