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Make our workplace safer: Report occupational injuries, incidents & risk observations

Portrait woman. Photo.
Nina Månsson. Photo: Agata Garpenlind.

If you have suffered an occupational injury or an incident, you must report it in the IA system. It´s important for many reasons (see fact box) for instance so it doesn't happen again and so that you will receive compensation. Our HR specialist Nina Månsson, explains.

"A risk observation could be an incorrectly placed chemical or an unclear instruction. An incident: a lamp falls from the ceiling in the middle of the workplace, but no one is injured because no one was sitting there at the time. An occupational injury could be exposure to a dangerous substance that has led to eczema. Or that an employee who is on sick leave on a half-time basis states that the reason is a constant high workload and a lack of resources to meet the demands of the work. Another example is an employee who is in a hurry to a meeting and falls down the stairs and breaks his arm.”

Get help

As an employee, you report what has happened by logging in to the IA system. A link to the IA system can be found on Intramed. If you need help with the report, you should talk to your immediate manager, safety representative or work environment coordinator and they can help you with the report. It is possible to report afterwards, but then the benefit is that the event is included in the statistics. As time passes it often becomes more difficult to work with investigation, measures and follow-ups.

Violations and discrimination

"If you feel that you have been subjected to harassment or discriminationt, you should tell your manager about it so that the management have the opportunity to do something about it. If it is your manager who you think has violated you, you must tell your manager's manager”.

You can ask for a meeting with the manager, write down your story in an email to the manager or report it in the IA system. There are no formal requirements for how you tell the manager. The important thing is that the manager knows what has happened and how you experienced it so that the manager can do something about it. If you do not know who your manager is, talk to the Head of Department, Head of Division or an equivalent. You are welcome to bring a support person, such as union support or a safety representative, with you when you tell them about what you have been through.

"This also needs to be added to the IA system for the sake of statistics, but you do not have to do it yourself. It can be done by the manager or the safety representative. It is important that no names are revealed, and the info is anonymized!”

Why employees should report incidents at work

  • To prevent something like this from happening again, that is, to prevent ill health and accidents at work.
  • Eliminate risks that could lead to occupational injuries or incidents.
  • Spread knowledge about risks to other activities, that is, learn from each other.  
  • Reporting incidents is an important part of work environment management to identify risks in the business, i.e. to take measures to prevent ill health and accidents at work.
  • Reporting helps to ensure that the person who may have been injured receives the correct compensation in the event of an accident, travel accident or occupational disease.
  • Last, but not least, to get good data/statistics to identify risks that are common in the business.

A good tip!

There is a short online course in the Competence Portal that takes about 15 minutes.

Work environment definitions

  • Occupational injuries are ill health or accidents that you encounter in or in connection with your work (AJ!).
  • An incident is when something has happened that could have resulted in an occupational injury OJ!).
  • A risk observation is a risk or a deficiency that could lead to an incident, ill health or accident.

For managers: Closing cases in the IA system

"I would also like to take the opportunity to convey that it is important to close cases that are in the IA system when they are ready. Today, there are quite a few cases that are probably ready, but not marked as ready. Both the manager and the safety representative need to mark as clear in order to close a case. Alternatively, add why the case is not marked as clear, for example it could be that the measure was not sufficient to remove the risk.” Read more on the HR web