Safety and Workers' Comp: Prevention Pays Off

Saturday, January 29, 2005 | 0

By Brent Heurter

Every injury you prevent saves you money, because the least expensive workers' compensation claims are the ones that never occur. By putting safety first, you'll avoid both medical costs and lost-time costs. A corporate culture that values safety all the time, every time, will do more than save out-of-pocket injury costs. You'll be keeping your people on the job, which enhances your company's productivity and profitability. And your demonstrated commitment to keeping employees safe from harm sends a strong message to them that they are important, which helps build a positive workplace culture.

Why do injuries occur in the workplace, anyway? Ask most managers and the typical response might be "the employee was careless" or "the employee didn't follow procedure." What these statements really say is that employees are the problem. In this scenario, management shirks responsibility and blames the worker for the injury.

Every year, there are approximately 1.5 million workplace accidents that require time away from the job. The top three injury causes are overexertion, falls on the same level, and bodily reaction (ergonomic injuries resulting from bending, standing, and reaching, as well as injuries from slipping or tripping without a fall). These top three injury categories are the fastest growing of all injury causes, costing almost $25 billion a year.

With these statistics in mind, it becomes clear that workplace accidents don't just happen. Nor are they always caused by carelessness. When you begin to closely examine the root causes of your claims, you'll see that the underlying causes can be addressed and resolved before they ever become workers' compensation claims.

Best Practices of Companies With Low Injury Rates and Costs

What sets the best-in-class employers apart when it comes to safety?. In case after case, what sets them apart is their total commitment to the health and safety of their employees. Best-practice safety programs go beyond the minimum required by OSHA or Cal-OSHA and make the changes necessary to ensure the health and safety of every employee. These programs have complete buy-in at every level of the organization. Best-practice programs also have another advantage: lower injury, illness, and workers' comp costs.

I've found that what they do right can be boiled down their lessons into the following eight steps:

1. Management has "found religion" and is committed to safety.
2. No expense is spared when it comes to safety and the quality of medical attention injured employees receive.
3. Managers understand the workers' comp system, the costs, and their rights.
4. They benchmark their safety record against previous years and against other companies. Annual safety goals are established and reported on at least quarterly.
5. Supervisors understand that they are accountable for the safety of their people.
6. They maintain an aggressive return-to-work program with the goal of returning all employees back to work.
7. They focus on improving the employer/employee relationship, and genuinely care about their employees.
8. They act with urgency, by reporting claims quickly, fixing hazards immediately, and being involved with safety on daily basis.

Is your program a best practice program? This checklist can help you implement a top-notch injury and illness prevention program or improve your existing safety program:

* Name a person(s) (yourself, one of your staff, etc.) who is responsible for day-to-day implementation of the program and has authority for ensuring its effectiveness. If you have multiple sites, name one person at each site.
* Audit your workplace to identify and correct general and specific workplace hazards.
* Communicate safety information to employees. But make this a two-way street: actively solicit their ideas and suggestions for improving safety, then follow through by bringing their concerns and suggestions to upper management. Safety starts with management sending a strong message of accountability and support. Following up with action lets employees know that safety is important to the company.
* Investigate accidents and near misses immediately. Determine the cause and set up procedures and policies to avoid future incidents.
* Train employees and supervisors on all aspects of safety, and test their understanding. Effective workplace safety and workers' compensation programs include an employee communication plan with a strong training component and multiple forms of reinforcement, from posters to newsletters to toolbox talks.
* Document and maintain the records required by the program. These records are your snapshot at how well you are doing in your safety efforts.
* Learn from the past. Before workers' compensation renewal time, take a good, hard look at your company's safety record. Start by collecting injury data from your Forms 300 and your injury or first aid logs. Ask your insurance carrier to provide you with a breakdown of your workers' compensation claims. This is called a loss run, and includes past injuries and costs. You should have four years of currently valued loss runs (printed within the last 30 days) on hand to conduct a review. Ask to have the loss run broken down by job classification and compared with the previous year's experience. In addition, talk to employees and supervisors about near misses: the falls, cuts, burns, and other injuries that almost happened.

With your injury history in front of you, look for patterns:

- Are injuries going up or down?
- What types of injuries are most frequent?
- Do you notice any trends or problem areas?
- Are the employees who are doing one particular job or working a lot of overtime the ones who are getting injured?

Is there any reason why your company can't follow in the footsteps of the best-of-the-best?

Brent Heurter is founder and chief solutions officer of ClearComp (www.clearcomp.com). For more information, call 1-888-CLEAR-89.

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The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of workcompcentral.com, its editors or management.