Description
Course overview
This course is for supervisors, health and safety representatives and anyone appointed or about to be appointed to investigate workplace incidents. It covers the whole duty: what counts as an incident, what the law requires you to report and when, how to secure a scene in the first hour, how to gather evidence properly, how to trace a cause down to something you can actually fix, and how to close out a corrective action so it stays fixed.
It is built on the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the General Administrative Regulations. It is self-paced, it works on a phone, and it is written in plain English for a workforce for whom English is often a second or third language.
What you’ll learn
- Which incidents must be reported under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, how soon, and to whom.
- The difference between the forthwith report and the seven-day written report – and why forthwith is additional, never a substitute.
- The difference between reporting under the OHS Act and claiming compensation – the single most confused point in the subject.
- Who is allowed to investigate an incident, and the correct first actions at a scene.
- What you may not move or disturb at an incident scene, and what you may still do while it is preserved.
- How to gather evidence from all four sources: people, place, parts and paper, and how to interview witnesses without leading them.
- How to trace an incident from its immediate cause down to the underlying cause you can actually fix.
- How to write corrective actions that get done, and close the loop with the record, the committee and the people affected.
Course duration
Approximately 2 hours of online learning.
Assessment & Certification
The course ends with a final assessment. Questions are drawn at random from the course question bank, so no two attempts are the same. You need 80% to pass, and you can reset the quiz and try again.
A certificate is issued automatically on successful completion.
An employer sign-off sheet is included with every enrolment. The employer uses it to record that the employee has demonstrated the course competencies in their own workplace, and to make the written designation of the employee as an incident investigator for a named area. A certificate shows knowledge; the sign-off sheet is what turns that knowledge into a defensible workplace designation.
Why this course
The Occupational Health and Safety Act requires certain incidents to be reported, and the General Administrative Regulations require a proper investigation to follow. Getting either duty wrong carries real risk: a missed or late report is a compliance failure in itself, and a poor investigation lets the same incident happen again.
An investigation done well finds the underlying cause, not just the surface one, and turns it into a corrective action someone actually owns. This course is that training, delivered in a form an employer can evidence: an enrolment record, a dated certificate and a signed workplace verification.
This course is competency/awareness training presented by Safety Toolbox – Safety Toolbox (Pty) Ltd · Reg 2026/639216/07.
