If you want to manage risk within your firm, you need to familiarize yourself with risk-management language. Here are some basic definitions, provided by the National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research, which you can use to build your knowledge base:
- Exposure: A situation, practice or condition that might lead to a loss; an activity or resource (assets, people).
- Peril: A “cause” of loss; an event that might cause a loss.
- Hazard: A condition within an exposure that might lead to an incident; “a peril about to happen.”
- Incident: An event that disrupts normal activities and might become a loss or claim; “a near miss.” Lifecycle of an incident: Pre-incident, incident, immediate post-incident, post incident, rehabilitation (repair, recovery).
- Accident: An incident resulting in injury or damage to person or property which has, or will become, a loss or claim; “an unplanned event definite as to time and place that causes bodily injury or property damage.”
- Occurrence. An accident with the limitation of time removed.
- Loss: A reduction in value.
- Claim: A demand or obligation for payment as a result of a loss.
- Frequency: The number of times an incident occurs.
- Severity: The monetary impact of a loss.
- Expected losses: Loss projections (“loss pics”) based on probability distributions and statistics; frequently developed using actuarial techniques.
For a complimentary review of the risks your business faces, please feel free to contact us at any time.
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On this Veterans Day, let us remember the service of our veterans, and let us renew our national promise to fulfill our sacred obligations to our veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much so that we can live free.
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In the April 2013 issue of Corporate Counsel an article entitled It’s a Systemic World Out Therediscusses the EEOC’s pursuing large “systemic” cases. For example, in fiscal year 2011 they conducted 580 systemic investigations, filed 84 systemic lawsuits, and settled 35 systemic cases for total $9.6 million. Although your company might not be large enough to be on the EEOC’s radar screen, I can tell you that attorneys are also suing small to midsized companies on a class basis. An employee walks into a lawyer’s office because they didn’t receive their final paycheck, and before you know it they’re filing a class-action lawsuit against your company for missed overtime and meal periods. The article provided a few golden nuggets of advice:
- When responding to an EEOC inquiry, don’t use the phrase “pursuant to our consistently applied policy.” This only invites a broader request for information.
- Do not submit more information than is necessary.
- Conduct your own statistical analysis before submitting data.
- Do preventative analysis looking for adverse impacts in the hiring, promotion, or termination practices.
- Validate pre-employment tests.
- Conduct preventative compensation analysis periodically.
- Cover all internal analysis with attorney-client privilege. This might be impossible in smaller organizations, but you can certainly retain outside counsel to instruct you on how to conduct such analysis and report back to them.
- Listen to your employees. As I have always recommended, you should survey your employees, including use of the Employee Compliance Survey that can be found in HR That Works.
- Invigorate that underutilized internal complaint system. Again, go one step further and ask if there’s a problem –don’t wait for them to tell you there is one.
- Stay current with legal trends. This is one reason why HR That Works membership is so valuable.
- Walk the talk. Are you sensitive to the potential for your practices to cause adverse impacts? Frankly in my experience I can tell you that some business owners could care less about whether a practice causes an adverse impact. All they care about is getting the best employees they can, damn the EEOC. Of course, few companies appreciate a risk until they’re hit with it.
Finally, the article points out how large corporations can gather the data requested by the EEOC easily because they have such large HRIS systems. However, most companies with less than 500 employees don’t have this data readily available, and t collecting it can be an over-burdensome process. This is one reason to make sure that you hire an attorney any time you receive a communication from the EEOC or another regulatory agency.
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The financial well-being of your employees affects their health, their productivity and your bottom line!
A recent nationwide survey by Purchasing Power, Inc. found that:
- A high percentage of employees suffer significant financial stress. More than one in four workers surveyed (28%) find it hard to meet monthly household expenses and nearly half (44%) have less than $2,000 in emergency savings.
- They bring these concerns to the job. More than four in ten (44%) worry about personal finances during work hours.
- This stress leaves them less engaged at work and reduces productivity. Nearly three in ten employees (29%) deal with personal finances during work hours and almost half of these (46%) average two to three hours a week on money issues.
