Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

Immediate causes
A detailed investigation should look at the following 
factors as they can provide useful information about 
immediate causes
that have been manifested in the 
incident/accident.
➤
Personal 
factors:
➤
behaviour of the people involved
➤
suitability of people doing the work
➤
training and competence
➤
Task 
factors:
➤
workplace conditions and precautions or 
controls
➤
actual method of work adopted at the time
➤
ergonomic 
factors
➤
normal working practice either written or 
customary.
Underlying and root causes
A thorough investigation should also look at the follow-
ing factors as they can provide useful information about 
underlying and root causes
that have been manifested 
in the incident/accident:
Underlying causes
are the less obvious system or organ-
izational reasons for an accident or incident such as:
➤
pre-start-up machinery checks were not made by 
supervisors
➤
the hazard had not been considered in the risk 
assessment
➤
there was no suitable method statement
➤
pressures of production had been more important
➤
the employee was under a lot of personal pressure 
at the time
➤
have there been previous similar incidents?
➤
was there adequate supervision, control and coord-
ination of the work involved?
Root causes
involve an initiating event or failing from 
which all other causes or failings arise. Root causes are 
generally management, planning or organizational fail-
ings including:
➤
quality of the health and safety policy and procedures
➤
quality of consultation and cooperation of employees
➤
the adequacy and quality of communications and 
information
➤
defi ciencies in risk assessments, plans and control 
systems
➤
defi ciencies in monitoring and measurement of work 
activities
➤
quality and frequency of reviews and audits.