How to Protect Your Business If Your Employees Get Injured

[This article was written by Anica Oaks.]

Even if you have proper safety precautions in place at your facility, accidents still can happen. When workplace injuries occur, it’s important that you have protections in place so that your business isn’t harmed by the aftermath of the injuries. Before, during, and after any injuries occur, this is what you need to be doing to keep your business running smoothly.

Get Their Statement

If an employee isn’t in immediate danger, it’s important to get a statement from them as soon as possible. Have a supervisor sit down with them so that they can go over what happened while it’s still fresh in their mind. The supervisor should write a summary of this statement and then read it back to the employee. If the employee agrees with the report, both the employee and the supervisor need to sign the document. This document needs to be kept to serve as evidence if anything should go wrong.

Obtain Insurance

Even if the employee who is injured has health insurance through your company, a workplace injury will fall under your company’s liability policy. That is why it’s crucial that you have professional liability insurance in place before a workplace accident occurs. If you wait until an injury occurs to try and get insurance, you’ll likely be denied, which would leave your company on the hook for the medical bills of the employee.

Be Proactive

As the injured employee seeks care, it’s important to be proactive to ensure you don’t hold anything up, which could give the appearance that your company is negligent. Make sure to call ahead to the medical provider to ensure all of the necessary paperwork is in order. In addition to protecting your company, this gesture will mean a lot to the injured employee so that they’ll have a positive opinion of the company even after their injury.

Retain a Lawyer

In some complex instances, it may be necessary to retain a lawyer to protect your company during an injury case. If an employee tries to abuse the care that’s provided, for example, you may need to consult with an attorney to ensure you make the right moves to protect your company’s bottom line. While this is typically not necessary, when a case does get escalated, it can go very badly for your company if you aren’t properly prepared.

Unless the accident was caused purely by employee negligence, it’s likely that you have some learning to do. Since many accidents are caused by some type of safety oversight, it’s important to study the accident to determine if you need to make any changes at your facility. This will allow you to create a safer workplace and put you at less risk for future insurance obligations.

Author Bio:

Freelance writer and web enthusiast