If you are injured at work or suffer from a work-related illness as a result of the negligence of your employer, you may be able to submit an accident at work claim for compensation.
The HSE 2009/10 statistics indicate that there were 233,000 ‘reportable’ injuries during this one year period. During the same period, there were 152 fatal injuries and a total of 1.3 million people who had worked during the past year who were suffering from an illness that they believed had been caused or made worse by their current or past work plus an additional 121,430 other reported injuries. This equates to 28.5 million working days lost overall which is equivalent to 1.2 days per worker. Of these, the majority of days taken off were due to work-related ill health (23.4 million) and fewer caused by workplace injury (5.1 million). These figures mean lost profits for companies, lost wages for workers and thousands of devastated families. Many of the workers injured will be unable to ever return to work.
Work-related injuries can include fractures, sprains, bruising, cuts and grazes, burns, electric shock, skin irritation, chemical burn and other different types. An ‘injury’ is distinguished from an ‘illness.’ Examples of work-related illness include stress and depression, asbestos-related cancers including mesothelioma, other cancers and asthma, plus others. An illness often develops over a long period of time and you may not be able to identify a single cause, unlike an injury which is usually the result of a single incident.
Stress at work is often caused by excessive pressure from long hours or poor management. There are many steps that employers can take to ensure a productive working atmosphere whilst keeping stress levels to the minimum. However, for one housing officer, these steps were not taken. After a change in management, he was required to comply with procedures and protocols which did not fit in with the nature of the work and did not allow space for initiative and experience. He found that his health suffered as a result of the pressure that he was under. He found it difficult to sleep and suffered from low mood which affected his punctuality and performance. Eventually, he had to take time off work.
In cases where an individual wants to make a claim for compensation based on work stress, a similar process will be followed as for any type of accident at work claim. Detailed medical evidence is essential. Many less experienced claims management companies will not pursue evidence and this can dramatically hinder a claim. Therefore it is important to use an experienced solicitor who knows how essential medical evidence is. The claim will then have to demonstrate that the working environment and failures on the part of the employer led to the condition. This may include failure to properly assess risks, failure to provide suitable safety equipment and ensure adequate training for staff and failure to intervene if the situation was foreseeable. ‘Foreseeability’ is very difficult to prove but it is an important part of an accident at work claim; it establishes whether the employer should have known about what was happening or the risk of something happening at the stage when it was possible to prevent it.