Protecting your health and safety at work is the joint responsibility of both you and your employer. Your employer has a legal obligation to protect your health and safety at work by providing a safe and healthy workplace and must tell you about any health and safety issues that may affect you.
However, as an employee you also have responsibility to take steps to minimise risk to your own wellbeing and that of your colleagues. For example, if you believe there are health and safety problems at work you should point them out to your employer or the employee safety representative and ask for the problems to be dealt with.
Your employer is expected to risk assess all aspects of your working environment to identify whether there are any health and safety risks. Where risks are identified, measures must be put in place to minimise the risk. The effectiveness of any measures taken must be monitored and evaluated as part of the risk management process.
It will not be possible to completely eliminate risk for working environments and there will be incidents where employees become injured as a result of an accident at work.
The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) requires employers to report the following incidents to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)
- Deaths, major injuries and over 7-day injuries
- Occupational Diseases
- Dangerous occurrences
- Gas incidents
What should you do if you have an accident at work?
- Any injury sustained at work should be recorded using the standard recording method – usually an accident/incident report form or accident book. This includes minor injuries. Recording the accident will provide a record of what happened in case you need time off work or need to subsequently claim compensation. Recording the details of the incident will also help your employer to identify previously un-detected risks or failures in control measures and take action to stop accidents in future.
- If appropriate, make sure your employer has reported it to the HSE
- If you need to take time off work as result of an injury caused in an accident at work check your contract or written statement of employment for information about sick or accident pay (See Section on Sick Pay Rights)
- All incidents should be reported online with a telephone service for reporting fatal and major injuries only – in those instances call the Incident Contact Centre on 0845 300 9923 (Monday to Friday 8.30 am to 5 pm).
For further information relating to this topic click on the web site link.
workplacewellbeing.com assumes no responsibility for the content of linked websites.
