How Tell Full Story Works
In this article
Introduction
Tell Full Story is the PeopleSafe way of reporting and recording accidents, incidents, hazards/risks, near misses, injuries, pain or discomfort, and nice jobs. Tell Full Story uses everyday language so everyone with a login to PeopleSafe can confidently tell their stories about what's really happening at work.
The Tell Full Story feature is the name of the online process in PeopleSafe, (accessed from a web browser), that helps you build a complete story about what happened without having to answer irrelevant questions. The intelligent form uses a combination of questions to answer, clickable boxes, drop-down selectors, and sliders to gather all the information about your story. Tell Full Story can even determine by the fields filled in whether a story is potentially serious or not and will send out the relevant alerts and notifications to users who need to know.
Everyone, who has access to PeopleSafe and is connected to an organisation that uses PeopleSafe, can tell their safety story using the Tell Full Story feature. Telling a full story may often result from someone adding a story via the StoryAnywhere app that needs further investigation.
How Tell Full Story Helps
Having a central record of all the accidents, risks, and basically any story that happens as part of the work you do is important. Not only does it help you work out and fix the things that are going wrong, it also makes sure you don't break the law.
The Tell Full Story process is:
- quick to complete
- your staff can access it anytime
- it's in plain English without the health and safety jargon
- super user friendly
When a User puts a safety story in PeopleSafe using the Tell Full Story feature, PeopleSafe will send out email notifications and txt alerts to the appropriate people to notify them that a story has been told. The notification will include the basic details of the story and a link to click through to view the full story details.
Now no one can say they weren't aware of an incident happening as everyone gets notified straight away at the same time.
The Tell Full Story process is only the first piece of the puzzle. Once the story has been told there are a couple things that need to happen. The first is called a Story Review. Reviewing a story is where the story details are investigated and we learn what real life changes need to be made. The second are Story Tasks. This is where the real life changes are made and recorded in PeopleSafe as tasks. Tasks are the proof that we're being proactive and trying to improve health and safety at work.
BUSINESS.GOVT.NZ say:
" It’s unrealistic to expect your work will always be 100% healthy and safe. Injuries, illnesses, incidents and near misses can — and do — happen. It’s important that when they do happen, you and your workers take the time to review and learn from them.
Depending on the nature, severity and complexity of the incident, learning from an H&S incident might be as simple as chatting to staff afterwards so you can all try to figure out what went wrong — and what can be done about it."
For further information: https://www.business.govt.nz/risks-and-operations/health-and-safety/plans-tools-and-learning-from-incidents/
How Tell Full Story Works
- For Users with Coordinator and Manage Users security clearance, Tell Full Story is accessed by clicking on the Tell Full Story button in the Stories tab.
- For users with Standard Staff security clearance Tell Full Story is accessed just by clicking on the Stories tab.
- Users must begin their story by selecting a Story Type to determine the questions they will answer.
- All stories except 'Nice Job' stories can have multiple story types selected.
- Questions and fields with a red asterix are compulsory and must be filled in before the user can continue to the next page.
- For extra help users can click on the grey Question Marks for a pop-up to appear with further explanation about the field.
- 'Where did it happen', 'Activity Happening at the Time' and 'Type of Gear Involved' are customisable fields.
- Tell Full Story has triggers to determine whether a story is potentially serious or not. Read about the triggers HERE.
- Stories told can be edited at the review stage.
- Attachments can be added at the end of the story, and attachments and notes can be added at the end of the review process.
- A story is assigned an ID number only after the story has been through the review process.
- A story can be deactivated only after the story has been through the review process.
Getting Started
As soon as users have been given their usernames and passwords to log into PeopleSafe, they have all they need to start telling safety stories immediately. We recommend that all types of stories be encouraged and welcomed.
Expected Step by Step Process
- (Optional) Coordinator creates site specific places and activities for Tell Full Story fields.
- Users are given their unique usernames and passwords
- Users tell safety stories about the work they do
- Managers and Coordinators are notified of stories told
- Managers and Coordinators verify the story with the story teller or other workers and give immediate aid as required
- The appropriate person reviews the story told in PeopleSafe
- Follow up tasks (sometimes called corrective actions) are created in PeopleSafe
- Notes and attachments that support the investigation are added to the original and/or the reviewed story record in PeopleSafe
- Follow up tasks are actioned and completed in PeopleSafe
Adding, Reviewing, Editing, Adding Attachments, Creating Reports or Deactivating Stories
Click on the Help Articles below for more detail.
