Workplace accidents are traumatic and those involved often need counselling to aid their recovery. However, there could be advantages to providing a counselling service for staff within the work environment, in order to reduce the number of work place accidents.
A recent article on the “People Management” website stated that a new survey has revealed that there are numerous benefits to offering workplace counselling including that it can reduce the number of work place accidents. This is excellent news as over 2 million people suffer workplace accidents each year and 131,895 injuries to employees were reported under RIDDOR to the HSE in 2008/2009 – many of which account for the ongoing rise in personal injury claims.
Helping staff with personal and psychological matters may decrease the number of work accidents and this was documented in a previous similar survey in 2008. However, it seems that organisations still haven’t taken heed of this advice, despite the fact that this new research compounds the argument that counselling could reduce personal injury compensation claims.
The survey conducted by the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) found that respondents are more likely to require counselling at the present time given the current economic recession. Furthermore, there is no doubt that organisations need to adopt innovative measures in order to survive the current downturn. Therefore, employee counselling systems may save industry considerable money if businesses would be prepared to implement such schemes.
It is understandable that businesses may be sceptical about adopting counselling services due to cost, resource and potential lack of take up. However, organisations may well turn to such schemes in order to reduce the number of potential personal injury claims. As highlighted by online magazine The Psychologist stress at work is significantly associated with amongst other things; accidents at work (Smith et al, 2000).
It is certainly clear that workplace counselling is a way of increasing productivity and reducing absenteeism but now it seems that it can reduce job site accidents and subsequently personal injury claims too. Therefore, perhaps the benefits of counselling can be gained before an accident happens as well as afterwards.
Related Personal Injury News
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- Survey suggests UK does not have a compensation culture