Compensation Solicitor: Accidents at Work

No matter where you work, your employer has a duty to ensure that your workplace is safe and meets all the current health and safety legislation. If you work in an industrial setting, with machinery or chemical scrubbers, there will be additional trainings, warnings and guidelines to make sure that you know how to operate the machines safely and carry out your tasks without risk to yourself.

Accidents at work can occur for a wide range of reasons, and your employer is legally required to have liability insurance. In nearly all cases of employee accidents at work, including when machinery or equipment has been borrowed from a third party, the employer is responsible and needs to show that they have made every reasonable attempt to comply with legislation and to communicate with employees.

Your company should have an accident book, where your accident should be recorded as soon as it occurs. If your company does not have an accident book, you should ask for the incident to be recorded separately by your manager, the personnel manager or another senior member of staff. You may be asked to sign the record of the event, in which case you need to read it through to make sure that it describes the accident properly. If you decide to consult a compensation solicitor later on, the accident record will be a key piece of evidence.

Your solicitor will also want to know about any witnesses to the accident, and whether any similar events have occurred at your workplace in the recent past. Further investigation may be needed into whether you were given appropriate training, or whether you had asked for guidelines or explanations and were not given any. In addition, if your accident was due to slipping or falling, your compensation solicitor will look into whether there was adequate warning of possible danger and whether your employer was meeting their duty of care.

Accidents at work are commonplace and many do not result in compensation claims, let alone a compensation award. There are cases, however, where the employer is clearly negligent and where damages can be awarded. Your compensation solicitor can advise you on whether you have a case.