When the Clock Starts: 12 Reporting Deadlines Across Jurisdictions
Most compliance calendars are built around annual obligations, because annual obligations are easy to schedule.
The obligations that catch international groups out are the other kind. They attach to an event, they start running the moment it happens, and several of them are shorter than the time it takes a multinational incident process to escalate from a local office to a regional function and back.
This is a map of those clocks, drawn from jurisdictions covered across this series. Treat it as a prompt to check your own entities rather than as a reference, because periods are amended and several of the sources below are secondary.
Twelve of them.
1. Great Britain: without delay, and the seven-day threshold
The anchor most groups design around.
Under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, the most serious matters are notified to the enforcing authority without delay and reported by an approved means. Regulation 4 sets out the non-fatal injury provisions, including where a person is incapacitated for routine work for more than seven consecutive days, excluding the day of the accident.
Regulation 6 adds a provision that catches people out: where an employee dies within one year of an accident, the employer must notify the enforcing authority without delay, whether or not the injury was reported at the time.
The specific reporting periods sit in the reporting procedure and are set out on HSE's RIDDOR pages. Confirm them there rather than from memory.
2. Croatia: two working days after a fatality
The shortest clock in this series, and it is not a report.
Where a fatal injury occurs, the employer must convene a session of the occupational safety committee within two working days. Failure is a specific offence.
Two working days is faster than most groups can convene anything, particularly where the committee includes an external occupational medicine specialist and the decision-makers are abroad.
3. Slovakia: eight days for the written record
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A registered work injury, meaning one causing incapacity beyond three days or death, must be investigated with the participation of the injured employee where their condition allows and the relevant employee safety representative, and the record written within eight days of the employer learning it is registrable.
The participation requirement is the constraint. This cannot be completed remotely from a central function.
4. Morocco: fifteen days, to two inspectorates
The safety and hygiene committee investigates every workplace accident and occupational disease through two nominated members, and the employer sends a copy of the report to the labour inspector and the medical labour inspector within fifteen days of the accident or of the finding of the disease.
Two recipients, one period.
5. Kuwait: immediately, and the commute counts
Where a worker is injured by cause of or during the work, or while on the way to or back from work, the employer reports immediately on occurrence or as soon as it becomes aware.
Two features. The word is immediate rather than a number of days, so an escalation path through a regional office will not meet it. And the commute is inside the obligation, which is an entire category most incident processes never capture.
6. Israel: the commute again, and annual returns
Israel takes a similar approach, treating an incident occurring while travelling to or from the workplace as an occupational accident requiring reporting, alongside separate annual reporting to the labour ministry on accidents, injuries and occupational diseases.
Where a group has both Kuwaiti and Israeli entities, the commuting category needs to exist in its process regardless of what the British position is.
7. Bahrain: seven successive days, and vehicles on site
Four reportable categories: death, serious injury, any injury causing absence for seven successive days not counting the day of injury, and vehicle accidents taking place in the establishment or workplace.
Two details. Where the day following the injury is a holiday, it counts in the days of absence. And the vehicle category means an incident in your own car park is reportable in its own right.
8. Estonia: ten days for an appointment
Not an incident clock, and it belongs here because groups miss it for the same reason.
The employer notifies the Labour Inspectorate of the appointed working environment specialist, through the working environment database or in a reproducible form, within ten days of the appointment.
Appointments change. The notification obligation attaches each time.
9. Lithuania: immediately on signing
Introductory instruction must be carried out and recorded in the undertaking's register immediately upon conclusion of the employment contract.
A group onboarding process that runs training in week one has missed a requirement expressed in terms of the contract date.
10. Bulgaria: 30 April
The annual declaration to the territorial directorate of the Labour Inspectorate is filed by 30 April of the following year, with filing open from 1 January and available electronically.
There is also a separate obligation to declare on opening a business or changing the activity or technology used.
11. Kenya: the audit that files itself
The statutory safety and health audit must be carried out at least every twelve months by an approved advisor, who issues a report to the occupier and sends a copy to the Director.
The clock here is annual, and the distinguishing feature is direction: the output reaches the regulator whether or not the organisation acts on it.
12. The pattern: three kinds of clock
Reading these together, a group incident and compliance process needs to accommodate three different things.
Immediate or near-immediate notification, where escalation through a regional function will fail. Kuwait is the clearest example, and Britain's without-delay categories work the same way.
Short fixed periods measured in days, where the constraint is usually not the deadline but a participation or convening requirement inside it. Croatia, Slovakia and Morocco all fall here.
Absence-triggered thresholds, which start running silently. Britain's seven consecutive days and Bahrain's seven successive days both depend on somebody tracking an absence and recognising that it has crossed a line, which is an HR process rather than a safety one.
That third category is the most commonly missed, because nothing happens at the moment of the incident to start a visible clock.
The twelve, in short
| Jurisdiction | Clock |
|---|---|
| Great Britain | Without delay for the most serious; over-seven-day threshold; death within a year |
| Croatia | Committee session within two working days of a fatality |
| Slovakia | Written record within eight days, with participation |
| Morocco | Report to two inspectorates within fifteen days |
| Kuwait | Immediate, and the commute is included |
| Israel | Commuting accidents reportable; annual returns |
| Bahrain | Seven successive days' absence; vehicle accidents on site |
| Estonia | Ten days to notify an appointment |
| Lithuania | Instruction register entry on conclusion of contract |
| Bulgaria | Annual declaration by 30 April |
| Kenya | Annual audit, report sent to the Director |
| The pattern | Immediate, short fixed, and absence-triggered |
What to do with this
Three things, and they are process rather than legal work.
Build the categories into your incident form. If commuting accidents and vehicle incidents on premises are not options somebody can select, they will not be captured, and two of the jurisdictions above require them.
Give each entity a named local reporter with authority. Where a clock is measured in hours or two working days, the report cannot route through a regional approval step. Decide that in advance rather than during an incident.
Connect absence data to the safety process. The seven-day thresholds are invisible unless somebody is watching absence with reporting in mind.
Holding each entity's categories, clocks and named reporters in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits are how groups discover which entity's process has never been tested. The ILO publishes the international standards many of these national requirements align to.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite builds incident processes that work at the speed each jurisdiction actually requires, which is the part a single group procedure cannot do. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with finance and banking, IT and software and professional services organisations with entities in multiple countries.
Our global health and safety consultants establish the clocks that apply to each of your entities, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current as requirements change.
If an employee in one of your overseas entities were injured tomorrow, and nobody could say who reports it or by when, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
