All entries for Thursday 14 July 2016

Are we doing enough?

With regards to H&S, companies should raise a question: are we doing enough? Are we doing enough to protect our employees by properly managing and preventing problems? Are we doing enough to monitor and record incidents and accidents? Are we doing enough to support employees if they are off sick as a responsible employer should do? Unfortunately, I have got a bad experience regarding to all these issues. In 2014, I slipped over on the wet stairs and flew more than 1 meter landing on my right leg breaking my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in my knee at my previous workplace. It was painful. I don't even remember how I drove home and pushed myself up to my stairs from the bottom up to my room. It is a shame that the statutory sickpay in this country at the moment is £88.45 per week (I got like £68 per week that time) so I couldn't afford to be sick. I still came to work with my sticks I got from the hospital and have done office work for 4-5 days and with that leg I worked at the weekend. Although, I knew I needed to have a surgery to fix my knee. I had to take a month off work in September 2014. My lovely employer basically forced me to use 2 weeks of my holiday for this, because I cannot be off sick that much time. So I ended up losing 2 weeks of my holiday, 1 weel fully sick pay and 1 week statutory sick pay. I was a bit disappointed as it can be imagined. My point is that if you don't pay for your own private health insurance and you get sick for a longer period, it is impossible to live from the statutory sick pay. This raises issues that either the government needs to change something, or the employer should be more concerned to minimise all the chances for any accidents and put in place robust risk assessment and audits to prevent any potential accident to occur.

: 14 Jul 2016 20:11 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem