A category can tell you what kind of incident you are dealing with. But as case volumes grow, broad categories often stop being specific enough.
Two reports may both fall under workplace safety, fraud, harassment, or data protection while describing very different behaviours, risks, and investigation needs.
When all of those cases sit under the same broad label, teams lose useful context. Reporting becomes less precise, predefined case information becomes harder to reuse, and downstream processes have less structured data to work with.
Ethicontrol’s Sub-Categories add another level of detail to case classification — and that classification can then support other parts of the investigation and risk management process.
A flat category structure works when organisations manage a relatively small number of incident types.
As the reporting programme grows, one category can quickly become a container for dozens of different situations.
Consider Environmental protection, health and safety.
Within that category, an organisation may need to distinguish between product safety, workplace accidents, unsafe equipment use, hygiene violations, or other specific behaviours.
Treating them all as the same classification makes it harder to:
Sub-categories add the granularity needed to distinguish those situations without creating an unmanageable list of top-level categories.
The Category dictionary in Ethicontrol supports three levels:
For example:
Environmental protection, health and safety
→ Product safety
→ Employee touches unpackaged product with dirty nitrile gloves
Each level narrows the context of the incident.
The system filters available options based on the previous selection, so users are presented with classifications relevant to the category they are already working with.
Visit our Help Center for step-by-step guidance on selecting sub-categories and working with them in case classification.
The selected sub-category does not have to remain an isolated field.
It can provide context to other elements of the case and support a more connected workflow.
When a user creates a Short plot, the selected case sub-category is automatically added to the Description field.
If the sub-category changes before a new Short plot is created, the new description uses the updated value.
This helps keep the short case narrative aligned with the current classification without requiring users to manually repeat the same information.
Sub-categories can also become an input into Violation Scoring and Risk Profiling.
Different violation sub-categories can be assigned different score values, allowing the organisation's scoring model to distinguish between violations with different levels of significance.
For example, a minor procedural breach does not necessarily need to contribute the same score as fraud, workplace violence, data misuse, or another serious violation.
This means the classification selected during case management can later contribute directly to a structured risk profile.
Read our article on Violation Scoring and Risk Profiling.
Consider two incidents reported under Environmental protection, health and safety.
The first concerns an employee slipping on a wet work surface. The second concerns an employee handling unpackaged food without the required protective gloves.
At the top-category level, both cases may look similar.
With sub-categories, they can be classified according to the specific behaviour involved.
That classification can then be reflected in the Short plot and, where configured, assigned its own violation score.
The result is a case record that contains more useful context without requiring investigators to manually recreate the same classification across different parts of the system.
More precise case data |
More relevant selections |
|
| Broad incident categories can be broken down into specific behaviours without creating an oversized flat category list. | Hierarchical filtering helps users choose from options related to the current category instead of searching through unrelated classifications. |
Better input for risk profiling |
Better analysis over time |
|
| Sub-category scores allow specific types of violations to contribute differently to a personage's overall violation score. | More granular classifications make it easier to identify which specific behaviours recur within a broader risk area. |
Sub-categories make case classification more precise, but their value goes beyond taxonomy.
By connecting detailed violation types with Short plots, Incident subjects, scoring, and other case processes, Ethicontrol allows information captured during classification to continue supporting the investigation afterwards.
A better classification structure therefore means more than cleaner case records. It creates better structured data for understanding incidents, identifying patterns, and assessing risk across the organisation.