The benefits of automated incident management

Automated incident management has the potential to transform a company’s EHS performance when applied correctly. Not only does it reduce administrative burdens, but it also allows for more in-depth reporting and targeted corrective action. Regardless of industry, there are so many benefits to automating how your team responds to and follows up with workplace incidents.

What does it mean to automate incident management?

Automated Incident Management involves the use of advanced technological solutions to handle, track, and resolve incidents in a swift and organized manner. This approach replaces or augments manual processes with automated workflows, ensuring a more proactive, efficient, and standardized response to various types of incidents.

Top benefits of automating processes

Process automation has many benefits for both workers and the company’s bottom line. While investing in digital solutions may seem like a major cost at the beginning, the savings you can achieve by improving your incident management program quickly make up for it.

Reducing incident rates, lowering administrative costs, and improving employee engagement are just some of the surface level advantages. Here are some of the other benefits that automated processes can provide.

Standardize your workflows

Many teams suffer from a lack of standardization. They tackle incidents differently each time, making it hard to compare and analyze data. This also creates more opportunities for things to fall through the cracks.

Automated incident management workflows provide the structure needed to effectively report and document incidents. By following the same steps each time, your team will be able to complete investigations and reports faster and more accurately. In the long run, this also saves time by eliminating the need for you to chase down and piece together all the elements of the process.

Organize data more effectively

An electronic data management system is oftentimes more effective than a manual one. Most software has options for categorizing incident data so you can find what you need faster. This means you’ll spend less time managing your documents.

Recognize patterns faster

One of the biggest benefits of automated incident management is being able to identify patterns faster. Because you can organize, tag, and filter the data, it’s easier to see how different incidents are connected.

A great example of this is figuring out which processes or departments generate the most injuries. From that data alone, you can focus your energy on the corrective actions with the biggest impact on performance.

Simplify and improve follow-up

Incident follow-up is a major challenge for many companies. And that’s because with a manual incident management process, the focus typically falls on reporting and documentation. Once that’s over, then teams tend to fall behind on the follow-up part.

With incident management software, you can set up automatic notifications for the corrective and preventive actions your team decides to take. These alerts give you more control over the entire process, so that you don’t miss out on the most important step.

Scale your approach

The problem with a manual approach is that it’s difficult to scale over time. The more locations and employees your company adds, the harder it is to maintain spreadsheets, emails, and written documents.

With a digital system, you can centralize all your data. This includes incident response plans, injury and illness forms, and other important documents. That way, you can maintain consistent incident management standards even across different locations or teams.

Implementing an automated system

One of the best things about automated incident management tools is that they apply to more than just safety incidents. Here are some examples of different processes you can use these systems for:

• Security threats (physical and cyber)
• Health and safety incidents
• Near misses
• Product recalls
• Equipment or process failures

When implementing an automated approach, you want to make sure that you provide adequate training for everyone on your team. The more practice users have with the system before you launch, the more likely they are to adopt it long-term.