Lindsay Gray, liability underwriter at Ecclesiastical Insurance, explains how in law any charity or organisation relying on volunteers has the same responsibility for their welfare as for paid employees.
Under Health and Safety Regulations, the health, safety and welfare of any worker is protected by law.The law makes no distinction between paid and unpaid employees and in terms of employers’ liability insurance, neither does the insurance industry.
Employers have a legal duty of care to ensure the safety of everyone working for them, paid or unpaid, and anyone affected by those workers’ activities.Equally, employees – and this also includes voluntary workers – have a responsibility to look after themselves and others.
Attention on health and safety issues has significantly increased since the introduction of the Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007 (effective from 6 April 2008) as a result of which companies or organisations can be found guilty of corporate manslaughter following serious management failures resulting in a gross breach of duty of care leading to a fatality.This Act is linked to existing Health & Safety requirements and penalties include unlimited fines.
The challenge that many organisations in the voluntary sector face is that volunteers do not always regard themselves as the equivalent of an employee.
Perhaps understandably:volunteers give up their own time and would not normally have any form of contractual arrangement with the organisation.However, in the context of Health & Safety and the implications for employers’ liability, volunteer workers simply cannot be regarded, or regard themselves, as free agents.
This, of course, is a two-way street.Whilst the voluntary organisation has a legal obligation to regard itself as the employer, the volunteers themselves are obliged to play their role in ensuring the welfare of themselves, their colleagues and members of the public.They must fully understand their own responsibilities to comply with good working practices and work within the parameters set out by their “employer” to meet Health & Safety requirements.
For the voluntary organisation, meeting the requirements of duty of care means ensuring that your volunteers are not put in a situation where they could be at risk.It would be impossible to give a definitive list of potential at-risk situations and it is up to each organisation to carry out their own risk assessments, identifying potential hazards, evaluating the risks and deciding on reasonable precautions to prevent injury.However, here are some typical situations that might arise:
Street or door-to-door collections:is the location safe?Are you are putting volunteers into a difficult environment? There could be a legal liability if they are attacked or assaulted.
Manual handling:charity shop workers moving and lifting boxes of heavy goods such as books could be in danger of back injury.Over a third of all reported over-three-day injuries reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) each year are caused by manual handling and the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, as amended in 2002 apply to a wide range of manual handling activities, including lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling or carrying.
Working at height:another possible risk for shop volunteers or for anyone working on a voluntary basis to maintain or clean premises where it may be necessary to use ladders.Again, there are specific Regulations that apply, in this case the Work at Height Regulations 2005, and they apply to all work at height where there is a risk of a fall liable to cause personal injury.
Volunteer drivers:the HSE deems a vehicle to be a place of work in the context of employment.If your organisation has a vehicle such as a mini bus driven and maintained by volunteers, you are legally responsible to ensure that it is roadworthy and that the people driving are fully competent.
Of course, no organisation relying on the efforts of volunteers wants to turn away offers of help or discourage volunteers from an active involvement but both sides must be alive to the question of risk.A case we handled recently involved someone who was working voluntarily as a general handyman.He worked without supervision and generally undertook most tasks on his own initiative but the organisation he was doing the work for were aware of his activities.Having heard of a specific problem, he set about an attempt to rectify it and during the course of his work, there was an accident when he was seriously injured.No one had specifically asked him to carry out this task and there had been no risk assessment carried out.However, the activity was deemed to be in breach of their legal obligations and the “employer” was held liable.
Organisations need also to think about more far reaching consequences of a breach of duty of care.Many volunteers are also in full-time paid employment.If they are injured in the course of their voluntary work and the organisation is found liable, there may also be a claim for loss of earnings from the full-time job.
Under employers’ liability someone undertaking a hazardous activity to raise funds on their own initiative would not be covered. However, if your organisation has any form of link which could be seen as a recommendation of a company that organises popular activities for fund raising (bungee jumping, parachute descents etc) it would be a sensible precautionary measure to make sure that that operation has adequate insurance cover in place.
In conclusion, there are very few grey areas as far as employers’ liability for volunteer workers is concerned.The law makes no distinction, and neither do we as insurers.Paid or unpaid, the voluntary worker is owed a duty of care by the organisation they work for.In turn, they owe the organisation their own duty of care to behave responsibly, adhere to proper working practices and do their best to ensure their own safety as well as the safety of those around them.
Volunteering England recommend that organisations have volunteers explicitly mentioned within the policy, in case any insures does refuse to pay out as a result of something that has happened through a volunteer's actions.
