There is a legal obligation on employees to take care for the health and safety of others at the workplace. This often requires employees to co-operate when the employer is fulfilling his or her obligations under health and safety laws. This also means that employees have a duty not to deliberately or recklessly place at risk the health and safety of another person in the workplace. Employees have the right to protect themselves against possible workplace injury or disease by ceasing to work in a workplace that places them at risk. The employer may instruct the employees to perform alternative work in the meantime.
Employees have a duty to exercise reasonable skill and care to prevent injury.
This often involves difficult questions of law. However, an employer cannot avoid the prospect of liability by leaving it to the employee to devise a safe system of work, as the law places this duty upon the employer. An employer cannot contract out of its occupational health and safety requirements. Therefore, the employer cannot usually argue that he or she should not be liable for a workplace accident because the employee knew of the potential risks and nevertheless decided to accept the risk. The law sometimes provides that the employer will escape liability if the employee had full knowledge and appreciation of the risk involved and freely accepted it.