Rank: New forum user 
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Hi Everyone
As professionals, we have all been involved with or have written many differing types of policies and procedures to prevent accidents/incidents, over time. But what about procedures for dealing with a workplace fatality - whether it is caused by a work related incident or natural causes to staff, visitors or contractors when on our business premises.
What I am interested in are ideas of how other organisations deal with these scenarios. For example our policy, which is an American version, deals with preserving the site of the incident, internal communication and communication between the business, the authorities, next of kin and the workforce and also how to deal with the press and media.
Going forward, I feel that I have two choices, stick with the USA version tweaked to reflect what we do in the UK or completely rewrite it. I would be interested in your ideas on this subject.
Best wishes as always
Stu
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Rank: Super forum user
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This is a difficult area, due to the number of permutations of circumstance.
In my experience, the normal workplace emergency procedures are adequate for dealing with such incidents.
Police are likely to attend and interview people. Indeed a sudden death is their territory. They can be extremely helpful in guiding you through the immediate aftermath, including situations where the deceased is not removed to hospital.
I would therefore suggest that your normal procedures, which will include all the items you mention should just be flexible enough to recognise that the Police have an input and can give valuable guidance.
I would suggest you ensure that you have some kind of counselling or feedback to manage the aftermath to the first aiders who attend. they can be traumatised both by a fatality from whatever cause, or even from a very near miss.
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Rank: New forum user
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Thank you Jane
You have made a good point on the first aider inclusion in counselling.
I suppose that the procedures that I am trying to put together are for the guidance of management in not only how to proceed with dealing with an incident but in what they can expect to have to deal with the issues thrown up by the incident.
Stu
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Rank: Forum user 
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Fatalities are easy, I would add colleagues to the first aiders to the traumatized list. you need to either have an arrangement with an external party to look after company personnel or have trained personnel to look after them. I would also add that senior management should conduct staff briefings on the circumstances.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Have a plan, have a procedure that is well thoght-out,
My daughter is a HR person for a large multi-national and was thrown in at the deep end on her first experience of a workplace fatality: natural causes as it happens but that's not really relevant.
The organisation has a major incident plan which was invoked that involved many people including senior management, PR, HR, TU and it was just coincidence that my daughter was "it" on that day from HR. She coped because the plan was there to guide everyone, all involved were supporting each other and the outcome, she says, was a calm handling of what could have been a very traumatic time.
After the event, the family and work colleagues took the time to praise the people who had been supportive of them.
A tragic event that was made a little easier for all. The plan had been well designed and worked well when it was needed.
They are far from a perfect employer but that time they got it just right and also on a subsequent occasion when it was invoked following a road traffic accident involving an employee on their wat to work.
The point is, I guess, having a plan is better than making it up on the spot. Look at what you have and tweak it to suit your own operations.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I think it is an important prolicy which often gets over looked even by relatively large organisations. I wrote a draft policy for a company largely in response to the Corporate Manslaughter Act coming into being. The policy should cover a number of areas, some of which may already be covered in other policies or procedures. However, by having one prolicy to follow in the event of a workplace fatality it should make it easier to follow.
Policy should include the immediate events following the fatality, not so much emergency response, but certainly an incident officer. Protocols for dealing with the police, regulators, solicitors, counselling and/or other systems for dealing with trauma, media, internal communications, evidence and HR matters. Notwithstanding the latter is not exhaustive and would depend to some degree the size of the organisation and the industry.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Yes, I think that Ray has hit the nail on the head. When I went to the LA briefing on CM some years ago in London, it was suggested that such a procedure was necessary to deal with the sort of issues that Ray has mentioned, rather than dealing with 'incident investigation' side of things (the HSE/Police will do that for you!)
One thing is for sure; a fatality, and a CM investgation is likely to be a deeply 'unpleasant' (for many reasons), very distracting, and costly (not just money) experience for any company, and perhaps more so for a larger one.
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Rank: Forum user 
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MAN wrote:Fatalities are easy Well, I've read some statements on here in the past that have left me slightly unnnerved but this one takes things to another level again. In what respect exactly are fatalities 'easy'? Having been involved in one just over a year ago - only after the fact thankfully - I can still clearly visualise the shocked and haunted faces of the work colleagues who had witnessed the accident that claimed the life of a friend. It didn't look like they were handling something that any of them would characterise as 'easy'. I never ever thought that I'd be involved in such an incident and there was no specific procedure in place to instruct those who dealt with the immediate situation or aftermath. Despite the lack of procedure everything was appropriately dealt with and went smoothly - I think in these circumstances much/many of the desired actions fall under the 'common sense' banner. The police will, in my experience, be helpful.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Mmmm....not sure if it was flippant or frivolous, but giving the benefit of doubt perhaps it was just weak grammar. Having experienced various fatalities I would never describe it as 'easy' either - strange.
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