Delayed incident reporting is an unfortunate but common problem in business management. Every company requires a reporting system to help track relevant incidents and take prompt actions. And that’s where incident management comes into the picture. It plays a critical role in the growth trajectory of organizations.
Reporting a potential incident on time enables more efficient management of the same, whereas reporting too late or not reporting incidents at all can have severe and even fatal consequences.
Let’s understand more about incident management and how delayed reporting can impact your organization’s growth.
WHAT IS INCIDENT MANAGEMENT?
An incident is defined in different ways as per the industry it is taking place in. For instance, an injury at a construction site will be categorized as an incident. In the same way, a malfunctioning printer at a retail outlet could be said to be an incident.
But, no matter the industry, and its definition of an incident, they have one thing in common – they disrupt the core business of your org. This is where incident management kicks in.
Incident management assists you in resolving issues so that you and your employees receive assistance as quickly as possible. It also ensures the least of the core business is harmed.
On the other hand, delayed incident reporting could mean delayed issue resolution. In some industries, like manufacturing and construction, delaying resolutions could even have fatal consequences aside from wasting time and money.
Moreover, incident reporting or managing security issues or incidents employees report reveal how your organization is managed. And it can show whether or not your organization is efficient enough in providing resolutions.
Therefore, it is essential to understand the after-effects of delayed incident reporting to maintain the integrity of an organization.
HOW CAN DELAYED INCIDENT REPORTING IMPACT YOUR BUSINESS?
Here’s how delayed incident reporting can leave a negative impact on an organization:
- Increases organizational cost
A delay in incident reporting may result in more expensive remediation and extended downtime. In addition, if the incident is not reported immediately, it may be challenging to find the root cause without a comprehensive trace log.
In addition, it may be challenging to identify the full extent of the incident, which then makes it difficult to determine what actions should be taken to remediate the issue. As a result, the time and effort of the employer are wasted, which results in additional expenses.
- Impacts the integrity of the organization
A poorly managed incident system can bring a company’s integrity down. Therefore, it is important to keep top of how your organization runs incident management operations and improve your system to keep your employees safer.
On-time reports lead to on-time actions, which result in the proper completion of tasks and reduced risks. A robust incident reporting mechanism will help improve company performance and make achieving business goals a breeze.
- Leads to unnecessary lawsuits
Employers may suffer legal consequences if they fall behind on important safety reports. So many incidents happen every day on a construction site, for instance.
These incidents could be anything from a worker falling off a ladder to getting hurt by a tool. These incidents can cause a lot of damage and lead to a lawsuit if incidents are not reported quickly.
A company always focuses on providing the best services to its employees. If an incident is not reported timely, the employer cannot take any action to resolve the issue.
For example, if an employee does not report an injury on time, the employer won’t be able to take the following steps to resolve the same.
For instance, in the case of an injury at a construction site, an employee might need medical compensation, and delayed reporting in such a case will delay receiving medical compensation benefits.
HOW DOES A TIMELY DIGITAL INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM HELP?
The price of a delayed incident reporting policy can be devastating to a business’s reputation and financial stability. Here are the benefits if you adopt a digital incident management system:
If incidents are recorded, logged, and reported timely, an organization can quickly act to evade potential harm to the core business. Orgs can also track incident patterns and resolve similar issues quickly in the future.
- Reduces overhead of reporting
Incident reporting can be a tedious task and may involve multiple employers investing their time and efforts.
On the other hand, an automatic inspection management tool will reduce the overhead and generate reports faster when compared to the traditional approach of manually collating data from multiple scattered platforms.
- Builds a communication channel between employee and employer
With the help of the digital incident reporting tool, it’s easier to report incidents to the management.
Incident management tools facilitate an efficient and smooth incident logging process. All an employee has to do is report incidents through the tool and the organization can take action accordingly—no chances of miscommunication or misinterpretation.
The bottom line is that reporting incidents and issues sooner is significantly more beneficial to your business than not doing the same.
The BARE-IFY Audit App is an advanced safety compliance and auditing tool is an audit and inspection platform with robust incident reporting mechanisms and super user-centric UI. With the help of this tool, organizations can automate the incident reporting process and reduce the amount of human intervention involved.
By making your company’s incident reporting process more straightforward, you’ll reduce the time your employees spend in reporting incidents and automatically cut back on opportunistic mistakes.
Pulse also offers ready-to-use checklists for multiple industries so that you can stay on the top of your compliance game and reduce the chances of incidents.
