According to the law, employers are responsible for the safety of their workers whilst they are in the workplace. This is more than a general principle as it has been enshrined in various specific pieces of legislation.
Your employer has a duty of care to ensure that the environment you work in has been made as safe as it possibly can be, in terms of both accidents and longer term conditions and illnesses. If they fail in this duty and this negligence results in you suffering an injury, then you have every right to seek compensation. If you’ve been injured at work, then the first step to take is to enter details of the incident in an Accident Book, thus providing a point of reference while the events are still fresh in your mind. The sooner you follow that by getting in touch with a personal injury solicitor, the better, since the testimony of witnesses and any more written documentation can be gathered together and built into a compelling case.
A successful claim for compensation requires convincing the court that your employer failed to live up to their duty of care and that this failure resulted in you becoming injured. The amount of money rewarded in the event of a successful claim will be calculated on the basis of several factors. The first of these is as simple as the pain and suffering you’ve experienced and the impact which the injury has had on your general quality of life. The other component of the compensation will be an amount to cover expenses from immediate travel and medical expenses all the way up to a calculation of past and future lost earnings. The least you can expect when earning a living is that you should be looked after by your employer. If this isn’t the case, then you deserve every penny of any compensation awarded.
