Duty of Care: An Employer’s Guide to Legal and Moral Responsibilities
In this post, we’ll examine what duty of care is, discuss how it can impact your business, learn from several duty of care examples, and answer some frequently asked questions about this highly complex subject.
In the modern workplace, the concept of duty of care is a fundamental responsibility for safety and security leaders. As organizations face evolving risks—from physical hazards to cybersecurity threats—leaders must prioritize the well-being of employees, contractors, and visitors.
Duty of care goes beyond compliance; it’s about building a culture of proactive risk management, resilience, and trust. This blog explores the essential role safety and security leaders play in upholding duty of care—providing actionable strategies to safeguard people, assets, and organizational reputation in an increasingly complex world.
What Is Duty of Care?
Duty of care is the legal obligation to prevent harm and protect others in your care or employment, using your services, or exposed to your activities. The concept is related to other legal responsibilities such as “ordinary care” or “reasonable standard of care,” which essentially means “what is expected of most people in most cases.”
For a property owner, your duty of care may cover anyone on your property, and for an employer, it would cover employees, contractors, and customers. Depending on the particular situation, there may be more or less strict liability, but you are expected to do your due diligence to prevent harm.
OSHA’s General Duty Clause
Each employer shall furnish to each of [its] employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to [its] employees.
This clause primarily covers hazards or harm not explicitly mentioned in a unique standard, such as those related to scaffolding and ladder requirements. It also leaves much up to a reasonable person’s interpretation and judgment. This broad, all-encompassing language can leave employers unsure of when and how they should step in to protect their workers. As the modern workplace changes with the rise in remote work, there are many more considerations businesses need to consider when approaching their standard of care.
Legalese
Because the term is often used in tort law, it’s also important to examine how the courts view an employer’s duty of care. In legal terms, the duty of care requires that a person act toward others and the public with the standard of reasonable care (watchfulness, attention, caution) that a prudent person in similar circumstances would use. The “reasonable person” standard is an objective test that jurors and judges use to determine if a defendant’s actions align with those of a hypothetical, ordinary person.
Put simply, duty of care is the standard by which someone is held liable for a plaintiff’s injury in personal injury cases like medical malpractice, car accidents, slips, and falls. If a person or organization is in breach of the duty of care, they may be held liable for negligence.
Duty of care is a moral matter
This post will focus on what it means from an employee safety and organizational liability standpoint, but a company’s duty of care is about more than just liability. Businesses have a moral duty of care to protect their employees and prevent harm while on the job, no matter what kind of work is being done. There is an ethical responsibility of employers to protect their employees and ensure the safety of others in their facility, so prioritizing safety is simply the right thing to do, on top of being a matter of good faith and a legal requirement.
Practical terms
So far, our discussion of duty of care has been relatively abstract. So, let’s make it practical. Duty of care means:
- Ensuring the safety of your international business travelers
- Creating a work environment that safeguards employee health during a pandemic or when working with hazardous materials
- Notifying and providing safe accommodations for workers exposed to severe weather or other nearby environmental threats
In other words, duty of care means recognizing that your organization has an obligation to keep people safe at the workplace—wherever that may be.
Breach of duty of care isn’t always a matter of recklessness. Sometimes, even a slight oversight can pose a substantial risk. For example, an employee in New South Wales won a lawsuit against their employer related to a car accident on the way home from their job caused by “work-induced fatigue.” The courts ruled that the employer had failed to properly care for their employee’s safety, even though they had a fatigue prevention plan, and that negligence resulted in over a million dollars in damages. Duty of care cases can be expensive and damaging to your company’s reputation.
Duty of care then and now
Duty of care originated as a common law principle in the 19th century. It further developed after the Second Industrial Revolution to protect factory workers from harsh and dangerous labor conditions.
However, duty of care has recently become more than an ambiguous legal term. In the past 10 years, lawmakers and employers have emphasized the foreseeability of events—strengthening laws and recognizing that employers have a responsibility to employees, customers, and shareholders to assess risks and take appropriate actions to mitigate them. As a result, modern definitions of duty of care broadly encompass a company’s legal, ethical, and fiduciary duty to protect employees from unnecessary risk of harm when working or traveling on behalf of the organization.
