What is an employer’s duty of care to employees?

What are the employers' responsibilities for health and safety?

All companies have responsibilities for their employees' health and safety. Below are some of the core duties that all employers have, regardless of their company size or the work they do.  

Overriding duties

Employers must take ‘reasonable care' of the health and safety of their employees. It's known as a ‘non-delegable duty': a company can't escape their employer responsibilities by delegating them to others. Everyone has a role to play in safety, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the employer.

Regulations for employers' responsibilities include the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. These give employers core responsibilities for your health and safety, including the following:

• Assess health and safety risks. Employers should assess the potential risks of accident, injury and illness. 
• Introduce measures to control the risks. Ideally, employers should take steps to avoid an identified risk altogether. But employers aren't expected to ensure that a workplace is completely risk free. Where they can't remove risks, they can take protective measures to enable people to work safely.
• Provide relevant information and training. Employers must give employees information about risks and how to manage them. Training on health and safety should cover tasks that each individual carries out.
• Involve and consult with employees. Employers should involve their workers in health and safety. This includes involvement in risk assessments and implementing safety measures. Consultation may be done through formal health and safety committees or less formal teamworking.

As well as complying with health and safety legislation, employers have ‘common law' duties. There are four main categories for these duties:

• Safe work premises
• Safe plant and equipment
• Safe systems of working and working practises
• Competent fellow staff

Below are descriptions of these categories of common law, with information on relevant health and safety legislation.

Providing safe work premises

Many of the risks faced at work are due to the condition of the premises themselves. Accidents at work are more likely in messy, dirty or poorly repaired premises. 

The main regulations for premises safety are the Workplace (Health, Safety, and Welfare) Regulations 1992. They apply to most workplaces, with exceptions including construction sites, ships and below-ground mines where other regulations apply.

The regulations cover a wide range of health and safety issues, including the following:

• Workplaces should be clean and maintained in good repair.
• Enclosed workplaces should be sufficiently ventilated.
• The temperature inside buildings should be reasonable.
• There should be good lighting so that employees avoid eye strain and can move around safely.
• Workstations should allow work to be done safely and comfortably.
• Floors shouldn't be uneven or slippery such that it exposes people to a health or safety risk.
• Floors should be free from hazards that could cause a person to slip, trip or fall.
• Pedestrian and vehicle traffic routes should be safe for the numbers of people and vehicles using them.

Employers should follow these regulations on premises they own or occupy. They should also do what they can to ensure safety at other premises where their employees work. But there is recognition that employers have less control over premises they don't own or occupy.

Providing safe plant and equipment

Faulty, poorly maintained or misused equipment often causes an accident at work. Employer responsibility includes assessing and minimising injury risks from equipment and machinery.

Risks for machinery users include injury from moving parts or ejected material. Parts of the body can become trapped or crushed in the machine's mechanism. There's also a risk of burning or scalding due to the high temperatures that machines often operate at.

Systems must be in place to regularly inspect and maintain equipment. There should be suitable reporting of problems, with repairs and maintenance to keep equipment in safe working condition.

Equipment should be suitable for the task it's used for and operated only by competent staff. The correct guards and other safety devices should be in place to minimise the risk of accidents.

The Employers' Liability (Defective Equipment) Act 1969 and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment (PUWER) Regulations 1998 cover equipment safety.

Providing safe systems of working and safe working practices

A safe system of working (SSoW) is needed for each task with a significant element of risk. These systems should remove or minimise issues identified in risk assessments. Developing an SSoW might include looking at the layout of the workplace, the equipment used and the safe way to perform each task. 

A good example is moving heavy objects. An SSoW might be developed in line with the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992. It may include staff working together to move heavy loads, or breaking them down into lighter loads. Procedures might also call for the use of suitable lifting equipment where necessary.

Employing competent fellow staff

You have a right to expect that the people you work with are competent. They should have the right knowledge, training or experience to work safely.

Making sure this happens is part of employer responsibilities. An employer's duty of care includes training new staff until they are competent and safe to do their job.

If someone isn't able to perform a task safely, they shouldn't put themselves or colleagues in danger. Employers should listen to their staff, and not order them to carry out tasks they don't feel able to do safely.

Additional duties for larger companies

All employers share the responsibilities listed above. But there are additional employers' responsibilities to employees for companies above a certain size. 

For example, companies employing five people or more should have a written health and safety policy. They should also write down their risk assessments. Smaller companies aren't legally required to write these things down. But they should still implement health and safety measures, including risk assessments.

Responsibilities for employers in specific industries

The main pieces of health and safety legislation apply to most sectors. Updates known as statutory instruments address additional risks in specific industries or from certain types of work. These include the following examples:

Have you been injured due to employer negligence?

If you believe that a duty of care failure led to your accident, call us today on or fill in our call back form. We'll be happy to answer your questions and help you understand whether you could make a claim for compensation.

