Is your employer neglecting to keep you safe on the job?
Perhaps the most important job an employer has – before hiring, employee engagement, payroll, benefits or anything else – is to keep the workforce safe every day. A healthy staff is a productive one. Keeping employees free from injury and illness is essential if you want a company to consistently achieve at a high level.
Unfortunately, keeping up high safety standards is more difficult in some industries than others. If you work in a setting where you’re required to face physical danger on a daily basis, that can be precarious. Injuries may well happen – and when they do, it’s worth considering whether your employer is at least partially to blame.
Safeguarding employees is an absolute must
Every employer in Australia today should know the importance of providing safeguards to prevent employee injuries. If they don’t, they could find themselves making serious accident compensation payments.
Case in point: According to Business News Western Australia, an energy company in Perth recently had to pay an $80,000 fine because a teenage employee was injured on the job. Four workers were using a large mobile shredder – one reached in to retrieve a stuck piece of rubber, and all fingers on his right hand were amputated.
A court found that the company should have placed guarding around the shredder to prevent employees from touching the cutters. This wasn’t done, and the employer was found responsible.
Submitting claims in a timely fashion
If you’ve been in a situation like this, where an employer has failed to keep you safe, it’s important to take action quickly. The better you can follow the right protocols after an injury, the better your chances of getting compensated.
This process begins with filling out all the paperwork required to report your injury and make a claim. Then, once you’ve gotten medical treatment, you should consider meeting with a compensation lawyer and talking about your options for getting recourse. The sooner you act, the better.
Tracking down the compensation you deserve
When you’re injured on the job, there are a lot of different types of compensation you’re entitled to. They include payment for time off work, money to cover medical expenses and rehab and reimbursement for any travel you’ve needed for medical appointments or anything else.
To track down all these payments and more, it’s best to work with the professionals. At Marshall and Gibson Lawyers, we have a strong team of workers’ compensation lawyers in Sydney who have been through this process before and know how it works. Contact us on 1800 675 417 or send us an email today and see how our experts can assist you.