Schools, colleges and training providers need to be sure that they satisfy all legal reporting requirements for both employees and their students and take appropriate measures to monitor Incidents. These include any accidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences that take place whilst students or pupils are within your care.
The law requires that certain work-related accidents are reported to the local authority or the Health and Safety Executive under RIDDOR. If your school and college is still using paper Incident Report Forms, you will be only too familiar with the lengthy processes that these forms take to complete. In this article, we outline 5 benefits of switching to electronic Incident Report Forms:
- Ease of use
Electronic forms provide a much more efficient and easy way of reporting accidents and incidents because they can be completed quickly whilst under pressure. This is particularly important to accurately record important details, such as wounds or injuries as soon as an incident has occurred. And with the growth of technology, people are now faster at typing than they are at handwriting, so switching to electronic forms will make it easier for all your staff to do this efficiently.
2. Greater flexibility
Electronic Incident forms provide greater flexibility if you are ever outside of the classroom, as they can easily be completed on an electronic device such as an iPad or Smart phone.
The forms can also be easily customised (using a drag and drop interface) to match your school or college’s branding and colour scheme and you can easily add or amend questions at any time.
3. Eliminates errors
Schools and College that use electronic incident report forms do not need to expend effort deciphering hand-written forms and transcribing data, so transcription errors are eliminated which will provide stronger evidence if any legal action were to be taken.
4. Easy integration
The submitted data can be easily transferred and integrated with your internal processes, thereby helping to streamline back-office processes. This helps to minimise administrative overheads of having to manually transfer the information from a paper form to your internal systems.
5. Easy storage and archiving
The Health and Safety Executive requires schools and colleges to keep records for at least three years after the incident. Imagine the amount of paper this would incur, not to mention the space to store and archive these over three years. Electronic forms allow you store all data securely in the cloud so you can easily access it should you ever need to. Finally, student and employee data are stored more securely; eliminating the risk of theft, fire or damage.
iPEGS has helped many schools and colleges switch to electronic incident forms to improve their internal processes. Contact us for a free trial, or sign-up for a free account today.
