Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

Type of incident
Most organizations will want to collect:
➤
all injury accidents
➤
cases of ill-health
➤
sickness 
absence
➤
damage to property, personal effects and work in 
progress
➤
incidents with the potential to cause serious injury, 
ill-health or damage.
Not all of these are required by law, but this should not 
deter the organization that wishes to control hazards 
effectively.
Analysis
All the information, whether in accident books or report 
forms, will need to be analysed so that useful manage-
ment data can be prepared. Many organizations look at 
analysis each month and annually. However, where there 
are very few incidents, quarterly may be suffi cient. The 
health and safety information should be used along-
side other business measures and should receive equal 
status.
There are several ways in which data can be 
analysed and presented. The most common ways are:
➤
by causation using the classifi cation used on the 
RIDDOR form F2508. This has been used on the 
example accident report form (see Appendix 8.1)
➤
by nature of the injury, such as cuts, abrasions, 
asphyxiation, amputations
➤
by the part of the body affected, such as hands, 
arms, feet, lower leg, upper leg, head, eyes, back 

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and so on. Sub-divisions of these categories could 
be useful if there were suffi cient incidents
➤
by age and experience at the job
➤
by time of day
➤
by occupation or location of the job
➤
by type of equipment used.
There are a number of up-to-date computer recording 
programs which can be used to manipulate the data if 
signifi cant numbers are involved. The trends can be 
shown against monthly, quarterly and annual past per-
formance of, preferably, the same organization. If indices 
are calculated, such as Incident Rate, comparisons can 
be made nationally with HSE fi gures and with other simi-
lar organizations or businesses in the same industrial 
group. This is really only of major value to larger organ-
izations with signifi cant numbers of events. (See Chapter 
4 for more information on defi nitions and calculation of 
Incident Rates.)
The HSE produces annual bulletins of national 
performance plus a detailed statistical report, which 
can be used for comparisons. There are diffi culties in 
comparisons across Europe and say, with the USA, 
where the defi nitions of accidents or time lost vary.
Reports should be prepared with simple tables and 
graphs showing trends and comparisons. Line graphs, 
bar charts and pie charts are all used quite extensively 
with good effect. All analysis reports should be made 
available to employees as well as managers. This can 
often be done through the health and safety committee 
and safety representatives, where they exist, or directly 
to all employees in small organizations. Other routine 
meetings, team briefi ngs and notice boards can all be 
used to communicate the message.
It is particularly important to make sure that any 
actions recommended or highlighted by the reports are 
taken quickly and employees kept informed.