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Accidents happen. According to the International Labour Organization, approximately 340 million workplace accidents happen each year.
But accidents don’t tell the whole story. While taking steps to reduce the risk of accidents can help keep workers safe and limit potential disruptions, organizations also need to consider the role of incidents in improving overall safety.
Here’s why: While accidents and incidents are similar, they’re not identical. As a result, addressing both is critical to paving the way for improved organizational health and safety. In this piece, we’ll break down the difference, why it matters, and look at ways for safety managers to better track and manage both incidents and accidents.
Incident vs Accident
So what’s the difference between an incidental and an accident?
An incident is an unexpected and unplanned event that could have resulted in property damage or physical harm — but didn’t. An accident, meanwhile, is an unexpected and unplanned event that resulted in physical harm and/or property damage.
Put another way, incidents become accidents when they include minor physical harm, serious injury, or damage. Let’s look at a few examples.
Consider a workplace that uses forklifts. If a forklift driver doesn’t see another worker until the last second and swerves to avoid them, this is an incident: No one was harmed and no property damage occurred. If, however, the driver wasn’t able to turn in time and the forklift struck the worker, this is an accident. It’s also an accident if the driver avoids the worker but crashes the forklift and causes damage.
An incident vs an accident can also be tied to environmental hazards rather than employees. For example, a pool of water on the ground could present a slip, trip, and fall hazard. If workers lose their balance but don’t fall, this is an incident. If they slip and hurt themselves, it becomes an accident.
Why Safety Managers Need to Know the Difference between an Incident vs an Accident
For safety managers, knowing the difference between an incident vs an accident can help reduce total risk. Here’s why: While addressing the root causes of accidents can prevent their reoccurrence, incident investigations offer a way to stop accidents from happening in the first place.
Consider the forklift example above. If an accident occurs and a worker suffers personal injury, safety teams can use this data to address issues around forklift speed, worksite visibility, and the use of PPE, in turn reducing the chance of another accident. By looking at incident data, meanwhile, teams can implement new policies before accidents occur, allowing them to proactively prevent costly problems.
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How to Track and Manage both Incidents and Accidents
The goal of any safety program is to reduce the total number of workplace incidents and accidents. In practice, this requires companies to effectively track both event types and then leverage this tracking data to improve overall safety.
Ways to accomplish this goal include:
OSHA 300, OSHA 301 & OSHA 300A Reporting
Injury and illness reporting forms from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) form the foundation of safety reporting. Not only do these forms help ensure compliance with OSHA reporting requirements, but provide a consistent source of data for accident and incident analysis.
Leading Safety Indicators
Leading safety indicators offer insight into potential risks before accidents occur. By regularly conducting assessments on environmental conditions and worker behavior, safety managers can uncover trends that point to increased risk — and then take action to reduce this risk. These indicators may be tied to incident reports, or may simply be the result of observation. For example, if safety teams notice cluttered workspaces that present safety risks but have never been reported as part of incidents, they can take proactive measures to prevent accidents.
Lagging Safety Indicators
Lagging safety indicators are reports of incidents or accidents that have already happened. Common metrics include the frequency and severity of injuries, the number of fatalities, the number of workdays lost to injury, illness, or hospitalization, and the value of worker’s compensation costs. These indicators can be used to address common sources of incidents or accidents based on historical data.
Near Miss Reporting
Near misses are incidents that occur when an accident almost happens. Near misses could include a worker’s clothing or PPE getting caught in machinery but causing no injury or damage. By using a near-miss checklist to track and report these incidents, safety teams can pinpoint recurring risks and eliminate them before accidents occur.
Both incidents and accidents play a role in overall workplace safety. By understanding the difference and effectively tracking these unexpected events, safety managers can pinpoint existing problems, remediate current issues and proactively address areas of concern.
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