Preventing Accidents in the Workplace: The Employer’s duty of care
The term “duty of care” is very common in every document discussing personal injury sustained in the workplace. In fact, it is one of the important aspects that need to be proven in the event that an accident claim is being considered. Even if the accident victim sustain injuries if he cannot substantiate that the employer failed to demonstrate his duty of care, the case may end futile. But what exactly comprises this duty of employers?
Duty of care means that the employer must exhaust every possible means to make sure that their employee’s health, welfare, and wellbeing are protected at all times inside the company premises. This is not for the advantage of the employees alone but it entails a business lead, too. It can highly influence the trust and the level of commitment of the employees. Higher commitment of employees leads to loyalty, better productivity, and competent involvement. All of which are factors in improving company profits.
The government imposes legal obligations to all employers to abide by the safety and health law relevant to their type of business. The employers are also obliged to have moral and ethical responsibilities not to promote or fail to prevent physical or psychological injury. The law also binds the employers to realize their duties regarding personal injury and accident claims.
Requirements under the employer’s duty of care include, but are not limited to the following:
- Clearly outlining and describing jobs, and the potential danger assessments
- Warranting a danger-free work premises
- Providing sufficient training and skill upgrades
- Conducting performance appraisal and providing feedback
- Ensuring that staff does not exceed standard work hours and if unavoidable, all excess hours must be paid
- Providing areas for breaks and recreation
- Promoting equality among employees (no discrimination)
- Encouraging employees to raise their concerns and demonstrating neutralism
- Protecting employees from bullying or intimidation, or harassment
- Protecting the staff from mental injury due to depression from excessive workload and work time
Though an employer can be charged of violating their duty of care if they do not exhaust every available way to keep their employees safe from danger, the employees also have duties for their safety at work. For example, refusal to accept work due to lack of training and high safety risk is supported by law, thus, disciplinary action is illegal. There are cases when a company introduces new equipment to replace manual processes without training the new operator. This imposes potential accident in the workplace and the new operator can decline the job. If the employee is forced to do the job and he sustains injury, the employer will be liable for the accident claim. If this happens, the cost for the claim will be greater than the cost of training the employee.