What this is
What is a workplace incident report?
What is a workplace incident report?
A workplace incident report is the first record of an unplanned event that caused, or could have caused, injury, illness, damage or loss. It documents the facts of the event rather than its causes, and it is the source record from which recordability, regulatory reporting and investigation decisions are made.
What makes an injury OSHA recordable?
Under 29 CFR 1904, a work-related injury or illness is recordable if it results in death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness. It is also recordable if a physician or other licensed health care professional makes a significant diagnosis such as a fracture or a punctured eardrum.
How quickly must a fatality be reported to OSHA?
Within 8 hours of the employer learning of a work-related fatality. An in-patient hospitalisation, amputation or loss of an eye must be reported within 24 hours. These reporting deadlines are separate from, and much shorter than, the recording obligation on the OSHA 300 log.
Scope
When is an incident report required?
The instinct is to reserve the incident report for injuries. That produces a record set that measures outcomes rather than exposure, and a trend line that improves whenever reporting gets worse.
Use this template when
- Any unplanned event causing injury, illness, damage or loss, however minor the outcome appears at the time
- A near miss with the energy and exposure to have caused a serious injury, scored on potential rather than what actually happened
- Property or equipment damage with no injury, which frequently shares a cause with events that do injure someone
- An environmental release, spill or exceedance, which usually needs a regulatory notification of its own as well
- A security or aggression incident affecting a worker, including events involving members of the public
Do not use it for
- The investigation itself, including cause analysis, which belongs in a separate record so facts and conclusions do not blur
- A hazard nobody was exposed to yet, which belongs in the hazard register rather than the incident log
- A quality nonconformance with no safety dimension, which follows the nonconformance route
- Routine equipment faults found during inspection, which are maintenance work orders
- Grievances or conduct matters, which have their own confidential process
Compliance mapping
Which OSHA 1904 requirements does this satisfy?
This template is the source record. It does not itself make the recordability decision, but it must capture everything that decision depends on.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| 1904.4 | Recording criteria for work-related injuries and illnesses | Injury |
| 1904.5 | Determination of work-relatedness, including the exceptions | What happened |
| 1904.7 | General recording criteria: death, days away, restricted work, transfer, medical treatment, loss of consciousness | Injury |
| 1904.7(b)(5)(ii) | Closed list defining first aid, distinguishing it from medical treatment | Injury |
| 1904.29 | Forms 300, 300A and 301, and the 7-calendar-day entry requirement | Follow up |
| 1904.32 | Annual summary preparation, certification and posting 1 February to 30 April | Follow up |
| 1904.33 | Retention and updating of records for five years | Follow up |
| 1904.39 | Reporting fatalities within 8 hours; hospitalisation, amputation or eye loss within 24 hours | Immediate response |
| WorkSafeBC OHSR 3.4 | Employer investigation of incidents, including preliminary and full reports | Severity and potential |
What it does not cover
- The investigation itself, including cause analysis, which belongs in a separate record so facts and conclusions do not blur.
- The recordability determination, which is a decision made from this record and should be logged with its reasoning.
- The OSHA 300 log and 300A summary, which are statutory forms with their own certification and posting rules.
- Corrective actions, which need owners, dates and effectiveness verification of their own.
- Workers compensation claim submission, which runs on the insurer's timetable, not the regulator's.
Global
Incident Report requirements by country
Every jurisdiction requires incident recording, but they disagree about what counts and how fast you must tell someone. Multinational operations get caught by the reporting deadlines rather than the recording criteria.
29 CFR 1904
Prescriptive. Closed definitions of recordability and first aid, statutory forms, fixed deadlines.
Recordability turns on treatment and outcome rather than severity as felt by the worker.
Provincial OHS regulations; WorkSafeBC OHSR Part 3
Provincially enforced with employer investigation duties.
BC requires a preliminary investigation within 48 hours and a full report within 30 days, which is a materially different obligation from US recording.
RIDDOR 2013
Reportable categories defined by injury type and absence duration.
Over-seven-day absence is the key threshold, reported within 15 days. Specified injuries and dangerous occurrences are reported without delay.
