Hazard, risk and incident: the difference, with examples
Short answer
A hazard is something that could cause harm. A risk is how likely that harm is and how bad it would be. An incident is something that has already happened. A wet floor is the hazard, slipping on it is the risk, and a worker on their back is the incident.
Automatically checked against WorkSafe Victoria on 1 Nov 2026.
Three words, three different jobs
On a form these get swapped constantly. “Hazard: worker fell.” “Incident: loose cable on the stairs.” Both entries are useful, but they belong in different places and they start different responses.
Getting the words right isn’t pedantry. It decides whether a report gets fixed this week, rated for priority, or investigated. A mix-up sends it to the wrong pile.
Hazard: the thing
A hazard is anything with the potential to cause harm. A loose cable. A stack of pallets leaning on a wall. A noisy compressor. A colleague who snaps at people. WorkSafe Victoria describes unsafe work conditions as practices or hazards that can put you or someone else in danger, mentally or physically. The row below quotes it.
Risk: the chance and the size
Risk is the judgement about the hazard. How likely is it that someone gets hurt, and how badly? The same hazard carries different risk in different places. A loose cable behind a locked cupboard is a small risk. The same cable across the main stair at shift change is a bigger one.
That’s why a hazard report needs a place and a time of day. Without them, a manager can’t rate the risk.
Incident: the thing that happened
An incident is an event. Someone tripped. A load dropped. A near miss counts here too, because the event happened even if the outcome was luck. Incidents get recorded and looked into. Some are notifiable to the regulator, which our notifiable incident pages cover.
A wet floor, three ways
- Hazard: water on the floor outside the amenities after rain
- Risk: high at 7am when the crew arrive in wet boots, lower at midday once the floor has dried
- Incident: a worker slips at 7.10 and lands on their hip
Why it changes the fix
The hazard decides what the fix is. The risk decides the order you do things in. Three open reports, one of them across the main stair, tell you where to start. Our hierarchy of controls guide shows how to choose between removing the hazard and managing around it.
Saying it at a toolbox talk
Keep it to one wet floor. Point at it. “That’s the hazard. Whether it hurts someone depends on who walks past and how fast. That’s the risk. If somebody had slipped, that’d be the incident.” Ask the crew for three more examples from the site.
Which report goes where
Report a hazard when you can see the thing and nobody has been hurt. Our hazard report form has the fields for that. Report an incident when something has happened. The incident report template covers it. If you’re not sure which one it is, report it anyway. A manager can recategorise a report in minutes.
In Haznote the AI suggests a category and a manager confirms it. The AI’s original and the manager’s edit are stored separately, so a change is visible.
Common mix-ups
- Writing the outcome in the hazard box. “Worker injured” is an incident
- Writing “dangerous” and nothing else. Say what’s dangerous: the unguarded blade, the missing edge barrier
- Rating risk without a location. A rating needs a place, a task and a time
- Treating a near miss as nothing. It’s an incident that missed
What the regulator says
Each row shows the source’s own words, who published them and when they were last checked by script.
| Item | What it says | Source and check date |
|---|---|---|
| Victoria: unsafe work conditions | Unsafe work conditions are practices or hazards that can put you or someone else in danger, mentally or physically. Source says: | WorkSafe Victoria Checked 1 Nov 2026 |
Plain answers.
Is a near miss a hazard or an incident?
An incident. It happened, even if nobody was hurt. The hazard behind it is a separate entry worth fixing.
Who decides the risk rating?
A manager or supervisor, using the site’s method. In Haznote the manager sets the priority and the AI just suggests one.
Can one report be both?
A worker’s account often describes both: what they saw and what happened. A manager can split it into a hazard to fix and an incident to record.
Where this comes from.
- Speaking up · WorkSafe Victoria
General information, not legal advice. Check the current rules with your regulator.
Report what you see by voice. A manager sorts it into hazard or incident.
Run it on one site and see the first report land in the manager’s list.