How common are office injuries and accidents?

The myth that offices are safe places to work takes a considerable amount of demolishing, so entrenched is it in the national psyche. However, filled with hazards ranging from unsafe office machinery, furniture and fittings to none-ergonomic work stations, unsafe floors and storage, repetitive tasks such as typing and hours of sedentary work the potential for harm to come to an office worker is far from minimal.

True, the rate of injuries and accidents is far higher is other sectors of the economy; indeed the 33 per 100,000 workers experiencing a serious injury in an office and 72 per 100,000 experiencing an injury requiring more than 3 days away from work, puts office work at the bottom of the Health and Safety Executive’s work injury incidence scale amongst the industry sectors for which there is data, but accidents and injuries in offices there most definitely are. To be precise, 1,035 serious injuries and 2,249 injuries requiring a three day plus absence from work in 2010-11 alone.

Data from the UK’s Labour Force Survey for 2010-11 strongly suggests substantial under reporting of accidents that occur in offices. The main reason for this under reporting is apparently the victims’ reluctance to blame anyone other than themselves for their accident as it occurred in an environment that everyone knows is completely safe to work in. After all, you can’t kill yourself with a paper cut and you’re not going to fracture your foot if you drop a roll of sellotape onto it. If only all office mishaps were so minor.

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The consequences of construction accidents

The obvious and most negative consequence of construction accidents is of course the sometimes terrible injuries that workers suffer. Multiple fractures of major bones, brain injuries, extensive burns, permanently damaged hearts due to electrocution, extensive damage to internal organs as a result of crushing injuries and nerve damage from conditions such as vibration white finger are amongst a list of injuries too varied and long to include here and which are all unfortunately still far from uncommon in the construction industry. Inevitably and tragically some of these injuries can prove fatal; in fact construction accidents accounted for a staggering 28% of all workplace deaths in the UK during the year 2011-2012.

If there can be a positive aspect to the grim statistics detailing death and injury from construction accidents, it is that each fatality and injury serves to highlight, in many cases, the negligence of employers in failing to comply with their legal duty to provide a safe workplace and ensure as far as is reasonably practicable the health, safety and welfare of their employees at work. From these instances of negligence hard lessons can be learnt and the deterrent factor of ever increasing insurance costs and tarnished company reputations in the wake of unsuccessfully defended work injury compensation claims, weighed by construction companies against the morally unjustifiable benefits to be gained by skimping on health and safety in order to be able to undercut rival bids for construction projects or simply sinking back into a comfort zone of paying lip service to health and safety.

On the evidence of the Health and Safety Executive’s data on accidents in the construction industry over the last couple of decades, lessons are indeed being learnt and the gradual reduction in deaths and serious injuries since the 1990s seems to reflect a more positive and pro-active approach to health and safety amongst companies working in the sector. However the numbers are still high compared to other sectors and whilst they remain so, the previously engrained misconception within the construction industry that the toll in human life and health is an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the type of work being undertaken will stubbornly persist.

Only increasingly proficient project planning, the elevation of health and safety above a merely paper exercise and the will to expunge the pockets of bad practice historically found in areas such as staff recruitment and training, workplace safety, personal protective equipment and the culture of long hours and bonus inducements, will continue the downwards trend in workplace fatality and injury rates.

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If you are in need of any advice or information regarding a Construction Injury, don’t delay, or you risk losing your right to be compensated for your personal injury.

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Common causes of accidents and injury in warehouses

Over recent decades, in order to become more efficient, warehouses have generally become larger which has generated the requirement for processes become increasingly automated and mechanised. The results of these changes have resulted in workplaces in which many more vehicles and equipment, than was formerly the case, have to be safely accommodated alongside the employees who themselves often have to manually move roll cages and pallets to tighter timescales than ever before. It can be a stressful environment to work in, often noisy and sometimes, unfortunately, more dangerous than it should be.