Model WHS Act Part 3
Notifiable incidents defined as death, serious injury or illness, or dangerous incident.
Notification is immediate on becoming aware, and the incident site must be preserved until an inspector directs otherwise.
ISO 45001 cl.10.2
Management system requirement to report, investigate and take action.
Certification auditors look for the thread from event to verified effectiveness, not just the report.
How to complete it
How to complete an incident report, step by step
The value of an incident report is set in the first hour. After that, the scene changes, people talk to each other, and recollection converges on a shared version that is tidier than what happened.
The report captures facts: time, place, task, equipment, people, conditions, sequence, outcome. Cause belongs in the investigation. Mixing them produces a record that leads the analysis and closes off lines of enquiry before anyone has looked. A first report that already names a cause is usually a first report that names the injured worker.
Photographs, positions, guard state, housekeeping, lighting, the actual tool in use. Within an hour the spill is mopped, the guard is back on and the offcut is in the bin. Nothing recovers that later, and the absence of it is what makes an investigation two weeks later feel like archaeology.
Work-relatedness is presumed for events occurring in the work environment, but 1904.5(b)(2) lists the exceptions, covering things like eating personal food, personal tasks outside working hours, personal grooming, self-medication for a non-work condition, and motor vehicle accidents in parking lots during commuting. Record the facts that bear on which applies rather than the conclusion.
An unguarded machine that nearly took a hand and one that did take a hand are the same failure with different luck. If your near miss reports are consistently thinner than your injury reports, the reporting system is measuring outcome rather than exposure, and the leading indicator you think you have is not one.
What auditors find
Most common incident report findings
Incident recordkeeping findings cluster around two things: cases that were never recorded, and records that were never updated.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Recordable case not entered on the 300 log, or entered outside the 7 calendar day window. | 1904.29(b)(3) | Recordability decision triggered automatically from the report, with the seven-day clock started at first knowledge. |
| Medical treatment misclassified as first aid. | 1904.7(b)(5) | Structured treatment capture checked against the closed first aid list rather than a free-text note. |
| Fatality or hospitalisation not reported within the 8 or 24 hour deadline. | 1904.39 | Severity flag on the report that raises an immediate notification task with the deadline visible. |
| 300A summary not certified by a company executive, or not posted for the full period. | 1904.32 | Annual task with the certifying role named and the posting window tracked to closure. |
| Case not updated when days away or restriction counts changed. | 1904.33(b) | Open case status until the outcome is final, with day counts maintained rather than entered once. |
| Records not retained for the full five years, or retained without the 301 detail. | 1904.33(a) | Retain 300, 300A and 301 together for five years following the year covered. |
| Work-relatedness decision recorded as a conclusion with no supporting facts. | 1904.5 | Capture location, activity, timing and the specific exception considered, so the decision can be re-examined. |
| Privacy concern cases listed by name on the 300 log. | 1904.29(b)(6) | Privacy case flag that substitutes the case description and holds the name on a separate confidential list. |
| First report already names a cause or a person at fault. | ISO 45001 cl.10.2 | Separate the fact record from the investigation record, and remove cause fields from the initial form. |
| Near misses reported at a fraction of the rate of injuries, with no serious-potential cases. | ISO 45001 cl.10.2 | Score potential severity independently of actual outcome, and route high-potential near misses into full investigation. |
Case in point
The first hour decides what the investigation can find
Incident investigations rarely fail on analysis technique. They fail on inputs. By the time a formal investigation opens, typically a day or two later, the machine has been cleaned and restarted, the guard is refitted, the floor is dry, the shift has gone home and the people involved have discussed it with each other at least twice.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Recollection converges. People adopt each other's version, not dishonestly, but because human memory reconciles to the group account. The version you get on day three is usually cleaner, more coherent and less accurate than the version available in the first hour.
Which is why the report has to be raiseable by the person who was there
The practical implication is that the first record has to be capturable on a phone, at the machine, by the supervisor or the worker, in a few minutes. Any system that requires walking to an office and finding a form is a system that produces day-three accounts.
