Incident register: what to record, and what regulators say

What the regulators mention

We found two states that talk about a register on their public pages. WorkSafe Victoria’s speaking-up page talks about a register of reportable injuries that the employer makes available. It also mentions your right to put the details of an injury in it. SafeWork NSW’s notification page mentions recording an incident in the register of injuries and telling the workers compensation insurer within 48 hours.

Both are quoted word for word in the table. Other states may say more on other pages. Check your own regulator before you build anything around these lines.

A register is not a notification

The register is your own record. A notification goes to the regulator. They overlap, because a serious injury usually ends up in both, but they do different jobs. The register also holds the small stuff that never reaches a regulator: a sprained wrist, a near miss, a hazard fixed on the day.

Columns that earn their place

You can build a register in a spreadsheet in ten minutes. The hard part is keeping it useful. These columns tend to do the work.

• Date and time of the event, and the time it was reported
• Who reported it, or “anonymous” if the site allows that
• Location, with a level, gridline or GPS point
• What happened, in the worker’s own words
• Category and priority, confirmed by a named manager
• Photos or other evidence, linked rather than pasted
• Action taken, owner and due date
• Close-out date and who checked the fix

Keeping it current

A register falls over when it depends on one person remembering. The worker who saw the hazard is the person who knows the details at the time. Put the entry within reach of that person, on the phone they already hold, in their own voice.

Review it weekly. Look at what’s open, what’s overdue and what keeps recurring. Two minutes of that at the toolbox talk tells the crew their reports go somewhere.

A small register, week by week

Start small. Open a list on Monday and add every report that comes in. On Friday, sort it into three piles: closed, in progress, not started. Anything in the third pile for more than a week is either a mistake or a decision. Write down which.

Leave out opinion. A register records what was seen and what was done. Blame goes elsewhere, because a register that names culprits stops getting entries.

Who owns it

Name one owner and one backup. The owner chases late entries, runs the weekly review and decides what to archive. Everyone else adds entries. When the owner moves on, the handover is one line on the job’s close-out list.

Paper, spreadsheet or Haznote

Paper is fine until the clipboard gets wet. A spreadsheet is fine until the person reporting is up a ladder. In Haznote the worker’s voice report becomes a register entry with the photo, time and GPS. The AI suggests the category and a manager confirms it. The AI’s original and the manager’s edit are kept separately.

Our incident report template gives you a printable version if you want to start on paper. The fields match the columns above.