What If My Employer Isn’t Taking My Injury Seriously?

If you are facing a workplace injury in Clayton, MO, you may feel overwhelmed. The extent of your accident has likely caused you grievous physical pain and suffering.

The emotional pain of anxiety and frustration are also likely affecting your daily life. Enduring these issues is certainly not easy for anyone. But the good news is that you are not alone in dealing with your accident and injury.

One unfortunate issue many injured people have experienced is their employers not taking the injury seriously. They may not acknowledge it or try to minimize its effects on your body.

Your first course of action under these circumstances is to remember that you have rights that are legally protected.

Depending on the elements of your accident, you could be entitled to relief such as workers' compensation. If your employer is found negligent in any way, you may be entitled to even more.

This post will give you all the major details you need to know and understand about workplace injury and how your employer handles it. Help is available for you to navigate through these often-complex cases.

Employer Responsibility

No matter the size or scope of a company, your job is legally obligated to give you and your coworkers a healthy, safe work environment. Part of what this entails is workplace accident prevention.

Prevention comes in many forms that are based on the type of business being conducted. Here are a few examples of a safe work environment:

Properly Trained Staff

Staff must receive proper training to safely complete their jobs. For instance, if the job requires regular lifting of heavy items, employers must train staff on how to accomplish this task safely.

Ongoing Safety Management

Further safety management helps prevent scenarios or situations that could lead to workplace injury. This may include tasks like inspection of machinery, certification of safety protocols, and more.

Regular Breaks and Rest

Physically demanding jobs can quickly lead to employee fatigue. In turn, this could lead to a lapse in form and potential injury. Employers must provide regular breaks for their staff to rest. They can’t push staff to ignore breaks to meet a quota, or other unethical behaviors, either.

Open Line of Communication to Report Accidents

An employer should make it easy for an employee to report an incident. Employees should never feel scared or intimidated about experiencing an injury. Instead, they should be able to report it and seek out medical care as quickly as possible.

Your Rights After an Injury

If you've experienced a workplace lifting injury or other accident, it's important to know that you have many rights. These include all the following:

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  Seek out and receive proper medical evaluation and treatment.
• Recover from your injury away from work.
• Filing a workers' compensation claim.
• Receive potential benefits through the workers' compensation process.
• Appeal any decisions made based on your workers' compensation outcome.

Your employer may attempt to conceal some of your rights or lead you to believe you don’t have them. By knowing and understanding them, you can stop these attempts right in their tracks.

What to Do If Your Rights Are Violated

If these rights are violated, you also have several steps you can take. One of the most egregious ways this happens is when your employer refuses to take the severity of your injury seriously. They may attempt to minimize your injury or tell you that you should keep working or not take as much recovery time as you need.

Many of these attempts lead to one grave consequence: you not getting the proper medical help you need. As we all know, this could produce even worse effects if your injury is severe.

Not all injuries immediately cause symptoms like pain or mobility issues. Again, this is why immediately seeking out medical care is so crucial.

Workers' Compensation Issues

If an employer refuses to take your injury seriously, they may also complicate the workers' compensation process for you as well. For instance, if your employer pressured you to stay through a shift after an accident, they could then try to minimize your injury by claiming you didn’t need to seek out medical care immediately.

When scenarios like this unfold, you may also deal with complexities such as workers' compensation denial. That could put you on the hook for expensive medical care and missing out on your normal work income.

Combining these issues with an injury could make the situation a horrible weight to bear. Accordingly, getting help is imperative.

An experienced Clayton, MO attorney can help you make sense of your case and iron out a path forward.

Don’t let an employer get away with neglecting your right – and your health. Speak with our team today for a free consultation about your case.