4th of July fireworks, parades and cookouts are an excuse for you to relax with family and friends. As you plan your celebration this year, take several steps to ensure safety for everyone involved in celebrating the United States’ birthday.
Use Fireworks Safely
Public fireworks displays are the safest way to enjoy the beautiful colors and terrific booms of this July 4th tradition, especially when you maintain a distance of at least 500 feet between you and the show. Firework displays at home can be fun though too. If you go that route, take these precautions.
Take Precautions While Grilling
Burgers, hot dogs, fruit and pizza taste delicious when they’re grilled. Grab your favorite side dishes and follow a few precautions that ensure you and your guests grill safely.
Stay Safe on the Beach
Swimming is a fun summer activity, and it’s good exercise. At the beach, lake, public pool or backyard pool, stay safe with these tips.
Wear Sun Bathing Protection
Picnics are part of many July 4th celebrations. You should also take these protective measures.
Your July 4th celebration will be safe when you take these steps. For more advice, talk to your health insurance agent. He or she stands ready to help you have the best birthday party ever.
Voluntary Vision and Dental insurance is becoming increasingly popular among mid-sized companies as a way to bolster their employee benefits programs.
Since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, benefit providers have been adding Vision and Dental care, giving mid-market companies a variety of choices among competitively priced plans that can help attract and retain quality workers. “We continue to see that benefits like these are good for driving employee loyalty and job satisfaction,” says Alan Hirschberg, vice president of dental and vision products for MetLife Inc.
Sales of Voluntary benefits keep growing: a survey last by industry association LIMRA International, Inc. showed that Vision coverage increased 75% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2012, while Dental care rose 1%.
To help curb costs, mid-sized businesses often ask employees to pick up at least 30% of premiums for these plans. Most workers are fine with this because the premiums are relatively inexpensive.
In addition to supplementing Group Health insurance, Vision and Dental plans cover tests and procedures that can reduce employers’ health care costs down the road. For example, eye and dental exams can be crucial in early detection and management of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
When it comes to Voluntary benefits, one size does not fit all. For instance, highly compensated employees might want a Dental plan that covers adult orthodontics, while lower-wage workers might prefer coverage for cleaning, fillings and other basic care. Companies can also offer multiple plans, allowing workers to select the premiums and coverage they prefer.
We’d be happy to work with you in tailoring cost-effective, comprehensive voluntary Vision and Dental plans that can benefit your business – and your employees.
Nearly one of four people aged 64 to 75 are still at work – and the number is skyrocketing, with more Baby Boomers who reach retirement age staying in the workplace. The good news: Older workers have a lower injury rate. The bad news: Their injuries tend to be more serious and require more time away from work.
Senior workers have specific safety issues. Their retention is often shorter, they’re more easily distracted, have slower reaction time, declining vision and hearing, and a poorer sense of balance. These physical limitations lead to specific types of injuries for older workers, ranging from falls to accumulated injuries after years of doing the same task What’s more, they sometimes deny their deteriorating abilities, which can lead to them to trying to work past their new limits.
Indicators that older workers might need accommodations can be physical (fatigue or tripping), psychological/emotional (loss of patience or irritability), numbers and patterns of sick days, or more frequent minor injuries or near misses.
You can help protect your senior workers by:
Make sure that safety culture becomes an institutional value for all employees. For example, when on-the-job feedback indicates that an older worker is having trouble, don’t fire the person. This will discourage honest input from employees who might feel responsible for their co-worker’s loss of employment.
For more information on making your workplace safer for older employees, feel free to get in touch with us.
No matter how large or small the job in the building trade is, it’s always the best policy to carry insurance again liability for losses from injuries, accidents, or property damage during construction.
Residential building contractors need a Liability policy to protect them from lawsuits from homeowners for construction-related losses, or from workers injured on the job. Make sure that your contract requires every sub to carry their own Liability insurance and exempt you from responsibility from damage they might produce during construction. The amount of coverage you need will depend on the size of the contract. As a rule of thumb, it’s wise to have two or three times the size of the project budget.
Commercial contractors usually carry millions in Liability insurance. Contractors with higher risk of damages (for example, roofers or contractors in highly specialized trades) often take out higher coverage.
Your Liability policy will set coverage amounts (limits) for both each occurrence and overall (aggregate) values. Limits are also set for: 1) fire damage to property under construction; 2) medical expenses for injured workers on the jobsite who might not be covered under Workers Compensation; and 3) personal and advertising injury (claims that promotion or advertising caused a financial or personal loss to the owner of the home or building).
While many contractors pay their Liability premiums up front, those with cash flow problems others prefer to finance them through an indemnity corporation with a down payment and monthly payments over six months to a year.
As always, our insurance experts stand ready to help you find comprehensive Liability coverage at a rate you can afford. Feel free to get in touch with us at any time.
An increasing number of employees in the “Sandwich Generation” are looking for benefits to help them manage the demands of caring for parents and children alike. A recent nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of respondents in their 40s and 50s have a living parent and are either raising a young child or supporting a grown one.
“There’s an emerging recognition of the impact of caregiver stress on working parents’ ability to be productive at home and at work,” says David Lissy, CEO of Bright Horizons, a provider of dependent back-up care services. “Particularly as families wait longer to have children, there’s more at stake in their careers and they’re pulled in many directions, dealing with the realities of their aging parents.”
On average, access to Bright Horizons allowed employees to work six days during the past six months – productive time that otherwise would have been lost – and nearly 70% of these workers used the service for adult care.
Care.com, another provider of backup care services for employees, saw a three-fold increase last year in the number of clients that added senior care planning. IRobot, Inc. chose Care.com as an employee benefit because “we value our employees and want to support them in managing the demands on their personal lives,” says benefits analyst Cathy Blanchard. Since adding the service, iRobot has seen a 15% month-to -month increase in using the program, which has boosted productivity by reducing costs from care-related absences and distractions.
If you’d like to learn more about offering day care for adults and children as an employee benefit, just give us a call.
Scurich Insurance Services
Phone: (831) 661-5697
Fax: (831) 661-5741
Physical:
783 Rio Del Mar Blvd., Suite7,
Aptos, Ca 95003-4700
Mailing:
PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
E-mail address:
[email protected]
Available 8:30am - 5:00pm
