The best software for quality and risk management.Where people work, mistakes are made. As an organisation, how can you learn from these mistakes? And how do you ensure structural improvement measures? This is where incident management comes in. We would like to give you some tips on how to turn an incident into a learning moment. Because this is the only way to make continuous improvement possible as an organisation!
Incident management is the reporting, analysis and resolution of a problem. You are probably familiar with it: you have just started working and suddenly the Wi-Fi goes down. Or the printer suddenly stops working just before you wanted to print an important document. But you also want to prevent more important incidents, such as falls or accidents. But how do you handle that?
Thanks to incident management software, you easily report the problem, also known as an incident. Your report then reaches the right department, which can take immediate action. By dealing with incidents in the right way, you ensure that incidents have as little negative impact as possible within your organisation.
Anything can go wrong in the workplace. Whether you have to deal with a data breach, fall incident, collision or other (near) incident: as an organisation, you simply cannot do without incident management anymore.
The consequences of incidents can be major. Not only for the employees involved, but also for the organisation in general. Think negative publicity, image damage or a fine. Prevention is better than cure, but how do you do that? By turning an incident into a learning opportunity and applying incident management.
Do you want to work safer as an organisation, prevent incidents as much as possible and know how to take structural improvement measures? Read below how to go from incident reporting to continuous improvement in seven tips.
Use the knowledge and experience of your employees. They are often the first to see where something goes wrong. And it is precisely this information you need to get the most out of incident management. This will give you insight into the various incidents that take place in all departments in your organisation.
Make sure they can easily report a (near) incident anytime, anywhere. Our simple and user-friendly app helps with this.
It is not only necessary to receive as many reports of (near) incidents as possible, but it is also important to handle those reports as quickly and well as possible. This can be done, for instance, according to a cleverly designed workflow that allows you to take action faster and link improvement actions to the right people or teams.
Incident management involves several processes. These include making a report, assigning it to the right department and processing it. Obviously, you want the follow-up to happen as soon as possible after a report is made and for the processing to go smoothly.
By automating these processes with convenient incident management software, incident reporting runs efficiently and it is clear to everyone who should take action when. Colleagues are proactively alerted to open actions, ensuring smooth handling.
What if colleagues come across an incident that does not require immediate resolution or they are unsure whether an incident is worth reporting? Even if the incident is not urgent, it is important to make a report.
The more incidents are reported, the more insight your organisation gains into potential risks and how they can be prevented. It is also important to make employees aware of the consequences if they do not make reports. Show that by making more reports, there will ultimately be fewer incidents and deviations. Use results as evidence.
Every incident has a different impact on your organisation. Are many reports coming in at the same time? Then clarify which incidents have the most impact.
That way, you make the best use of your IT department’s capabilities and handle the highest-priority incidents the fastest.
Knowing what is going on in an organisation starts with insight. In this case, with insight into incidents and their handling, but also into the status of improvement measures you have put in place based on previous incidents.
A powerful dashboard and the ability to extract smart reports from the incident management system supports you in this. This allows you to spot any hotspots or bottlenecks early and act accordingly. Not only do you gain insight, but thanks to dashboards and reports, you can also share this information with important stakeholders, such as management.
In addition, if you use a complete quality management system like Zenya, you can easily link information from audits, checks, inspections or safety rounds, for example, so you always know what’s going on.
When figuring out the cause of an incident, try going a step further. For example, use proven incident analysis methods such as Tripod, 5 whys, and the Root Cause.
For example, if the cause of an incident is a broken piece of equipment, the cause may be overdue maintenance or misuse. And that means there are probably many more risks lurking.
These analyses are crucial to prevent similar incidents in the future. By monitoring risks, deviations and unsafe situations, you move from reactive to preventive incident management.
Do you have everything in sight, have incidents been reported and dealt with, and do you recognise patterns from analyses? Great! Then there is one more thing you can do to make real structural improvements. A crucial step that is sometimes forgotten.
We also briefly mentioned it above: linking improvement measures prevents the repetition of mistakes and helps prevent incidents in the future. Make sure everyone agrees with the improvement measures. That way, you have the key to learning and improving with incident management.
Want to easily report incidents, handle them and link improvement measures to achieve a safe working environment? Read all about Zenya’s incident management software. Or contact us! Together we will work on a structural improvement within your organisation with our software.
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