Incident Reporting and Record keeping
It is important for you to report all incidents, accidents and near misses immediately. All near misses, first aids, property damage incidents and injuries should be reported immediately to your foreman. Once the foreman is aware of the incident they should contact Trevor Atherton at 812-483-8049, Rick Jordan at 812-305-1801, Kent Kafka at 317-480-6252 or Gary Plummer at 618-708-3196 within 30 minutes. Once the Safety Department has been notified the Area Manager should also be notified. It is to the employee’s benefit if the employee reports these incidents immediately. The employee can receive the medical care that is required to prevent increased severity of the injury and decrease pain and suffering.
One example of this is an eye injury, if an employee feels like they have gotten something in their eye it needs to be reported immediately so they can get the appropriate first aid care to remove the debris. This is an incident that if not taken care of immediately can cause more damage to the eye by the employee rubbing their eye or the debris becoming imbedded in the eye. Another example would be lacerations that could become infected. It is imperative that the laceration be cleaned out and antibiotics applied to prevent infection. Another reason to report is that worker’s compensation requires the employee report the incident within the work shift that the injury occurs. Also, when incidents and near misses are reported, procedures or policies can be put in place to keep employees from being injured in the future from the same types of incidents. If incidents are not reported immediately, disciplinary action will be taken. Report a slip or trip to the ground even if you don’t believe you are hurt, that way if you wake up the next morning with a bad back or swollen hand, it was reported on the day it happened.
OSHA requires each contractor to use the OSHA 300 log to record each injury or illness during the year that meet the OSHA definition of a recordable, restricted duty, or lost time accident. At the end of the year the employer is required to fill out the OSHA 300A log. This log is required to be posted on each jobsite from February 1st thru April 30th of each year. If OSHA conducts an inspection at your site during this time frame, and the log is not onsite, it results in an OSHA violation and a fine. As long as you have this log in the back of your safety manual you will be covered.
Report all incidents to your foreman or safety department immediately!