Risk Management - Injury & Incident Reporting - Escalate Using the Extension Phone Tree

The Extension Phone Tree is an escalation tool that should be used to notify Extension leadership of a high-risk incidents/injuries prior to submitting the appropriate report to risk management.

• Extension employees who engage in Extension programs, events, or activities have the important responsibility to protect their participants, volunteers, and third parties from harm.
• In the event of an injury or incident during a program, event, or activity, employees should respond in a proactive manner and follow the Extension Injury/Incident Response & Reporting Workflow. 
• An Extension employee should use their professional judgement to determine if the injury/incident should be categorized as "High" or "Low" Risk (See High-Risk and Low-Risk examples). 
• If the injury/incident is categorized as "High-Risk" it should be escalated using the Extension Phone Tree as part of the High-Risk Incident Response Workflow.
• Extension Supervisors are responsible for escalating high-risk injuries/incidents up the administrative and programmatic chains.

Extension Phone Trees

• Extension phone trees are manual call trees that escalate high-risk injuries/incidents up Extension's supervisory chain. 
• Which phone tree you use will depend on what type of employee you are and who you report to. There are four categories below:
• County-Based Educators & Coordinators
• 4-H Volunteers
• FoodWIse Educators & Teaching Coordinators
• Other Non-County-Based Employees
• In the case of a high-risk injury/incident, the phone tree is initiated by an employee calling their supervisor.
• Extension county-based faculty should escalate to their Area Extension Director.
• In the event of no answer, leave a message and call the next leadership employee(s) in the phone tree. Continue calling until you are able to reach someone.
• If you've called everyone in the phone tree with no response and you're still concerned about making sure that people know, send out an email to those you called.

Follow these instructions to find phone numbers for the phone tree

4-H Volunteer Phone Tree

FoodWIse Phone Tree