Sustainability & Risk / Health & Safety / Background Data

Defining Incident-Related Background Data

As a safety manager or occasional user enters workplace accidents (incidents) into the system, the system will present fields for which users must choose values describing the incident or how it was resolved. With the Background Data process, you define the values that the user can choose when completing these forms.

Choose the Background Data process. Choose the appropriate task to complete the following tables:

Table	Purpose	Example Values
Root Cause Categories	So that you can analyze your site's incidents, safety managers can classify how they resolve the issues leading to the incident. With incidents attached to root causes, you can summarize your data by this information.	Administrative failure, engineering failure, unknown.
Incident Types	So that you can analyze your site's incidents, incident reporters can classify the type of incident. With incidents attached to incident types, you can summarize your data by this information and spot trends.	Spill, commute, fire, elevator malfunction.
Short-Term/Long Term Corrective Actions	As part of tracking an incident, safety managers enter the short-term immediate response, as well as a longer-term response designed to improve procedures and avoid mishaps of this type in the future. Here, you enter basic categories of short-term and long-term corrective actions. When the safety manager tracks an incident, they can choose these values and also enter a free-form description with the details of the corrective action.	Disable equipment, discipline employee, close area.
Injury Categories Injury Areas	Incident reporters will also be able to choose the type of injury (burn, laceration, fracture) and the bodily area (head, foot, arm) on which it occurred. Use these tasks to define the list of values from which the incident reporter can choose when reporting an incident.	Burn, chemical burn, laceration, sprain, fracture.

Setting the Notify? field of the Incidents Types table:

If you want the system to automatically send a notification to the safety officer when occasional users or others enter incidents of this type into the system, set Notify? to Yes. A safety officer may wish to be immediately notified of incidents of a specific type so that they can personally supervise the matter and required follow up. For example, if your site handles hazardous liquids and a safety officer wants to be immediately notified if a spill occurs, you can set the Notify? option to Yes for the Spill incident type. For more information, see Incident Notification for Safety Officers.