What can you do in seven seconds? Pour a cup of coffee to bring back to your desk? Ask a coworker how their weekend went? Check your email to see if there are any updates or notices from your supervisors?
If you’re at work, not a lot gets done in seven seconds. However, according to the National Safety Council, that’s all the time that it takes for a worker in America to get injured. When you look at the national statistics, there are on-the-job injuries every seven seconds or just over eight injuries per minute.
It is astounding to think of it that way. You know that injuries happen, especially if you work in a high-risk industry like construction. But it often feels like something you may encounter once in your life. Maybe it’s not anything you really worry about. You feel like injuries are few and far between.
They’re not, though. They happen all the time, at a rate that makes them nearly constant. Every month, thousands of workers get hurt on the job.
Granted, injuries are not spaced out this evenly. You have major issues, such as a bus accident in a construction zone, that could injure numerous people at once. These spikes do push the average up. But you still have plenty of single-worker injuries that don’t impact the company as a whole, but that can change that one worker’s life forever.
It is clear that workers need to be aware of the risks that they face. If you get injured on the job, you also need to be aware of the legal options you have. Your financial recovery can be just as important as your physical one.
