With so many demands on their time, many business owners find it difficult to learn enough about their insurance programs.
You’ve probably found yourself asking questions such as:
- Do I have the right coverages to protect my business from financial loss?
- Do I have any exposures to loss that aren’t covered and should be?
- Exactly what am I buying?
- Am I getting the best value for my premium dollar?
As insurance professionals, we help you answer these questions because we:
- Offer policies providing protection against a wide variety of risks that can threaten your business – everything from Accounts Receivable and Business Interruption through Employment Practices Liability and Glass Insurance to Theft coverage and Workers Compensation.
- Recommend an insurance company (from among the quality carriers that we represent) that will provide quality protection.
- Make it a point to learn how your business works so that we can pinpoint potential sources of loss.
- Design a program that minimizes the impact of these losses (incidentally, we don’t always recommend insurance).
- Provide comprehensive protect that’s tailored to your needs – and your pocketbook.
- Work with you to make sure that your coverage stays updated as your business grows.
In short, we take over one phase of your business for you, and work with you to accomplish your first goal – protecting your profits.
To help us help you make sure that your business insurance makes business sense, please feel free to get in touch with our agency’s professional at any time.
We’re here to serve.
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The use of narcotics in treating injured workers faces heavy scrutiny today – and for good reason. The latest National Council on Compensation Insurance, Inc. (NCCI) Annual Issues Symposium found that:
- The average cost of narcotics per Workers Comp claim rose from $39 in 2003 to $59 in 2011. This is a rate of 0.79 narcotic prescriptions per claim, up from 0.56 in 2003 – a 14% increase in eight years.
- More than 5% percent of Comp claims that resulted in at least one prescription for if anymedication included five or more narcotics prescriptions.
To curb the prescribing of narcotics for your injured employees, start by choosing the right Workers Comp physician.
In most states, businesses have the legal right to designate the physician that injured employees must use. To find a physician in your area who is board certified in Occupational Medicine, go to http://www.acoem.org/. If none is available, look for a doctor who takes patients on Workers Compensation. In many cases, urgent care clinics make great partners. Once you find a physician, talk to him or her about your business, discuss your return-to-work program and the types of transitional jobs you offer – and ask about their attitude toward prescribing narcotics.
Even if state law prohibits you from requiring injured workers to see a specific physician, you can still suggest that they do so. For example, you might say, “Doctor Joan at Acme Urgent Care has treated many of your co-workers and they’ve gotten better quickly.”
Selecting a doctor who doesn’t dispense drugs and only prescribes narcotics when they’re are absolutely necessary can go far to help injured employees get back to work and be healthy and productive as swiftly as possible – while keeping your Workers Comp costs under control.
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If you held your last fire or emergency evacuation drill more than six months ago, it’s time to think about staging another. Careful planning and evaluation can help you get the most out of these exercises, enhancing your employee’s chances of a safe evacuation.
Bear in mind that unannounced drills give you an idea of how workers might actually react in an emergency situation. On the other hand, announcing drills offer them the opportunity to prepare for and practice specific skill sets they would need.
Before a fire emergency arises, workers need to know:
- How to activate the appropriate alarm system(s).
- How and when to contact the fire department.
- What to do before they evacuate—such as shutting down equipment.
- Their role in the evacuation. For example, they might need to assist disabled co-workers, help contractors or visitors on the premises, bring essential items such as visitor logs that can be used to verify that everyone is out of the building, provide first aid for injured co-workers, or act to prevent or minimize hazardous chemical releases.
- How to evacuate their work area by at least two routes.
- The locations of stairwells (workers should not use elevators to evacuate).
- Places to avoid – such as hazardous materials storage areas.
- Assembly points outside the building.
After the drill, evaluate the exercise to determine which problems need addressing.
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A study commissioned by the British government found that for every lost-time injury of more than three days, there were 189 non-injury cases. No business can afford to ignore these near misses, which provide invaluable opportunities to identify and correct safety hazards on the job before they lead to accidents or injuries.
