Health, Safety & Quality Consultancy
Employers can be held criminally liable for the sometimes foolish actions of its employee’s. Even if an employee admits to taking a foolish risk which results in an injury, the onus can still be shifted to the employer, if the HSE can produce evidence of exposure to a foreseeable risk. It is then up to the employer to show that they did all that was reasonably practible to prevent that exposure.
In the example of an engineer putting a spanner inappropriately into a conveyor belt to find where it was sticking following a blockage and breaking his arm, it was his employer that was prosecuted because a limited permit to work had been raised, which meant that the machine could be operated without any guarding in place. The employers were found liable because they permitted the running of the conveyor belt with its guarding removed under a permit to work system and under this system employers were exposed to a clear risk of health and safety.
This serves as a timely reminder to employers that when considering whether employees or non-employees are exposed to a risk, they must consider in their risk assessments, the likelihood that employees will act foolishly and deviate from safe ways of working. If this has been considered and all reasonably practible measures have been taken to reduce the risk of foolish actions, that could result in injury, then the employer can show they have done everything they can to prevent exposure to risk. The employee would then be held accountable for his own health and safety.