9.2 The Business Case for Incident Investigations

Some employers may not realize the benefits of conducting a thorough incident investigation. The Canadian  Center for Occupational Health and Safety suggests the top reasons for conducting incident investigations include:

• most importantly, to find out the cause of incidents and to prevent similar incidents in the future
• to fulfill any legal requirements
• to determine the cost of an incident
• to determine compliance with applicable regulations (e.g., occupational health and safety, criminal, etc.)
• to process workers’ compensation claims
• Root cause discovery and the discovery of contributing factors is a significant reason for conducing an incident investigation. Once an employer identifies the root cause and contributing factors, it may result in training or re-training individuals, policy change, signage, PPE just to name a few. An employee cannot work towards avoiding or minimizing the risk of a similar incident without the identification of the root cause and contributing factors.
• Meeting legal expectations and compliance is essential for every employer. A workplace incident may involve government workplace inspectors and, in some instances, law enforcement.
• Understanding both the direct and indirect costs of a workplace incident allow an organization to justify additional safety measures that will eliminate or reduce these financial costs going forward.
• Employers must ensure they have gathered the correct information needed to accurately report workplace incidents to Workers Compensation in a timely manner.^[1]