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After a workplace incident, the first step is to implement immediate corrective action to remove the hazard, whether that's a faulty piece of equipment or a bully employee. The next step, though, is what prevents similar incidents in the future.

Conducting a root cause analysis helps you get to the bottom of an issue and hopefully fix it for good. This exercise finds all the possible primary and secondary causes for a problem. Then, you can figure out which of these factors contributed to the incident and correct them to reduce your risk of further problems.

There are many tools and methods for conducting an RCA. This cheat sheet outlines different types, how to use them and the pros and cons of each one.