Everyone has a right to expect that when they arrive at work every morning, they will not come to any harm whilst carrying out the job they are paid to do. The law recognises this as a fundamental right, too.
By law, employers owe each of their workers a duty of care to protect their health, safety and welfare, and they must take reasonable steps to achieve this. Depending on the type of work involved, keeping employees safe from accidents at work may be easier to accomplish in some occupations than in others.
Specific jobs are inherently more dangerous than others, and the same goes for the places we may find ourselves working in.
For example, you’d expect less likely that an office-based worker or someone who works in a shop would be at risk of suffering an injury at work than a construction worker who carries out building work on scaffolding several hundred feet above the ground.
Nevertheless, try telling that to the secretary who breaks an arm from tripping over a computer lead left trailing across the office floor, or a shop worker who slips on a wet floor and suffers a serious back injury from the ensuing fall.
Of course, there are specific types of jobs where, every day, employees are at risk of becoming the victims of serious or even fatal accidents. Certain occupations are proven to be more dangerous than others.
Each year, The Health, and Safety Executive (HSE) produces a report with the sobering title of ‘Workplace Fatal Injuries in Great Britain.’ This year’s report was published in July.
Whether judged by the largest number of fatalities per industry sector or by the number of deaths per 100,000 workers, the two industries that came out worst with the largest number of fatal injuries were:
- The construction injury
- Agriculture, forestry, and fishing (including farming).
The potential for accidents happening on a building site is self-evident. Workplace accidents caused by falling from heights, getting struck by moving vehicles, being hit by moving, flying or falling objects, or becoming trapped by something collapsing or overturning all accounted for a number of fatal injuries in the year 2021/2022.
You might find it strange that the various occupations that make up the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry group should be as dangerous as the accident statistics reveal them to be. However, the farming industry falls within this group, and it is statistically the most dangerous occupation in the UK when the industry’s comparative size is considered.
Only 1.4% of the workforce are employed in farming, yet it accounts for the most deaths per 100,000 workers annually in the UK. Accidents involving moving machinery and getting struck by moving vehicles account for many fatal farming accidents reported annually.
One of the reasons most often given as to why so many serious farming accidents occur every year is that farming employs a high proportion of older workers, who have often worked on one farm all their lives and who may be prone to run risks with health and safety to get a job done faster. In other words, the risk is poorly managed.
Whatever your occupation, all roads lead back to health and safety considerations when it comes to preventing workplace accidents. Employers who take their responsibilities to look after their employees whilst they are at work seriously are more likely to have fewer workers taking time off work due to injuries suffered in accidents at work. They are also the employers who are less likely to be on the wrong end of accident at work claims brought by injured employees who seek out the services of specialist accident at work solicitors like Mooneerams to help them pursue compensation claims.
Health and safety regulations and the basic legal duty of care imposed on employers to keep their workers safe in the workplace have developed for a reason; to try and ensure every employee, whatever job they do for a living, returns home from work safely every night.