As an employer, you are generally responsible for the health and safety of your employees. This means you should take reasonable steps to protect employees from getting injured at work. Enacted and administered by state governments, workers' compensation laws exist in every state to protect employees against financial losses that may result from work-related accidents and injuries. Workplace injuries, in this context, refers to any bodily harm or illness that an employee might suffer due to their job.
Under workers' comp laws, injured employees may be awarded damages for medical and rehabilitation expenses incurred when seeking treatment for work-related injuries and for loss of earnings due to the inability to go to work. If an employee is fatally injured, their surviving relatives may receive death benefits.
Knowing what to do when accidents happen in the workplace is crucial for avoiding huge civil lawsuits against your company. Here are two important steps to take when a work-related accident occurs.
Assist the injured employee.
The first thing to do when there has been an accident at work is to provide emergency assistance to the injured employee. You should generally accept liability for job-related accidents and injuries, even if you feel that the worker is at fault. Treating every accident and injury as legitimate helps to protect yourself from being sued by your employees, for example, for refusing to provide them with the workers' comp benefits they are entitled to because the circumstances surrounding their injury made you suspicious.
Administer first aid and accompany the injured employee to a medical provider to ensure they get the medical attention they require. Follow up with the medical care provider to ensure the employee receives prompt medical treatment. That's what any reasonable employer would do after a workplace accident.
Report the accident.
Any accident that happens in your workplace must be documented. This includes following up with the injured employee to find out what happened and filing an accident report with your state-specific workers' compensation agency.
The requirements for filing an accident report vary depending on your state. For example, each state has its own legal requirement for the time within which employers must file accident reports. If an accident at work isn't reported within that time, you'd face paying hefty fine.
Dealing with workplace accidents can be daunting. Consider seeking advice and guidance from a workers' compensation law attorney whenever an accident or injury occurs at work.
Share15 December 2020
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