If you have been injured as a result of an accident at work, you may be entitled to claim compensation. The latest government figures for 2010 show that 147 people were killed whilst at work, and over 121,000 other accidents happened at work that were serious enough to need reporting to the governments Health and Safety Executive.
If you are injured whilst you are at work or because of your work, your employer may be responsible for paying you compensation if they have failed to meet their legal responsibility to keep their employees safe.
In the vast majority of cases, the claim will be dealt with by the employer’s insurance company. It is a legal requirement for all employers to have insurance in place to cover the risk of employees being injured at work.
Employers have a legal duty to look after the health and safety of their employees – an employee injured at work will be entitled to compensation if their employer failed in this duty. This duty covers all areas of an employee’s work. The main duties involve making sure the work place is safe to work in, and that all work is done in the safest way possible.
In practice, this means ensuring that floors, corridors, walkways, roadways and stairs are kept clear of any obstructions or hazards that could cause someone to slip or trip. Workers must be provided with all the equipment they need to do their job safely. Any equipment provided must be suitable for the job and it must be kept in good working order and be readily available.
Workers must be given training to show them how to work safely. This includes showing new employees how to safely use machinery and equipment ,and also making sure that employees continue to do so in the future. An employer’s duty also includes making sure that they employ other employees who are reasonably safe. This means that if you are injured because of another employee’s negligence as they were not properly trained or qualified, the employer will still be liable for the injury. Although in many cases, any negligence caused by another employee is usually something the employers insurance is duty bound by law to cover you for.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 imposes a specific duty on all employers to carry out a risk assessments of all potential risks to the health and safety of their employees. The employer must identify what hazards exist in the workplace, decide who these may harm and how, then decide how serious the risk is, and what steps must be taken to reduce them and then put the findings of the assessment into practice. Employers must continually review their risk assessments and update them if necessary and all but the smallest employers must record their risk assessments.
If an employer fails to carry out a proper risk assessment of something that later causes injury to an employee, it is much more difficult for the employer to later avoid paying compensation for the injury.
If you have been injured as the result of an accident at work, call our claims helpline to find out if you may be entitled to claim compensation.
