5.3 Who Investigates Workplace Incidents?

Who investigates an incident is a particularly important question. The lead investigator should be someone with investigative experience, knowledge of the work and work processes, and an understanding of how incidents are caused. Many workplaces will task a senior health and safety official or senior manager with managing incident investigations. No one should investigate an incident alone, and other people should be selected to assist, to provide different perspectives, and to divide the workload. Other possible participants should include joint health and safety committee members or some other worker representative, people linked to the work that had been performed, and, in most cases, the direct supervisor of the work (although there are cases when inclusion of the supervisor may not be appropriate). Union agreements often stipulate that a union steward or representative participate in incident investigations. Anyone who is identified as an investigator should be properly trained beforehand.

“Incident Investigation” in Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces by Jason Foster and Bob Barneston, published by AU Press is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, unless otherwise noted.