An incident report is a form to document all workplace illnesses, injuries, near misses and accidents. An incident report should be completed at the time an incident occurs no matter how minor an injury is.
Any illness or injury that impacts an employee’s ability to work must be noted. The specifics of what is required by law to be included in an incident report will vary depending on the federal or provincial legislation that affects your workplace.
To lodge an incident report:
There is a ready-made form by the HR department for incident reports. All you have to do is fill up the form with the necessary details, fully explaining how and why the incident happened. The reporter must not leave any details behind. Every single detail must be hashed and said to avoid any confusions.
The form contains the following:
- Name of the reporter – name of the person reporting the incident.
- Position – the position of the reporter of the incident.
- Department – the department the reporter belongs to.
- Name of the concerned employee – the employee in question or the employee involved in the incident.
- Position – the position of the employee being reported.
- Department – the department in which the employee belongs to.
- Date of incident – the date the incident happened.
- Time of incident – the time the incident happened.
- Location – the location where the incident took place.
- Incident details – how the incident happened, the factors leading to the event, and what took place during the incident.
- Attachment – proof of the incident that has occurred.
- Date submitted – the date the incident report has been submitted.
Refer to the form through this link: https://hoit-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/ersonc_houseofit_com_au/EmmURqgAItpEuTvFoF3jXggBgR67yk1H2iMf_JQ8HY2qtg?e=G1UmnV
Since the employee relations part of human resources focuses on discipline and disciplinary actions, the process is as follows:
- To start disciplinary procedures, the HR department receives incident reports from team leaders/department heads in Freshdesk or if they cannot lodge a ticket, the department heads or team leaders provide insight to the HR department and from there the HR starts the disciplinary action procedure. This is only applicable to problems which cannot be solved directly by ready-made articles or sensible solutions in Freshdesk.
- If the tickets are lodged through Freshdesk, TLs or department heads are asked to fill out incident report form ready-made by the HR department in MS Forms.
- If they cannot access the incident report form, the employee relations officer will be the one to encode details with the guarantee that Freshdesk ticket is filled out completely, without missing any information about the whole incident.
- The employee relations HR person checks responses made by the department heads and team leaders and then issues a notice to explain or an NTE to the employee in question, while thinking and deciding on possible actions to take, referring to the code of conduct made by the company in relation to rules and regulations. For the NTE, the employee relations officer in-charge refers to which category of offense it lands on for the possible decisions to be made.
- The employee in question is given a grace period for 5 days to prove and explain his/her side of the story as to why the incident happened. If they cannot provide an explanation, be it verbal or written, within 5 days, HR will issue an NDD or notice of disciplinary decision for the employee being sanctioned. The notice of disciplinary decision is used as basis to what consequence the employee in question should receive.
- Lighter cases are different from heavier cases for heavier cases require administrative hearing. Lighter cases meaning it does not require intense disciplinary action, just verbal or written warnings. While heavier cases, as what was previously being mentioned, involves administrative hearings for the incident that has taken place. Usually these kinds of incidents are mostly continuous disobedience to the code of conduct or the repetition of offenses and not taken in consideration the warnings they have been given.
- The employee being questioned must provide explanation letter about his/her actions and the employee relations HR in-charge must coordinate with the department heads for the decision of the status of the employee in question in the company.
- This is however a case to case basis. The decision will be based on the code of conduct and the extremity of the offense. Some cases are not that high of intensity since the offense can be warded off with warnings. However, other cases require hearings and more extreme repercussions.
- The decision is up to the department heads for the issuance of disciplinary action which is to be acknowledged by the employee.
- Administrative hearings happen when the cases are subject for dismissal or the likes. Dismissal happens when the offense cannot be solved with warnings and if the offense has grounds for dismissal.
- Employees however have the right to have any legal representative present during the administrative hearing. The people present in the administrative hearing are the HR, the employee being questioned and his/her legal representative, immediate superior, witness.
- The CEO is in charge of the releasing of final decision. The CEO coordinates with the HR department and the immediate head of the employee in question for the ultimate decision.