Report an injury, incident or observation

When an accident or incident happens, regardless of whether an injury has occurred the process is:

• Notify your manager immediately afterwards
• Complete an injury/incident report on the same day

This fulfils the University's reporting obligations, enables prompt investigation, and ensures that where needed, early injury management to begin.

Report any injury to an employee, student, contractor or visitor during the course of work activity.

Report any unplanned event or occurrence that under slightly different circumstances could have caused harm, injury, ill-health or damage.

Note

Damage and/or maintenance to property requires the submission of a maintenance request.

Report observed safe (positive) or unsafe (hazardous) acts or conditions.

Students should report incidents, injuries and observations to the Student Contact Centre or via their academic supervisor.

If you're a manager and you don't know whether or not an injury to a direct report has been reported, report it. Over-reporting is safer than under-reporting.

What you need to know:

To assist with identification of the person involved, include their Campus ID number and a contact phone number (if known) in the "What Happened" section.

Note that the searching of names is via the person's legal name which may differ to their preferred name.

Any incident, injury, illness or related health and safety concern at the University of Auckland must be reported if they occur:

• On Campus
• At a UoA controlled entity e.g. offsite store
• At a "Work from home space", if the incident is work related
• Or while taking part in any University-sanctioned activity or field-trip, including when overseas or during maritime work

These include:

• Injuries or illnesses
• Incidents or near-misses with potential for harm to persons
• Health and Safety observations (safe/positive or unsafe/hazardous)
• Gradual process injuries such as noise-induced hearing loss or dermatitis (where an actual injury date may be difficult to determine). Note that you should record these injuries when you first notice the symptoms or suspect you have them.
• Any time you have sought treatment from a medical provider for an injury that may be deemed work related (eg doctor, physio)

These are serious events where someone's health or safety is endangered or threatened.

If there has been an incident resulting in, or only narrowly avoiding serious harm (a Notifiable event), preserve the scene and notify the Health, Safety and Wellbeing (HSW) team immediately to determine whether a formal investigation is required.

For emergency assistance contact University Security (24 hours):
Ph 0800 373 7550 or 966 (internal)

Information collected for health and safety incidents is for the express purpose of enabling an appropriate response to the incident including investigation, follow up, corrective actions and consolidated reporting.

The information is not shared for any other purpose, except with express approval from the person involved.

Further details are on Privacy, consent and your rights (in relation to injury management).

Access reported HSW incidents: Damstra Event section

Damstra Safety (Vault) online courses

Complete these to learn how to report and manage incidents.

Damstra Safety (Vault) online courses

Damstra Safety (Vault) user access request

You can request access to the HSW Damstra Safety (Vault) Enterprise system by submitting the Damstra Safety (Vault) user access request (staff only).

• Health, Safety and Wellbeing Policy
• Health, Safety and Wellbeing definitions
• Health and Safety at Work Act, 2015 (WorkSafe)

Document Control
Version: 1.2
Last Updated: Oct 2025
Next Review: Oct 2028
Owner: hsw@auckland.ac.nz
Approver: Associate Director, Health Safety & Wellbeing