7 Duty of Care Examples
These duty of care examples help clarify when your business would be required to intervene or act to keep your people safe. While this is not an exhaustive list of examples and recommendations, it will help you to understand your duty of care in an actionable way to serve your employees better.
1. Remote workers
Duty of care extends beyond the office. Employers should provide remote employees with safety training, ergonomic support, and emergency preparedness resources. For example, GitHub trains employees on wildfire evacuations and offers safety guides for protests, cyber threats, and disease outbreaks.
2. Business travel
Traveling employees remain under an employer’s duty of care. Organizations should track threats, ensure safe travel accommodations, and maintain regular check-ins. Location-based safety alerts help mitigate unforeseen risks like accidents or violence.
3. Extreme weather
Employers must monitor weather threats and communicate emergency protocols. Whataburger, for example, uses real-time alerts to notify employees of severe weather, ensuring rapid response to tornado threats.
4. Mental health
A psychologically safe workplace is crucial. Employers should offer mental health benefits, train managers to support employees, and promote work-life balance. Addressing mental health reduces absenteeism and improves overall workplace safety.
5. Employees with disabilities
Providing a safe work environment includes necessary accommodations for employees with disabilities. Employers should ensure accessibility, plan for emergency evacuations, and engage employees in discussions about their specific needs.
6. Healthcare industry
Hospitals and healthcare facilities must uphold a duty of care for employees, patients, and visitors—in addition to the expected medical care. This care includes maintaining safe staffing ratios, preventing medical malpractice, and ensuring workplace safety.
7. Nearby active shooter event
Workplaces must prepare for potential violence, even if it occurs nearby. Security measures such as guards, situational awareness training, and active shooter response plans help protect employees.
Which Type of Employer Are You?
When considering duty of care, there are three categories of employers:
The Uninformed EmployerIf you’re the Uninformed Employer, you may not understand your duty of care responsibilities. Intentions aside, it’s hard to fulfill your responsibilities if you don’t know your responsibilities. | The Bare Minimum EmployerIf you’re the Bare Minimum Employer, you know how to protect your employees. You meet those requirements but only just, and you choose not to do anything above and beyond for safety. | The Employee-First EmployerIf you’re the Employee-First Employer, you know and fulfill your requirements, but your focus is on caring for your team’s whole health and wellness. You do whatever it takes and prioritize your employees. |
None of these types of employers are wrong; if you’re the Uninformed Employer, you don’t know what you don’t know, and if you’re the Bare Minimum Employer, you’re still meeting your requirements. However, the Employee-First Employer is a shining example of a workplace safety mindset that will pay off in the long term. Employees are more likely to stay with the company that puts them first. And when safety is a priority above all, fewer accidents and injuries will occur.
As you learn more about your duty of care in this article, it’s a great time to ask yourself, which kind of employer are you? And which kind do you want to be?
Duty of Care at Work
Duty of care has tangible implications for every company, regardless of size. Start by considering the worst-case scenarios for your organization. For example, what happens if an employee gets in a car accident in the office parking lot? Do you have a plan for when an employee contracts an illness while working internationally? What if an employee suffers an accident traveling between job sites?
These questions raise important legal and moral questions about an employer’s responsibility to their employees. It’s important to distinguish and define the difference between an ethical and legal duty of care. Duties arising from ethics or morality are called moral duties, while duties created by the law are called legal duties. To protect your employees, customers, and anyone on company property, you need to consider both when planning to fulfill your duty of care.
Protecting workers anywhere they work
Protecting workers in an office or at a job site can be complicated enough. Still, when you factor in safeguarding your remote workers or business travelers, things can get even more complex. The same safety expectations still stand for your team members who are spread out around the globe, but your execution is going to look a little different.
Instead of mitigating hazards in your facility, you may use threat intelligence and monitoring to track threats near your offsite employees. Instead of providing live safety training in a conference room, you may choose an online version of that safety training so everyone can benefit. And instead of doing risk assessments for a single location, you’ll be performing assessments for any location with employees.
Who Is Responsible for Duty of Care?
At this point, you might wonder who in your organization should be responsible for fulfilling duty of care obligations. That can be a complicated question—and the answer will partially depend on your company’s size and organizational structure.