Why are these responsibilities important?

Statistics confirm that the risk of a workplace injury is very real. This is despite improvements in safety standards over the past few decades. Recent annual statistics report 693,000 non-fatal injuries and 142 fatal accidents.

The main reason that employer responsibilities for safety matter is a desire to look after employee wellbeing. Companies want to avoid accidents and injuries caused by employer negligence. Duty of care isn't just a legal duty: it's a very real matter of keeping people safe.

There are other reasons why employers benefit from investing in health and safety. Productivity and staff retention may improve when workers feel safe. Having good safety standards also reduces the risk to a company's reputation caused by a poor accident record.

Companies will also want to avoid penalties of breaching their duty of care. Before 2015, the maximum fine for many health and safety offences tried in magistrates' courts was £20,000. Now there is no limit on the size of fine that the courts can impose. 

Employers who breach their duty of care responsibilities may face other penalties. These include disqualification from running a business for up to 15 years. Employers even face imprisonment for up to two years for more serious offences.

If I am injured due to a lack of duty of care from my employer, what are my rights?

All employers have a legal responsibility to make sure you are safe in the workplace. If you are injured due to a failing in your employer's duty of care, you have a number of employment rights. 

These include protection against dismissal just because of an injury. You are also protected from dismissal without being given reasonable time to recover.

You also have a right to bring a claim for compensation after a workplace accident. By law, this cannot compromise the employer-employee relationship:

• If your employer sacks you for making a compensation claim, you may have a case for unfair dismissal. 
• If they threaten you with the sack, this could also be a case of unfair dismissal.
• If they make your life at work so unbearable you end up quitting, you may have a case for constructive dismissal.

You may also have a right to receive statutory sick pay if you need time off work due to your injury. If your injury is serious, you might be entitled to industrial injuries disablement benefit.

Can I sue my employer for lack of duty of care?

You have a right to claim compensation if a breach of employer responsibilities led to an injury. If you believe your employer or anyone else at work was negligent, and this caused your injury, you can make a claim.

Even if you think you may have been partly to blame for what happened you may still be able to make a claim. The principle of ‘contributory negligence' makes this possible. In these cases, both sides in the claim share the blame. The amount of compensation awarded would reflect this.

If you've been in a workplace accident, we may be able to help you make a claim for compensation to put things right. Below are some types of accident we can help you with. But don't worry if we haven't listed your accident here as it's still likely we can help. Call us on  or request a call back so we can discuss what happened and whether you have a case for compensation.

• Factory accidents
• Industrial accidents
• Construction accidents
• Machinery accidents
• Office accidents
• Agricultural accidents
• Forklift accidents
• Manual handling claims
• Asbestos compensation
• Scaffolding accidents
• Needle stick injury
• Accidents as a carer

Whatever type of workplace injury or illness you suffer, you can usually claim on a no win no fee basis with no upfront charges or costs. You'll pay nothing at all if you lose. If you win, your contribution to the costs will simply be deducted from your compensation at a level agreed with your solicitor. There really is no financial risk to you.

How long do I have to make a claim?

You have three years to claim if your injury was due to a failing in your employer's responsibilities for your health and safety.

There are some exceptions to this three-year time limit:

• If you were under 18 at the time of the accident, the three-year limit begins on your 18th birthday. You have until your 21st birthday to claim.
• There's no time limit for someone who lacks the physical or psychological capability to make a claim. This can be due to the effects of the accident or unrelated conditions. 

If you're unsure about how these time limits affect you, please contact us on or request a call back. We'll be happy to answer any questions. If we think you're eligible to claim, we'll put you in touch with a solicitor specialising in employers' duty of care cases.

How long could my claim take?

How long a claim takes to process often depends on the nature and severity of your injuries. Complex cases involving serious injuries may take longer than simpler cases with less serious injuries.

However, no two cases are the same. The solicitor we appoint for you will be able to give you a more accurate estimate when they've reviewed all the details.

How do I start a claim?

Please contact us as soon as possible if you have been injured in a workplace accident that wasn't your fault. The sooner we hear from you, the sooner we can assess whether you may have a case to make a no win no fee claim for compensation. 

It will help your claim if you can supply evidence of what happened. But please don't worry if you don't have all the information listed below - contact us anyway to get your claim started.

Evidence that may support your claim could include:

• The date, time and place of the accident 
• A copy of the entry in the company's accident book
• Contact details for anyone who saw the accident
• Pictures of where the accident happened, showing anything that contributed to the accident 
• CCTV footage of the accident if it's available - employers are legally obliged to give this to you
• Details of any medical treatment received for your injuries
• A breakdown of any financial losses such as prescription costs and lost earnings

Just call us on or request a call back. We'll listen to what you've been through and let you know if we think you could make a claim. If you're eligible, we'll put you in touch with specialist employers' liability solicitors who can support you through the claims process.