08/11/22
By safetybox
How confidently could you defend a negligence claim… 3 years after the alleged incident?
Obviously ensuring you have good health and safety practices in the first place is vital to prevent accidents and ill-health. However, despite your organisation’s best efforts, incidents could occur, but the question would be, could it have been prevented and is the incident a result of alleged failure on the part of the employer?
The more information that is known about the incident, the easier the claim will be to establish. In many cases, insurers have no choice but to make compensation payments to claimants, even if they and the insured company think the claim is not genuine. This is because the defendant companies are unable to provide the insurer with the correct documents to defend the claim.
From SafetyBox’s extensive experience of working with major insurers, we are acutely aware of the critical information that needs to be gathered in order to defend spurious claims, these include:
- 1. Accident report form
- 2. Accident investigation report
- 3. RIDDOR report (if relevant)
- 4. Witness statements
- 5. CCTV recording/photographic evidence
- 6. Risk assessments
- 7. Employee training records
- 8. Inspection/maintenance logs
- 9. Medical reports
If you don’t have all of these documents and are unable to defend a claim, this can be very expensive. Successful claims will result in higher pay outs, increased legal fees, higher insurance premiums and reputational damage.
Incident Management is crucial, as many claims are paid out as either the relevant information has not been obtained in the first place, it has been lost/damaged or there has been a change of personnel since the incident. Would you be able to trace the documents to defend a claim arising from an incident in your company 3 years ago? If the answer is no, then you are probably in the majority.
If a claim was to occur such as an employee injuring themselves while lifting a heavy box and you can provide the supporting evidence that the individual had received the appropriate manual handling training, along with other supporting documentation then you have much more chance of defending the false claim for compensation.
SafetyBox’s Incident Management feature, makes it easy for you to do this. You can quickly and easily capture the correct details following an incident, including supporting evidence such as witness statements, photos, video and CCTV footage, all in one place. You can move in real time between your PC and a smartphone or tablet in order to capture photos and video. In the event of a serious incident such as a RIDDOR reportable one, key managers will be alerted automatically too. It’s all backed up in the Cloud, so no need for manual filing or issues with damage or GDPR, all completely safe!
Interested in finding out more – visit www.safetybox.io/features/#incidentmanagement