Workplace Incident Reports, or Learning from Mistakes.

If you are a safety manager for a company you no doubt handle incident investigations as part of  your job. The general purpose behind post incident investigations and reports is to provide insight into the cause (root case, etc.) of an incident so that repeat incidents is reduced or eliminated.

The post incident investigation report should be thorough, honest and clear.  Post incident reports need provide the reader (usually field managers, middle and top management) with a clear idea of what, why,  how, and who was involved.  In short, an opportunity to  learn from mistakes.  And of course, post incident reports provide a useful tool in safety training, for example, tool box safety talks.