How to Tell A Story
How to Review A Story
How to Add Attachments to a Story
How to Create Story Reports
How to Deactivate a Story
Access Permissions
Users with Coordinator Security Clearance can:
- Tell Stories.
- View the full list of Stories told.
- Review Stories.
- Upload and delete Story attachments.
- View the history of Stories.
- View and edit all Story notes.
- Deactivate Stories.
- Export Story data via CSV.
- Create Story Reports
Users with Manage Users Security Clearance can:
- Tell Stories.
- Review Stories told from users they have been given visibility of.
- View and Edit Stories told from users they have been given visibility of.
- View notes in Stories told if a) they have visibility of the user and b) they are the creator of the note.
- Create Story reports that include data from users they have been given visibility of.
Users with Standard Staff Security Clearance can:
- Tell Stories.
Outcomes
Review
Stories are only half the equation. It's great to have stories told but just as important as having the paperless record is reviewing the story.
The story review process is your opportunity to investigate the story. A review allows you to explore the root causes of the incident, add more information to the story and create action follow up tasks (sometimes called corrective actions). Completing a story review and using tasks to track actions taken is essentially creating the proof that your organisation is being proactive in incident prevention and following the law. See below for further explanation of Story Reviews.
Deactivate
Rare occurrences determine that a story might need to be deactivated. A story may be deactivated at any time but only once the story has had a story review.
Deactivating a story will delete the story details, notes, and attachments. Deactivating a story will NOT delete any tasks associated with the story.
In the context of stories, deactivating a story effectively is the same thing as deleting a story. Deactivated stories cannot be retrieved and returned to the stories list.
Related Processes and Tasks
All Coordinators, and Managers who are assigned as the Manager of staff involved in a story, will receive an email story notification which contains the main details of the Story, and will be assigned the review task. When a Story is deemed 'serious' by way of certain triggers PeopleSafe will send out an extra notification by way of TXT alert and email to users with Coordinator Security Clearance, and anyone with a Manage Users Security Clearance, providing that their profile has these settings set correctly to On. These extra alerts are designed to help management take appropriate actions sooner and assist in incident notification across the organisation.
Reports
Smart-lists allow the following story fields to be filtered in preparation for print, PDF, CSV, or bar graph reports:
- Story Type selected
- Story 'What Happened' details
- Injured or Involved persons
- Where the story occurred
- Who Reported the story
- Activity
- Severity
- Whether the story is 'Rated as Serious'
- The story importance
- Organisation the story was told in (useful for users with All Organisation view)
In One-click Story Reporting, the Story does not attempt to record which of a staff member’s Jobs they were performing at the time, so a single story may appear related to multiple Jobs.
Known Limitations
One-click Story reports may show different numbers if collating numbers across different reporting categories. This is because a single story can contain more than one reporting category, i.e. a story can contain an injury, damage and and be an accident all at once.
Export Data
Stories and directly associated data can be exported in .CSV format at any time. How to: Export Data from PeopleSafe
Traditionally, finding out what was really going on around safety at work was complicated, slow or often a bit hit and miss.
PeopleSafe helps resolve this problem by providing you with tools that direct you to take the right actions around safety. Story Reviews are one of these tools. When a Full Story is told a Story Review Task is auto-generated. This means someone in the organisation will be tasked to review that Story and take some action if needed.
Story Reviews
- Why do a Review?
- What are the steps in the Review Process?
- Who gets involved in a Review ?
- What actions may result from a Review?
- What are the keys to a successful Review?
- How do I go about reviewing a story and why are details so important?
- More about Story Reviews
Why do a Review?
Once a full story has been told, a Review is the best endeavour to have the most accurate and fullest story recorded. It's the opportunity to find out "What's really going on here?" People see and remember different things. It's important to record all perspectives of a story and it's OK if explanations of what happened don't match. It's not about being perfect but about having a clear picture of what went on. When all the details are known you have the best chance to work out what needs to be done to make work safer.
The Review Process has several goals
- To ask more questions to help you do a thorough investigation of the story.
- To check that the details of the story are correct and make any changes as updated information comes to light.
