*Collaborative Post
You should be aware of the steps you need to take following an incident in the workplace. These are serious issues and should be treated as such, both by you and your employer. Read the following article below to learn more about what you should do and how to best look after yourself.
Seek Medical Help Immediately
The first essential step to take is to seek medical help immediately. When you sustain the injury, try to make your co-workers aware so that they can go and seek help. Help may come in the form of medical equipment, or it could be calling an ambulance over.
There should be guidelines within your workplace of the procedures to follow when an injury happens; ask your employer if you’re unsure. The main thing you should do is try to stop any bleeding that may have occurred or not strain any muscles or bones that may have been injured.
Report The Incident
As soon as you know you’re safe in the short term and have been seen by a doctor, consider reporting the incident to work. If possible, try to keep records of your accident, as this could help you make a claim further down the road. It will also help you claim benefits, such as statutory sick pay, which you will be entitled to.
Contact A Solicitor
Once you have been seen medically, you should contact a solicitor who has experience in workplace injury cases. It’s possible that you, or even a loved one, have had their life completely changed as a result of an incident, leaving life-lasting injuries. Depending on the severity of the injury, you may not be able to work in the same way you did before.
Longer-lasting pain could reduce the amount of time you can work. It could even mean you are not able to work at all. In cases like this, you will be due some compensation, especially if it happened within your regular working responsibilities.
It will be essential to your case that you find a solicitor who is an accredited personal injury specialist. PSR Solicitors are one such group of experts who deal with injury at work claims regularly. They can help assess your claim, and have an accident at work compensation calculator that allows you to get a rough idea of the sort of compensation you could be owed.
Ensure Your Workplace Makes Changes
While it won’t be your responsibility to enforce changes in the workplace, you can certainly provide your employer with your own experiences to help them make changes. This should allow your workplace to make changes to prevent someone else from going through something like you did.
Whilst this doesn’t help you now, it can help you feel better about everything, as you know you have done something positive. As you probably know, an employer has a legal obligation to be responsible for an employee’s health and safety. If they don’t make any changes for whatever reason, you may need to pursue further action.
This may be something you choose to do if you have remained working with your employer or after you’ve left. It will be up to you to deal with it in any way you see fit. Try not to strain yourself in doing so, as the last thing you want to do is injure yourself further, either emotionally or physically.
