Safety reporting for a US company operating in the UK

Knowing when and how to report after your employee has an accident can be challenging, especially when your parent company is located outside of the UK.

A major electrical component manufacturer, headquartered in the US but with operations in the UK faced this exact issue. One of its staff had been injured during a journey to site, when lifting his own personal ruck sack. The back injury he sustained took him out of the business for more than 7 days. The questions being posed by the company were, (i) as a US organisation is this OSHA recordable and (ii) as the injury was not necessary considered work related, although he was travelling on work time, would it need to be reported under RIDDOR?

OSHA recordability does not apply to the UK. It only applies to US workers unless the corporate requires them to use OSHA reporting worldwide. In this case, the policy for the US parent required it to report the accident as a RIDDOR, despite there being no legal requirement to do so. The incident prompted this company to clarify up its accident reporting protocols and to provide relevant refresher training for other employees making similar journeys.

If you are interested in reading more about reporting RIDDORS please visit the HSE’s site here: http://www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/report.htm

Or, contact your panel of risk experts for more bespoke advice, at [email protected]