How to Investigate a Workplace Incident Properly (Not Just Report It)

How to investigate a workplace incident properly (not just report it)

Reporting an incident to WorkSafe and investigating it are two different jobs. The law makes most Victorian manufacturers do the first — call 13 23 60 immediately, then submit written notice within 48 hours for anything notifiable. Nobody makes you do the second. That's the gap where the same incident happens again six months later.

Start by preserving the scene, not tidying it up

Under the OHS Act 2004 (Vic), an employer required to notify WorkSafe of an incident must not, without reasonable excuse, fail to preserve the incident site until an inspector has attended or otherwise directs. The only permitted exceptions are to protect health and safety, help an injured person, take essential action to make the area safe, or prevent a further incident.

In practice that means: photos before anything is moved, not after the forklift's been driven away and the spill's been hosed down.

What WorkSafe's own investigators actually do

WorkSafe's own process is a useful model for what "properly" looks like. Their investigators ask people what happened — witnesses, other employees, the employer, sometimes experts — and request signed witness statements. They collect evidence and examine training, maintenance and medical records. WorkSafe is upfront that a full investigation "can take many months."

An employer's internal investigation should follow the same discipline — evidence and statements, not assumptions — just a lot faster, because you don't have months before memories fade and the next shift resets the scene.

Five things a proper investigation actually covers

1. Scene and evidence — what the area actually looked like, before anyone tidies up
2. Witness statements — taken while people still remember details clearly, not weeks later
3. A timeline — what happened, in order, not just what happened
4. Root cause, not the first excuse — "the guard was off" is what happened; why it was off, and why that was allowed to be normal, is the root cause
5. Corrective actions matched to the hierarchy of controls — eliminating or engineering out the hazard beats "retrain everyone," which is usually the weakest fix available and the first one reached for

Why "who's to blame" investigations make things worse

An investigation that's really a search for someone to blame teaches your crew one lesson: don't report the next near miss. A fair, documented investigation that focuses on what let the incident happen — not who to punish — is what keeps people reporting the small stuff before it becomes the big stuff.

The clock that matters most: the first 24–48 hours

The 48-hour written-notice deadline gets the attention because it's a legal one. But the more consequential clock is the same 48 hours for your own investigation. WorkSafe's own investigations can run for months precisely because they're starting from a cold case — statements, records, and a scene that's long since moved on. An employer who gets evidence and statements down in the first day or two often ends up with the only complete, contemporaneous record of what actually happened.

How Ardmor helps

When an incident is logged in Ardmor, it opens as a guided, five-stage investigation — scene, evidence, interviews, root cause, controls — with a draft for each stage generated from the details already on file, for a person to review and finish rather than starting from a blank page. Witnesses can be sent a link to give their account without creating a login. The same 48-hour countdown from notification carries through to a drafted WorkSafe notification, built from the case record. It's guided by our team, not left to a template — because a fill-in-the-blanks form is exactly what produces a "the guard was off" investigation instead of a real one.

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 1 August 2026.