In larger organizations, dedicated employee safety positions may exist. Common job titles include EHS (employee health and safety), BC/DR (business continuity and disaster recovery), Risk Management, and Emergency Preparedness. These roles are specifically designed to handle the general duty of care obligations.
However, the presence of these roles should not give other managers in your organization the impression that they don’t need to worry about duty of care at work. Duty of care needs to be on the minds of all your managers.
If you are in charge of facilities maintenance, you have a duty to ensure your facilities are prepared for a wide array of emergencies. If you are responsible for business travel care, you have a duty to monitor your business travel locations for risks. If you manage a team during a pandemic, you have a duty to mitigate the risk of infection for employees working on your team.
But in any organization—no matter the size—human resources will play a critical role. HR is the one department in an organization that works closely with every business function. Many duty of care concerns that require company-wide coordination will necessarily fall on HR.
At the very least, human resources should handle the communication and coordination portions of your organization’s duty of care obligations. Your HR department should be comfortable using your company’s emergency communication system and oversee all internal communication about duty of care initiatives.
The Impact of Duty of Care
Aside from the legal implications, putting employees first—especially regarding their health, safety, and well-being—is a good business decision. It ensures business continuity, maintains employee morale, and supports employee loyalty and retention.
Show your employees that you are taking proactive measures to keep them safe. As a result, they will be more motivated and productive than those who feel like a commodity. Statistics back this up. Studies have found that companies with exemplary safety, health, and environmental programs outperformed the S&P 500 by between 3 and 5%. Thus, taking proactive measures to fulfill your duty of care obligations will typically pay significant dividends.
To accomplish this, think about the risks your employees face. Then, take some time to re-examine your company’s measures. Are you prepared to keep your employees safe even with threats like fires, hurricanes, and active shooters? You can never know which of those threats will impact your people. But one thing is sure: You will need a way to communicate with your employees.
Testing and measuring duty of care
Running tabletop exercises is a great way to help your organization test its duty of care by simulating real-world threats like natural disasters or workplace violence. These discussions evaluate your response effectiveness and identify gaps in due diligence. Applying the foreseeability test determines if risks are predictable and reasonable steps and precautions are taken, while a multi-factor test assesses factors like harm likelihood and the expected standard of care.
Post-exercise, a judicial review approach analyzes decisions as if under legal scrutiny, ensuring compliance and risk mitigation. Refining emergency plans based on these insights can strengthen safety measures and fulfill your duty of care obligations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the definition of duty of care?
Duty of care is the legal and moral obligation to safeguard others from harm while they are in your care, using your services, or exposed to your activities.
What are some examples of duty of care obligations?
Some duty of care examples include keeping business travelers safe while abroad, ensuring your facilities are prepared for emergencies, and switching to remote work when commuting or in-person work would put employees at risk.
How can employers show they are fulfilling their duty of care obligations?
Legal impact: Learn how duty of care laws impact every area your employees will work in, or you could find yourself liable.
Planning: Consider all possible situations that could arise for your company and create your response plan in advance.
Policies: Employers should create a duty of care policy and circulate it among the company. This policy will help managers understand the expectations and show employees what steps the organization is taking to ensure their safety.
Open communication: Let your employees know the measures you are taking to protect them. This communication will make them more receptive to doing their part and helping you help them.
What are the employers’ responsibilities related to corporate travel and remote work?
Employers have a duty of care to ensure their employees are safe no matter where they work. This may mean ensuring your employees use safe methods of travel and monitoring all business travel locations for time-sensitive and perpetual threats. For remote workers, this may mean monitoring threats near employee homes or providing cybersecurity training for those working in public spaces. You should also ensure consistent, open communication with your employees, especially when away from the facility.
Ensure You Have the Right Tools to Protect Your Employees
Duty of care in the workplace is more important than ever, and now is the time to ensure your organization isn’t left behind. Fulfilling modern duty of care obligations means using modern solutions. Ensure you have a robust, reliable, two-way emergency notification system. With the right processes and tools, you’ll soon find it’s possible to efficiently and effectively communicate with employees about all kinds of emergencies and other potential threats, protecting both them and your business.