The measurable version of this is time from event to first record. Sites that track it and drive it below an hour get investigations with photographs, positions and unreconciled individual accounts. Sites that do not get a tidy narrative and a corrective action about being more careful.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
8 sections
- Reference
- SAF-001
- Archetype
- Record
- Record ID
- CASE-2026-000
- Scoring
- Actual severity and potential, scored separately
- Direction
- High is bad
- Singleton
- No
- Basis
- OSHA 1904, WorkSafeBC 3.4
- Links
- Feeds RCA, CAPA, Witness Statement; links Asset, Worker
- Tags
- Incident, Lagging
- Sections
- 8
- Fields
- 47
- Follow up fields
- 19
- Repeating sections
- 0
- Links out
- 8
Event
6 fieldsCase ID*
Auto sequence. Format CASE-2026-00000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
Drives who this goes to next.
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Date and Time of Event*
Date Reported*
A gap between these two is worth understanding on its own.
Reported By*
Person ID*
Format PER-0000.
Links to FDN-003 Person ID
Where
4 fieldsSite*
Site ID*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Area*
The area within the site.
Exact Location
Drop a pin for anything hard to find.
What happened
7 fieldsDescription*
Facts only. What happened, in the order it happened.
Photographs
Wide shots and close ups, before anything is moved.
Equipment Involved*
Asset
Asset ID
Format AST-0000.
Links to FDN-002 Asset ID
Was Machine Running
Guard Or Control In Place
- Yes, correctly fitted2 pts
- Yes, but bypassed0 pts
- No0 pts
Injury
8 fieldsAnyone Injured*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Injured Person
Person ID
Format PER-0000.
Links to FDN-003 Person ID
Body Part
Injury Type
Treatment Given
- None4 pts
- First aid on site3 pts
- Medical treatment off site2 pts
- Hospital admission1 pt
- Fatality0 pts
Medical Provider
Days Away Expected
Severity and potential
6 fieldsSeverity Guidance
Two ratings, never one. Actual severity drives your reporting duties. Maximum potential drives how deeply this is investigated. A first aid with fatality potential is investigated as a fatality.
Actual Severity*
- No injury4 pts
- First aid3 pts
- Medical treatment2 pts
- Lost time1 pt
- Fatality0 pts
Maximum Potential Loss*
The worst credible outcome had circumstances been slightly different.
- Minor4 pts
- Moderate3 pts
- Serious2 pts
- Fatal or catastrophic0 pts
Investigation Required*
Set by potential outcome, not by what actually happened.
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Investigation Level
RCA ID
Format RCA-2026-00000.
Links to FDN-013 RCA ID
Immediate response
8 fieldsImmediate Action Taken*
What was done to make the area safe before anyone left.
Area Made Safe*
Scene Preserved
Work Stopped
Reportable To Regulator*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Regulator
Notification Reference
Links to SAF-010 Notification ID
Notification Made
Related records
2 fieldsWitness Statement ID
Statements taken for this event.
Links to FDN-019 Statement ID
Just Culture ID
Where an individual's actions are being considered.
Links to FDN-017 Determination ID
Follow up
6 fieldsAction Required*
Raise the action record, then enter its reference here.
- No2 pts
- Yes0 pts
Priority
- High0 pts
- Medium1 pt
- Low3 pts
CAPA ID
Format CAPA-2026-00000.
Links to FDN-014 CAPA ID
Action Owner
Supervisor*
Signature*
SAF-001 · record IDs look like CASE-2026-000 · Feeds RCA, CAPA, Witness Statement; links Asset, Worker
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
The report is easy. What fails is everything hanging off it: the recordability call nobody made, the eight-hour clock nobody started, the corrective action closed without anyone checking it worked.
Captures the report at the point of the event on mobile, starts the recordability assessment, and raises the notification task with the regulatory deadline attached when severity crosses the threshold.
Holds treatment detail against the closed first aid list and tracks days away and restriction as the case develops, so the log stays current rather than being entered once.
Links the event to competency records for the task and surfaces whether required training was current at the time.
Keeps the case thread together from report through investigation to verified corrective action, and holds every write for approval.
This template lives in KnowSafe — safety and compliance. Incidents, hazards, permits, inspections and the critical controls behind them.
