Even though some areas are riskier to work in than others, there is no 100 percent injury-free workplace. Safety measures, regular inspections and injury prevention policies can only take you so far but when the injury occurs, you need to know exactly how to act. This way, you’re making sure your injury is properly treated, that all your legal rights are protected and that your office is – further improved to prevent this situation from ever happening again. With this in mind here are a few steps you need to follow after getting injured at work.
1. Get a proper medical attention
The first thing you need to do immediately after a workplace injury is get proper medical attention. No matter how mild an injury may look, you won’t know how dangerous it actually is without being examined by a physician. This is important both for your health and your future legal claims. An insurer or an employer may, later on, try to claim that the injury, in fact, occurred later on and not in the workplace. Here, even having a number of eye-witnesses may not be as effective as having an actual hospital report. Still, keep in mind that you need to state this to the nurse or a physician as soon as you enter the medical facility, just in case.
2. Make an injury report
Next, you need to make a proper injury report and this is not that simple. Start by notifying your supervisor. This is something that usually needs to be done at most30 days after the injury, seeing how otherwise you may lose the right to claim the compensation. On the other hand, this may be up to the regional law, which means that you might have more or less time to do so. Next, you need to notify your regional workers compensation board (WCB). This can be done by mail, by fax or by email. Furthermore, you need to file using a worker incident report form which can be downloaded online.
3. Contact your legal team
In 2017 there are many situations in which you will have to fight for your rights in the court of law and it’s always for the best to be prepared for these situations. Today we’re talking about a workers’ compensation claim but tomorrow it will be a public liability claim. In either way, you need a team of experts that deal with a wide array of these situations. This will save you both time and money so you won’t have to look for the new representative for each of these situations. Luckily, most high-end experts such as Adams & Co compensation lawyers from Sydney offer a wide array of legal services.
4. Get acquainted with relevant policies and guidelines
Finally, you need to keep in mind that you need to think about your responsibilities long before you start worrying about your rights. If there is a particular safety-relevant policy or guideline within your company, you need to follow it to the letter in order to qualify for the above-mentioned compensation. This means that if a company you are employed in requires you to wear a protective piece of equipment at all times, you must do so, regardless of how silly or inconvenient you find it to be.
Conclusion
The greatest problem with a workplace injury is the fact that it will most likely leave you in a state of shock caused by physical pain, which might make you overlook even some of the most logical above-listed safety measures. This is exactly why it is vital that you think about all of this beforehand so that you can be ready for such a situation.
