Risk & Business

In the past I have spoken to clients regarding a particular workers compensation claim affecting them and have asked if they have brought the employee back to work yet. Too many times the answer is no, they have nothing for that employee to do since said employee is not 100% and unable to perform their specific job prior to their workers compensation injury/claim. The problem with this is that too often employers miss the point that even though an employee can't perform in the position they were in prior to their injury, it behooves the employer to create some type of alternative task/job the employee can do until such time they are able to resume their normal duties. Bringing that employee back to work means that work comp benefits /payments in that particular claim are being curtailed, thereby saving the employer potentially more being paid out, while adding to their experience mod and driving their overall work comp expenses up.

Image via Wikipedia When was the last time you took a few minutes to perform a quick safety inspection of your workplace? You might be a small business owner and don't have a risk manager on staff so it falls to you to ensure that there are proper safety procedures in place and risk is mitigated for customers and employees alike. After all, a simple slip and fall can have a disastrous effect on either your workers compensation policy, in the case of an employee mishap, or on your general liability policy, should a customer suffer an injury. Take a few minutes to inspect all signs for emergency exits , fire extinguishers and alarms to make sure they are clearly visible/lit in the event of an emergency. Also, look for trip and fall hazards, wiring looking frayed or worn, and make sure you have surge protectors installed. It might not sound like much, but just a few minutes paying attention to safety related details can save you a bunch of premium dollars down the road. ...

Image via Wikipedia According to the latest circular released by the Delaware Compensation Rating Bureau, (DCRB), after a period of review the rates in Delaware for workers compensation have been decreased an average of 9.74% for residual market rates and 11.3% in voluntary market rates effective this past December 1st. Obviously, with the state of the economy locally, this can't hurt. Hopefully with all the stimulas money coming out of Washington some of it will trickle down to our State and put our local contractors to work, either through infrastructure improvements needed or get the banks lending again and create a possible increase in housing construction. Reblog this post [with Zemanta]">

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr I recently came across a post on a insurance blog, link above, that discussed the usage of peer group pressure being brought to bear to help decrease workers compensation costs. The idea was to divide your employees into groups to start a competition among them to see who can have the lowest workers compensation claim incidence rate . The article suggested monthly prizes, recognition, etc, to be used as a form of incentive . Obviously a larger motivating factor, often unspoken, would be the peer pressure among team members to keep other members incidence rates to a minimum. Those employers with not enough staff to divide into teams can use the same concept on an individual basis. Each employee would still strive to keep their incidence rate down so as to decrease the chances of having their fellow employees look down on them since results would be publicly posted monthly. There are many good ideas out there, this just being a good ...