However, according to an article in the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) journal, employees often resist reporting these close calls for such reasons as fear of management retaliation, peer pressure, concern about a safety record, complicated reporting forms and lack of feedback.
To encourage employee reporting of near misses in the workplace, experts recommend these guidelines:
- Provide your employees with safety training.
- Develop strategies to measure how reporting near misses improves safety performance.
- Recognize and reward employees for proactive safety engagement.
- Have your safety committee oversee the reporting process.
- Provide incident investigations training for all managers that includes mentoring help for new staff members.
- Investigate everything! The time you spend investigating near misses will yield long-term rewards by eliminating the time, expense, and hassle of dealing with major (possibly fatal) injuries or property loss – not to mention the impact on productivity and workplace morale.
- Conduct comprehensive follow-up on corrective action plans. Ask who, what, and by when – and make sure that these changes are made.
- Report on all investigations. Making sure that every employee hears about every near miss will encourage reporting of future incidents, as workers realize that speaking out will help them do their work more safely.
Our agency’s specialists would be happy to provide their advice on encouraging your employees to help keep their workplace safe. Just give us a call.
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Employment-related accidents behind the wheel are the leading cause of death from traumatic injuries in the workplace, killing some 2,200 people a year and accounting for 22% of job-related fatalities. Deaths and injuries from these accidents increase costs and reduce productivity for employers – while bringing pain and suffering to family, friends, and coworkers.
Preventing work-related roadway crashes poses a significant risk management challenge. The roadway is a unique work environment. Compared with other work settings, employers have little ability to control conditions and exert direct supervision over their drivers. The volume of traffic and road construction continue to increase, while workers feel pressured to drive faster for longer periods, and often use mobile electronic devices that distract them behind the wheel.
To help reduce this risk, for both long-distance truck drivers and employees who occasionally use personal vehicles for company business, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommends that employers follow these precautions:
- Require drivers and passengers to use seat belts.
- Ensure that employees who drive on the job have valid licenses.
- Incorporate road fatigue management in safety programs.
- Provide fleet vehicles with top quality crash protection.
- Make sure employees receive training to operate specialized vehicles.
- Offer periodic vision screening and physicals for employees whose primary job is driving.
- Avoid requiring workers to drive irregular or extended hours.
- Prohibit cell phone use and other distracting activities such as eating, drinking, or adjusting non-critical vehicle controls while driving.
- Set schedules that allow drivers to obey speed limits.
- Follow state laws on graduated driver’s licensing and child labor.
For more information about how to prevent work-related driving deaths and injuries, just give one of our Risk Management experts a call at any time.
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If you have teenagers, you’re well aware that they’re all too prone to take risks. Four in five U.S. teen (80%) have part-time jobs. Of these, more than half (52%) are in the retail sector, which includes restaurants and fast food establishments.
To help keep themselves safe on the job – and thus reduce their employers’ risk-management exposure – teenagers who work in restaurants and agriculture can use interactive web-based training tools provided by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
According to OSHA, educating and training young people about safety in the workplace can help prevent injuries today and lead to a healthy workforce in the future. These resources provide practical information to protect young workers from hazards in industries where many of them are likely to work during high school and college.
The Teen Worker Safety in Restaurants eTool highlights the most common hazards in these workplaces and offers safety and health suggestions, safety posters, and electronic links to educate young workers about job safety. Areas of focus include serving, clean-up, drive-thru, cooking, food preparation, delivery, and worker rights and child labor laws.
The Youth in Agriculture eTool presents case studies that describe common hazards and offers safety solutions for teenage workers in such areas as farm equipment operations, confined spaces, and prevention of c injuries g from falls, electrocutions, and chemical exposures.
The OSHA Teen Workers page offers educational resources such as fact sheets on workplace rights and responsibilities, hazards on the job, ways to prevent injuries, work hours, job restrictions, etc.
Letting teenage workers know about these resources can benefit them – and their employers. What’s not to like?
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