Meet KnowSafe→Glossary
Incident Report definitions and key terms
- Recordable case
- A work-related injury or illness resulting in death, days away, restricted work or transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness, or involving a significant diagnosis.
- First aid
- Treatment appearing on the closed list at 1904.7(b)(5)(ii). Anything not on that list is medical treatment for recordkeeping purposes.
- Work-related
- An event or exposure in the work environment that caused or contributed to the condition, or significantly aggravated a pre-existing condition, subject to the listed exceptions.
- Days away
- Calendar days the employee was away from work following the day of the injury, capped at 180 days for logging purposes.
- Restricted work
- Where the employee cannot perform routine job functions or work a full shift, recorded separately from days away.
- Reportable event
- A fatality, in-patient hospitalisation, amputation or loss of an eye, requiring direct notification to OSHA within 8 or 24 hours.
- Privacy concern case
- Case types, including certain injuries and illnesses, where the employee name must be withheld from the 300 log.
- High-potential near miss
- An event with no injury but with the energy and exposure to have caused a serious one. Investigated on potential, not outcome.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about incident report
What makes an injury OSHA recordable?+
Work-relatedness plus any one of: death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness. A significant diagnosis by a physician or other licensed health care professional, such as a fracture or a punctured eardrum, is also recordable even without those outcomes.
What is the difference between recording and reporting?+
Recording means entering a case on the OSHA 300 log, which must happen within 7 calendar days of learning about it. Reporting means directly notifying OSHA of a severe event: a fatality within 8 hours, and an in-patient hospitalisation, amputation or loss of an eye within 24 hours. The two obligations are independent and the reporting deadlines are much shorter.
Is treatment first aid or medical treatment?+
First aid is defined by a closed list at 1904.7(b)(5)(ii). If the treatment given is on that list it is first aid; if it is not on the list it is medical treatment, regardless of how minor it seems. Wound closure with sutures, staples or adhesive is medical treatment, while butterfly or steri-strips are first aid. Prescription-strength medication is medical treatment even at a single dose.
How long must incident records be kept?+
Five years following the end of the calendar year the records cover, under 1904.33. That covers the 300 log, the 300A annual summary and the 301 incident reports. The 300 log must also be updated during that period as new information changes a case, such as a change in days away.
When must the OSHA 300A summary be posted?+
From 1 February to 30 April of the year following the year covered. It must be certified by a company executive as correct and complete before posting, and it must be displayed where employee notices are normally posted.
Should near misses use the same report?+
Yes, with severity potential scored separately from actual outcome. A near miss with the energy to cause a fatality warrants the same investigation depth as a serious injury. Using a lighter form for near misses reliably produces lighter investigations, which is how the same event recurs with a worse outcome.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Incident and Investigation
Root Cause Analysis
Finds out why something happened rather than who was involved
Corrective and Preventive Action
The single action record used everywhere
Finding
Records a single deficiency picked up during an audit, inspection or check
Effectiveness Verification
Checks whether an action actually worked, some time after it was put in place
Just Culture Determination
Separates a system problem from a genuine choice to take a risk, using a consistent set of questions
Extent of Condition Review
Asks two questions after an investigation: where else does this same condition exist, and where else could this same cause bite us
More in Incidents
Near Miss Report
Records something that could have caused harm but did not
First Aid Report
Records a minor injury treated on site with no further medical care needed
Medical Treatment Report
Records an injury needing treatment beyond first aid
Lost Time Report
Records an injury that keeps a worker away from work beyond the day it happened
Property Damage Report
Records damage to equipment, buildings or stock where nobody was hurt
Vehicle Incident Report
Records a collision or vehicle event on site involving forklifts, yard trucks or visiting vehicles
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- 29 CFR Part 1904, Recording and reporting occupational injuries and illnesses
- 29 CFR 1904.7, General recording criteria, including the first aid list
- 29 CFR 1904.39, Reporting fatalities, hospitalisations, amputations and losses of an eye
- WorkSafeBC Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, Part 3, incident investigation
- RIDDOR 2013 and HSE reporting guidance (UK)
- ISO 45001:2018 clause 10.2, incident, nonconformity and corrective action
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.