- To add more details that were unavailable at the time the story was told.
- Fix up any spelling mistakes!
- Identify any risks that were part of the story that were not considered (both new risks and risks you know about).
- Formulate new Safety Plans or update existing ones
- Look at the overall causes of the story, and consider any business changes that may need to happen because of new learning.
What are the steps in the Review Process?
There are a number of steps to the Story Review process
- An internal decision is made in the business as to who will do Story Reviews.
- The Review Process is completed within PeopleSafe.
- Any commitments or actions are added as Tasks (these are then tracked as part of the story). How to add a Task linked to a Story Record
- Automatic notifications & alerts are created in PeopleSafe depending on the content of the review.
- The story is automatically given a number and the Review Task is completed.
- Any actions committed to, need to be followed up by your internally appointed person.
- Any newly identified risks need to be reviewed considering the detail of the story.
- Any risks that were known about and had Safety Plans to control them, are reviewed to determine if any additional actions are needed to improve the control.
- Any people that were injured as part of the story need to be looked after and supported.
- Feedback on results of the review and any changes needed, to be given to workers.
Who gets involved in a Review?
Your business will have decided when setting up PeopleSafe who is responsible for reviewing stories. The size of your organisation will usually determine how many people have this role. It may be a Manager or PeopleSafe Coordinator. Anyone reviewing stories must have the delegated authority of the business and have completed the Tell Your Story Reviewer Learning Video in PeopleSafe.
The reviewer will also need help from the worker telling the story and anyone else who was involved or who needs to be consulted about the story.
What are the keys for a successful Review?
- Know your internal review processes on who does Story Reviews.
- The right people involved with the review; access to the people who were involved in the story.
- The time available to complete a review in one go.
- Any additional information ( ACC forms, Doctors certificates, etc)
How do I go about reviewing a story and why are the details so important?
A story Review involves working through a series of questions. PeopleSafe encourages good safety practices and so will ask you questions that will make it more likely that you are having the right conversations around the stories that happen. In the first screen your answers will determine the questions that follow, specifically around risks. The rest of the questions will already be populated by what has been told in the story. The Reviewer's role here is to fact check & in some cases provide detail that would only be available after the story has been told. This will likely require you to ask further questions of the worker and anyone else involved to ensure you have a robust record of the story. If Bob fell over and got 'HURT', it's very important to find out what caused Bob to fall.
PeopleSafe asks specific questions that are designed to help you meet the requirements under the law . eg Early identification of seriousness. During the review process you may escalate the story eg you may find the story now meets the notifiable injury standard.
Note: PeopleSafe does not provide additional alerts at this point and expects the reviewer to take action.
More about Story Reviews
- Story types in PeopleSafe are fixed and cannot be changed by the end user, ie the Reviewer. This mean that anyone using PeopleSafe uses the same language, and the story types are used to reduce the complexity for workers. They are not intended to be used as a perfect statistical measure of what has happened.
As soon as you start looking to get extremely detailed around high level numbers you move into Bad Safety Strategy territory. This is primarily because a story may contain multiple story types, eg where someone is hurt and breaks something because of threatening behaviour that also identifies a risk. It means that you have to choose one option to be used for statistical purposes and it becomes impossible to rank these sensibly. - Do I need to follow the Tell Your Story Review process for every safety story that happens? The intention of the PeopleSafe story workflow is to provide a clear structure for dealing with work issues that arise where you think they are more than trivial. Deciding whether to use the Tell your Story process or not see When to use Tell Your Story
- The Tell Your Story process will help you achieve good safety in your business in several ways. It will help you to find out “What’s really going on here” and to identify any new or un-controlled BIG risks. You can now monitor any new stories for controls that might not be working and it is used to provide a way for workers to engage and participate in good safety improvement processes
Further Help
External Resources:
Approved Code of Practice: Roles and Responsibilities for principals and contractors
http://www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/information-guidance/approved-codes-of-practice-acops
Business GOVT - Compliance Matters: Keeping Your Business Safe
https://www.business.govt.nz/compliance-matters/workplace-health-and-safety/workplace-health-and-safety/safety-of-visitors-in-the-workplace
Accident Compensation Corporation : Workplace Health and Safety
https://www.acc.co.nz/for-business/workplace-health-safety