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Dealing with Workplace Accidents

Despite huge improvements in health and safety along with an ever increasing list of safety rules, sadly many workplaces still remain dangerous. It doesn’t matter what employment sector you work in there are potential dangers present in all of them.

You could be working in an office and start suffering from repetitive strain injury due to incorrect positioning of your desk or you could trip over aspects such as boxes that have been left on the floor. Maybe you are a construction worker who is suffering due to a fall from scaffolding or you are a labourer who has been given faulty equipment. Whatever your position and whatever your workplace sector, if you don’t have the correct health and safety or the right amount of training you are running the risk of suffering from a severe accident.

It is the responsibility of your employer to ensure that the workplace is safe and free from hazards. It is also the responsibility of your employer to ensure that employees have received the correct amount of training; however as an employee if you feel that you haven’t received sufficient training for the job that you are doing or if any of the equipment that you are using is faulty/worn you must report it to your employer straight away so that the necessary action can be taken to improve the safety of the workplace.

If the worst does happen and an accident does happen in the workplace then your employer has a legal obligation to report certain accidents and incidents. Your employer must report serious work-related accidents, diseases and dangerous incidents to the Incident Contact Centre of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), or in Northern Ireland the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI).

It is essential that your employer reports the following:

• Death
• Major injuries (for example, a broken arm or ribs)
• Dangerous incidents (for example, the collapse of scaffolding, people overcome by gas)
• Any other injury that stops an employee from doing their normal work for more than three days
• Disease

As well as reporting any serious accidents or incidents you employer must also provide the company with an accident book, which is required by law if a business has more than ten employees. If however there is no accident book and no one has made a note of the incident then it is important that you advise your employer to put what happened into writing, detailing the full circumstances of the accident and the injuries that were sustained.

In order to reduce the amount of accidents that are caused due to incorrect safety procedures it is important that all employers are provided with the correct safety wear such as goggles, hard hats, ear defenders, dust masks, safety gloves, safety boots or high-visibility jackets as well as being shown how to lift heavy objects in a safe way.

If you have had an accident at work it is important that you get any injuries checked by a health professional and that you record details of your injuries to your employer.

Helen is the web master of Accident Consult, specialists in all aspects of Workplace Accidents.

Dealing with Workplace Accidents / Author: Helen

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