Purchasing Power Chief Revenue Officer Elizabeth Halkos offers some recommendations to help your workers maintain their engagement and productivity at the office:
- Help them reduce debt by offering education, either in groups (through webinars or with a live speaker) or individually so that workers can learn about topics such as budgeting, intelligent use of credit and savings programs. A referral to a qualified credit counseling agency can provide a useful follow-up.
- Give them access to responsible budgeting tools. Offering non-traditional voluntary benefits, such as employee purchase programs ( which allow workers to acquire high-ticket items and educational services on a “forced saving” basis through payroll deduction) can help reduce their financial stress significantly.
- Encourage employees to participate in retirement programs such as a 401(k) plan. However, before workers do this, advise them to deal with debt and budgeting issues and tuck away a nest egg.
Our Benefits experts stand ready to help you ensure financial peace of mind for your workers. Just give us a call.
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Imagine that you ignored or forgot to pay a few minor traffic tickets – and that the police arrested you as a scofflaw.
It can happen. For the past seven years, the “Great Texas Warrant Roundup” has mailed thousands of notices a year giving citizens with outstanding warrants for offenses such as minor traffic violations two weeks to pay up –or face arrest.
Although this is an extreme example, if you have accumulated numerous tickets for minor violations, you’ll need to choose between hiring an attorney to go to court (assuming that you have a strong case) or paying the fine.
Even though using a lawyer will set you back several hundred dollars, it might make financial sense. If you’re acquitted, the tickets won’t show up on your driving record, which will play a major role when the insurance company sets your renewal rate; if you pay the tickets, your premiums could rise as much as 40% to 50% — a hike that will probably be far more than the attorney’s fee.
If you lawyer up, ask the attorney:
- Do you charge by the hour or a flat fee?
- What is your rate?
- What does the rate cover – and not cover?
- How and when do you expect payment?
However, paying up for minor traffic offenses is often the way to go. For one thing, unless you have a strong case, you did break the law. If you have several tickets, taking a driving course, might help erase points from your record. If a driver picks up a few minor violations a year, most insurance companies won’t factor them into the renewal rate.
As always, we stand ready to offer our professional advice.
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This question was recently asked of the ThinkHR Hotline team: What benefits must be continued while an employee is on Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave? What should we do with an employee who is not making his share of the copayments while out on leave?
Their expert answer: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) regulations require that employers continue to provide group health benefits under the same terms and conditions as if the employee was actively at work. There is no requirement under the FMLA to continue other types of benefits offered by the employer. Whether or not an employee’s other benefits continue depend on an employer’s established policy. Any benefits that would be maintained if the employee was on another form of leave should be maintained while the employee is on FMLA leave.
Part of the requirement to continue health insurance benefits “under the same terms” means that both the employer and employee must continue to pay their portions of the group health insurance premium, unless the employer has a different policy for managing premium payments during leaves. The employer is required to notify the employee of the payment requirements while on leave, including the amount of the payment, date due, and where the payment should sent. If the employee fails to pay his or her portion of the premium, the employer may be able to suspend group health benefits for the remainder of the FMLA leave.
In order to suspend benefits for someone on FMLA leave, the employer must allow the employee a 30-day grace period to make payment after the original payment due date. The employee must receive written notice at least 15 days prior to the actual suspension, and the best employer practice is to send a pending suspension notice once the employee is 15 days past the payment date. One important item to note is that even if an employer suspends an employee’s health coverage under these terms, the employer is required to restore coverage without penalty or delay once the employee returns from FMLA leave to a level of coverage that is equal to what the employee had prior to the leave and had not missed premium payments. If the employee does not return from FMLA, the employee whose coverage was suspended for failure to pay premiums during the leave would be eligible for COBRA continuation coverage.
Don Phin, Esq. is VP of Strategic Business Solutions at ThinkHR, which helps companies resolve urgent workforce issues, mitigate risk and ensure HR compliance. Phin has more than three decades of experience as an HR expert, published author and speaker, and spent 17 years in employment practices litigation. For more information, visit www.ThinkHR.com.
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