In the fifteen years since I graduated university, I’ve had half a dozen jobs. As well as working in marketing and PR, I worked for a few years at a publishing company. Before that I did a few temping jobs, mostly desk-based work – I think the closest I’ve ever got to manual labour was a week spent in the strange half-floor of an Enterprise Rent-a-car office, crawling around on my hands and knees doing filing and searching for job slips.
Needless to say, apart from the odd back ache, sitting at a desk all day doesn’t lead to many accidents or injuries, so I’ve been relatively lucky to remain unscathed after all this time.
It would appear that many people aren’t quite so lucky, though, with injuries at work being far more prevalent than I ever realised.
According to the clever folks at Hayward Baker (they must be clever, as they asked me to help them promote it!), 69% of British workers (that’s 21 million people!) claim their workplace to be a health hazard.
In order to promote this discovery (and presumably their services to help said workers – including an interactive injury compensation calculator), Hayward Baker have put the findings in a handy infographic, which you can read below. Here’s a couple of the findings which surprised me:
- 35% of the British workforce say they’ve picked up an illness from their work – with 18% saying they’ve been struck down with food poisoning or a stomach bug because of hygiene issues. Gross!
- 20% of Brits have been to hospital due to a work-related illness or injury. No wonder our hospitals are always so crowded – stop putting your workers in danger, Britain!
The infographic and associated research was commissioned following the launch of the personal injury solicitor’s new interactive injury compensation calculator, which you can try out on their website.
Take a read of the research – and for goodness sake, stop getting injured at work, people!