By far the most common major accidents in warehouses in the UK since the turn of the century have been slips and trips, accounting for 26% of all injuries. A truly astonishing 45% of all injuries sustained in course of warehouse work that necessitated workers taking three or more days off work were caused by manual handling accidents. Trailing in the statistical wake of those two work accident types are:

• Falls from height.

• Being hit by a moving or falling object.

• Being struck by a vehicle.

• Impact with a stationery or fixed object.

• Other kinds of accident.

The main causes of these accidents fall under two main headings:

1) Environmental

2) Work processes

Environmental factors include:

• An insufficiently clean workplace.

• Poorly maintained systems, devices and equipment.

• Inadequate lighting.

• Poor floor surface, due to presence of contaminants or inadequate maintainance, inappropriate covering, slopes, ramps and holes.

• Accumulations of waste.

• Staircases without handrails (one or two).

• Insufficient space for employees to work.

• Temperature too hot or cold.

• Poorly designed warehouse floor plan.

• Vehicles not separated from pedestrians.

• Vehicle movement, not controlled when operating in an environment with pedestrians.

Work processes factors include:

• Inadequate job and health and safety training for employees.

• Managers/supervisors not challenging unsafe behaviour by employees.

• Jobs that require repetitive heavy lifting or the application of excessive physical force.

• Absence of personal protective equipment or a lack of training on how to use it.

• Inadequate communication with non-employees (visiting lorry drivers, members of the public) regarding site health and safety rules.

• Lack of lifting and carrying equipment to enable manual handling to be avoided.

• Overstocking causing packs to fall off shelves.

• Poorly designed shift rotas leading to employee fatigue.

• Insufficient training on the movement and storage of hazardous substances, leading to mishandling that causes hazardous contents to be accidentally released from their packs.

The list is almost endless. The factors are all addressable and indeed, under the current and extensive UK workplace health and safety legislation it is the legal duty of employers to maintain their workplaces in safe and good order and as far as is reasonably practicable ensure the health, safety and welfare of their employees at work  – or risk the chance of a personal injury compensation claim.

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Can I claim compensation for an injury involving working with horses?

If your personal injury was the result of an accident for which you weren’t to blame, you are on well on your way to being able to make a claim for compensation. If, additionally, your accident occurred because your employer failed to ensure as far as is reasonably practicable your health, safety and welfare at the riding establishment or livery stables where you work, it will probably only take a short time for a specialist personal injury claims solicitor to determine the connection between your accident and your employer’s failure to discharge her legal duty of care to you. If that connection is there then your claim can usually go ahead.

Although equine businesses are sometimes not structured like ‘normal’ workplaces and are often run by families and friends and have employees carrying out similar tasks to those family, friends or the customers paying to hire horses or livery their horses, the owner or employer has a duty of care to all of them, employees and non-employees alike. You do not therefore need to have been an employee when you suffered your injury to be able to make your claim although the duty of care to an employee entails a greater extent of responsibilities than does the duty of care to a non-employee. In the former instance health, safety and welfare of individuals have to be taken into account, in the latter only the health and safety of non-employees. Usually, in the case of a workplace accident and claim for compensation this differentiation will have no bearing on the validity of the claim.

A straight forward example of an employer’s failure to discharge their duty of care towards an employee in their stables would have been to neglect to warn that employee that horses are unpredictable and nervous animals who possess a dangerously powerful and long reaching kick and as a result of that lack of training, the employee sustained a serious injury due to being kicked. Another straightforward example of an employer’s failure to discharge their duty of care would be a failure to supply adequate protective equipment, such as a hard hat and body protector to an employee expected to exercise horses by riding them and due to the lack of equipment that employee sustained a serious head injury when she/he fell from their horse.

Making an Equine Injury Claim

If you would like our expert Personal Injury Solicitors on your side, just email us on advice@the-personal-injury-solicitors.co.uk or call us on FREEPHONE FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 today and we will contact you very soon.