Posted By stephen J Smith Jason, Hi, Interesting way of trying to ensure accidents get reported but not I believe a good way to manage the problem. If an employee has an accident and does not report it until the next day does that mean the accident didn't happen? If the employee could not report it eg he fell over and was knocked unconscious who would report that, after all how would you know what happened. The only way to effectively manage this is to have an open reporting procedure overseen keenly by a responsible person and back that up by an effective and rigorous investigation and root cause detection system. Not allowing employees to report the following day is not an answer after all many ULD's do not affect the employee until they've gone home - what would you do then?

Posted By Alex Ryding Hi all, in our company if someone wishes to retrospectively report an accident then, the accident report is countersigned by their area manager verifying the accident did occur; if they were unaware of the accident then we will require witnesses to countersign. Either way an accident investigation will occur. So far we have only ever had 2 or 3 retrospective entries and the manager or team leader was aware of the accident. We’ve not yet had an incident where no one knew of the accident, and I’ll have to cross that bridge should it ever happen; I expect a very thorough investigation will be initiated.

Posted By jackw. Hi, Hopefully you are already aware of this fact, but the requirement to record accidents is also part of social security legislation and you will run the risk of coming into conflict with that government department too if you refuse to record and report, if necessary, accidents/injuries at work. Remember too that an employee has the right, up to 2 years after an incident, I think that’s the correct time scale, to have a work accident recorded in an accident book. We have similar problems with a very dispersed work force working in clients homes. It can be several days before we get a report of an accident. These may be legitimate or not. Thus we have to try and work out which is genuine and which is not. An accident investigation may help but not always in the case of lone workers, who can argue that there was no witness. E.g. falls, trips etc coming out of or going from client to client homes. We always record the fact that the report was X amount of days after the alleged incident. But we feel and I believe H&S and SS legislation bind us/you to accepting the reports regardless of what policy you may have in place to “discourage” late reporting. Bottom line I think you are not on sound ground with such a policy. Hope this helps Cheers.

Posted By NeilM Poyznts-Powell Well said Heather. The report of the accident is only the first step. The subsequent investigation and review of controls is more important. As this will protect the company, its shareholders and employees. Staff are less likely to report spurious accidents if they are aware that every incident receives an appropriate investigation. With the working culture this policy would breed I could see Near Miss reporting going completely out of the window. Also, does a 'report on the day of accident only' policy take into account the right of a Union Appointed Safety Representative to carry out his own investigation or would they be advised that as the company does not accept the incident report so it never happened. As previously stated, in my mind, it is better to create an open reporting culture within an organisation, work at the root cause of accidents and drive down incidents through good mangement control rather than seek to prevent people reporting incidents. Regards, Neil