Accidents at work are an unfortunate reality – a reality which saw 135 workers lose their lives in a work-related incident last year alone. Health and safety is such an important consideration, and so heavily legislated, for this very reason. As a newly-incorporated start-up, a given business might not be aware of exactly why certain processes are so important, or even which responsibilities are legally enshrined. What, then, are the chief responsibilities of an employer to its staff, and how do these responsibilities bear out with regard to UK regulations and common law?
Recording and Reporting
Assuming immediate medical intervention has already occurred, the employer’s first responsibility is to log the precipitating incident and the results thereof. Businesses are required to have an accident report book, as a key evidential provision with regard to reporting of incidents through RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations).
Time Off
Employers are required to honour time off according to the nature and severity of the injury, and to pay employees for the length of this time – albeit paying Statutory Sick Pay, as opposed to the employee’s regular injury. The employer may have an additional agreement with their staff to pay above this legal minimum, but this is not legally enshrined, and could only be seen as something of an optional company benefit.
Potential Civil Recourse
Here, it is important to acknowledge a key potential part of an employee’s post-injury journey. While this doesn’t quite fall under regulatory compliance, conventional legal responsibilities or common-law duty of care considerations, it does address a legal process, and the employer’s potential liability.
Where workplace accidents are found to be no fault of the employees in question – whether they are caused by negligent colleagues or institutional health and safety failures – employees may be successful in making personal injury claims against employers. These civil cases are often settled prior to court proceedings, via a letter before action that summarises the intent to file a claim and the details of the claim.
Phased Return
After an injured employee has been determined fit to work again, the fit note with which they are furnished will include doctor’s advice on the best approach for a phased return to work. Phased returns enable post-injury workers to return in a slow and steady manner, taking on small amounts of their workload at a time in order to re-acclimatise.
Reasonable Adjustments
As an injured employee effects their return to work, it may also become incumbent on the employer to meet new requirements in the form of reasonable adjustments. Where the employee was debilitatingly injured or otherwise rendered disabled, the shape of their role and attendance becomes beholden to the Equality Act 2010; employers must make reasonable adjustments to the role or premises to accommodate the worker, and at employer cost to boot.
