ECU has a duty of care to maintain a safety and healthy working environment and this includes the requirement to report hazards and incidents and conduct investigations.
The Incident Reporting and Investigation Guideline provides overviews of ECU’s Health and Safety incident and hazard reporting processes.
The Incident and Hazard module of Riskware is used for reporting both hazards and incidents and completing investigations and action plans.
Click here to view information on how to use Riskware.
Everyone at ECU who observes a hazard has an obligation to report and to fix them where it is safe to do so. For hazards that you can’t fix yourself, report them using the Riskware Incident and Hazard Module. For information on raising maintenance requests, refer to the DCS website or contact maintenance directly on 6404 5554.
If you're not sure where to report a hazard, please contact your local elected Health and Safety Representative or the Safety and Employment Relations Team on 6304 2302 or osh@ecu.edu.au
Where a hazard requires more than a maintenance request to resolve it, ECU’s Online Riskware system will prompt completion of an action plan to document actions required to eliminate or minimise exposure to the hazard. It is the responsibility of the Supervisor of the area where the hazard is located to complete the action plan.
The Hazard Resolution Procedure provides further details of the process for reporting and resolving hazards, it also provides a process for what to do if a hazard isn’t resolved to your satisfaction.
ECU takes incidents in workplaces seriously and expects these to be reported in a timely manner, after initial response and assistance is provided. The Incident Reporting and Investigation Guideline and supporting documents provide further details of the process for reporting Health and Safety incidents.
Staff are responsible for reporting any incident involving a staff member, student, contractor or visitor. Incidents must be reported to your Supervisor as soon as practical and recorded using the Incident and Hazard Module of Riskware .
In addition to reporting the incident in ECU’s online Riskware system, it is the responsibility of the Supervisor to escalate communication of the incident further within School or Centre and in accordance with their requirements.
Should a staff member require medical treatment as a result of a workplace incident, please contact the Safety and Employment Relations team on 6304 2302 or osh@ecu.edu.au as soon as practicable to enable early injury management intervention.
There are some circumstances where an incident must be reported to WorkSafe and this is undertaken by the Safety and Employment Relations office. Early reporting to the team will ensure compliance.
It is the responsibility of the involved person’s direct line supervisor to investigate Health and Safety incidents in consultation with area Health and Safety representative. For students this may be their Lecturer; for contractors it's the ECU Responsible Officer. The person responsible for investigating an incident involving a visitor will vary, depending on the purpose of their visit.
The Incident Reporting and Investigation Guideline in the Resources section also provides details on the incident investigation process.
Incident investigations are completed within the Incident and Hazard Module of Riskware. Notification that an incident investigation is required to be completed within Riskware will be automatically triggered when an incident is reported.