What Steps Should You Take After Suffering An At-Work Incident
If you’ve been involved in an accident at work, then it’s important that you take a number of distinct steps in the aftermath. These will help to protect your health, and the health of those around you, and help you, where appropriate, to seek a legal remedy.
So, what do these steps look like? Let’s take a look at some of the more crucial ones.
Table of Contents
Make the environment safe
If the cause of the accident is still posing a danger to those nearby, then it’s vital to eliminate the threat before taking any further action. If there’s a fire, in other words, you’ll want to either put it out or evacuate the building before doing anything else.
Seek Immediate Medical Attention
Once the source of the danger is eliminated, you can worry about seeking medical attention for those who need it. It’s worth bearing in mind that even an apparently minor injury can be serious, if left untreated.
Seeking medical attention will also serve another important purpose: it will create a record of the injury, which you can use to evidence any legal claim you make in the future.
Report the Incident to Your Employer
If there are more than ten people employed by your employer, then they have a legal responsibility to keep an accident book. This should be updated with the details of the accident as soon as possible. This will not only help to resolve any disputes when a claim is made – it will also provide vital evidence that your employer can use in a risk assessment, in order to make future accidents of the same kind less likely. If an injury was caused by a lack of PPE, then saying so in the log book will provide the employer with a reason to secure more PPE, and mandate its use.
Understand Your Legal Rights and Seek Advice
Under UK law, employees are entitled to a safe working environment. If this is not provided, then it might amount to negligence on the part of your employer. This being the case, it’s appropriate to seek compensation through the right solicitor. A personal injury solicitor will often assess your claim at the outset, and may even proceed on a no-win, no-fee basis.
Document the Accident Scene
As well as filling in the accident book, you’ll also want to thoroughly document the accident itself. Images, video and spoken evidence might all be crucial. Make sure that you have testimony from any witnesses, as well as contact details. You might need to rely on this testimony in court later on. If you fail to document the scene before it’s cleared up, you might create additional work for yourself later – and lower the chances that your claim will ultimately succeed.