Employers and employees can work together to prevent work-related injuries.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) revealed that more than four million employees suffer from severe work-related illnesses or injuries across the United States every year. OSHA also indicated that work-related injuries result in the death of over twelve employees every day. This is equivalent to more than 4,500 employees annually.
How Employers Can Prevent Work-Related Injuries
One important thing that employers can do to prevent work-related injuries is to ensure the availability of equipment suitable for a particular job. The equipment may include safety goggles and glasses, proper head and footwear, aprons, gloves, tools, and equipment and power tools with suitable protection. Employees should also be familiar with the risks and hazards involved in their job so that they can better protect themselves from any work-related injuries.
Certain qualifications and training is required to perform each type of job. Employees should go through appropriate safety training to acquire the necessary skills that allow them to safely perform their jobs. There may be some instances when employers, supervisors, or administrators require employees to perform certain tasks even though they do not have sufficient training to carry out these tasks. In these situations, employees should get in touch with the human resource department and request for appropriate training to allow them to safely perform the tasks assigned to them.
What Employees Can Do To Avoid Work-Related Injuries
Employees may often wonder how they can avoid injuries while at work. The concerns about getting injured are genuine as millions of people are injured at their workplace every year in United States. Workers injured at the workplace can seek benefits under the workers’ compensation system. There may be some instances when employees may have to consult a St. Louis workers’ compensation lawyer to facilitate the release of their workers’ compensation benefits whenever they are injured at work. There are a number of things that employees can do to prevent work-related injuries.
Employees should ensure they get enough rest before they report for work. Attentiveness while at work can help prevent work-related injuries. Studies have revealed that fatigue was the main cause of around 18 percent of work-related accidents and injuries. Avoiding misbehavior while at work can also prevent work-related injuries. A number of severe injuries result from misbehavior at the workplace. Misbehavior include pranks and horseplay, playing around or inappropriate actions, and wasting time.
Work-related injuries are part of the risk that employees face every day. In order to prevent these injuries, employees have to ensure they have all the equipment required to perform their job while remaining alert for any potential accidents that may happen during the course of their work.
If you have been injured while at work and need assistance collecting your workers’ compensation benefits, contact The Law Office of James M. Hoffmann at (314) 361-4300.