There are many different ways you can suffer an injury at work, and different roles and professions bring with them various hazards that you need to look out for. Office workers may worry about choking on their lunch or falling supplies when stocking up on pens. In contrast, construction workers or tradespeople are likely more concerned about heavy machinery and faults.
There are health and safety policies put in place to ensure employees and visitors remain safe at work. However, even the most fine-tuned policies are not perfect, with 2.8 million workplace injuries reported last year. While the chances of an injury are decreased through these policies, they are not eliminated. If you have suffered an injury at work, here is what you can do.
Get Treatment
Before anything else, you must get treatment for whatever injuries at work you have suffered. This can be as minor as a cut in your arm to something more severe. You might experience a broken leg after falling from a platform or an injured back from something falling on top of you.
The person responsible for First Aid should be there to help you through the treatment. However, First Aiders can only do so much, and it might be that you need emergency medical attention. If this is the case, someone should go with you to the hospital.
Tell Somebody
Telling someone what happened won’t be necessarily high on your list of priorities after suffering an injury, especially if it is particularly severe. Despite this, it’s still crucial that someone informs the manager of what happened to help them write up an incident report.
Your supervisor or manager should be aware of what happened, and anyone who witnessed the incident should provide any information they can to ensure a thorough and clear picture of what happened. You will also need to provide your statement within 30 days of the incident. Otherwise, you risk missing out on any insurance provided by the company, meaning you’ll need to pay for your own medical bills.
Follow Procedure
It’s easy to get frustrated after an injury at work, especially if it was the fault of someone not following the correct procedures. Your insurance should cover any medical expenses, but you may want to take it a step further and work with personal injury lawyers and pittsburgh workers compensation attorneys to receive further compensation.
It can be risky to file a claim against your employer. However, if you feel you have a solid case against them, then it could be worth pursuing. Despite this, you should endeavor to remain professional throughout the proceedings and provide the necessary details and information about your incident.
Your accident may push your employer to update its workplace safety policies, too, and this won’t just be a benefit to you and your coworkers, but also to the company as a whole as it should minimize the risk of further incidents in the future.
On the Job
You might expect to be safe at work, but many circumstances can affect this. While most accidents are preventable, others would have occurred regardless of how closely you followed safety procedures. When this happens, you must approach the next steps knowing exactly what you need to do.
