Tips for Managing Workers’ Comp to Boost Safety Performance
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Do you worry about your workers’ compensation insurance premiums and the claims activities on your policy? You have anxieties about the recordable damages you must add to your injury and illness records. Will your premiums increase? Will you be targeted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or state bureau for an on-site inspection? Your manager may even assess your accomplishment as a safety manager based on the quantity of compensable or recordable injuries or both.
How do you efficiently manage both workplace safety training and health program and a workers’ compensation insurance plan? Could developing your workers’ compensation results help you more adequately comply with occupational safety and health regulations and safety training guidelines?
Workers’ compensation insurance carriers and state departments of insurance often have helpful direction and support to help companies improve their safety training details. Examples include:
- Liberty Mutual offers its clients use of an exclusive website, Liberty Mutual SafetyNet™, which produces materials and self-assessment instruments for managing workplace safety hazards.
- Liberty mutual also has a Risk Control Consulting hub employed with safety experts accessible by phone or mail.
- State Farm allows its policyholders support for stopping slips, trips, and falls; fire prevention; and disaster preparation.
- The Travelers Companies give a Workforce Advantage® program to help organizations manage their safety training and health and workers’ compensation programs by concentrating on selecting the right employees, successfully onboarding them and instructing them in your organization's safety culture, and continuing to promote and involve them in that business safety culture.
- The Texas Department of Insurance’s Division on Workers’ Compensation has checklists, webinars, and workplace signs to assist you in managing occupational driving safety, stop fatal falls, and recuperate from major hurricanes.
Commercial insurers also crunch the numbers housed in their databases and often publish their conclusions. Liberty Mutual’s newest Workplace Safety Index published this season, announced the top 10 costliest causes of workplace injuries:
- Falls on the corresponding level
- Struck by machine or object
- Falls to a lower level
- Other exertions or bodily responses
- Roadway incidents involving a motor-driven vehicle
- Slip or trip without falling
- Caught in or compressed by equipment or objects
- Repetitive motions concerning microtasks
- Struck against object or devices
Analyzing Close Calls
The best time to sharpen your concentration on accidents and injuries is before they occur.
Never become smug. If you haven’t had a compensable or recordable injury on your watch lately, don’t pretend you’re safe. There’s a modern term for that. It’s called “confirmation bias.”
Watch closely for near-hit disturbances. Measuring close calls could prove useful. Investigations show that for every workplace safety accident that occurs, there are more than 600 near hits. Such close calls may be due to related safety accidents or expose errors made regularly by operators and administrators. It may only be a matter of time before these continued blunders lead to an accident or injury, keeping it difficult for the organization to be incident and injury-free.
Completely examining all accidents and near hits can help decrease the number of claims at your buildings.
Operators and administrators should be urged to communicate all safety accidents and close calls to create the amount of data you need to perform an objective investigation. Remember that near hits are not recordable, and a recordable injury is not fundamentally a compensable one. Examine all accidents, injuries, and close calls as they happen. Expeditious evaluation can stop additional problems in your safety culture.
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Guy Burdick Sep 9, 2019 EHS Management - You worry about your workers’ compensation insurance premiums and the claims activity on your policy. You have concerns about the recordable injuries you must add to your injury and illness logs. Will your premiums go up? Will you be targeted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or state agency for an on-site inspection? Your boss may even evaluate your performance as a safety manager based on the number of compensable or recordable injuries or both.
Workers' compensationHow do you effectively manage both a workplace safety and health program and a workers’ compensation insurance policy? Could improving your workers’ compensation results actually help you better comply with occupational safety and health regulations?
