Skip to main content
search
All Posts By

robintek

Jun 03
Love0

Employers Liability – what are your employees bringing home

By Workplace Safety

Employers liability fills gaps in the workers’ compensation standard coverage. For example, suppose an employee is injured due to a defective piece of equipment that their employer manufactured. The employee has a products liability claim, but is also collecting under workers’ compensation. Employers liability coverage steps in and covers the employees products claim in excess of the workers’ compensation payout.

Another extension of workers’ compensation through employers’ liability concerns the families of workers. If a worker transports a toxin or a pathogen back home on their clothing or themselves and exposes their family, employers liability pays the medical bills.

This scenario is little known and rarely claimed, however, for more than just monetary reasons, it’s good to control this potential exposure.

The first step requires reviewing any material safety data sheets (MSDS) for chemicals and supplies that may be transportable by simple contact to clothes, through respiration or on skin or hair.

Can any of these products cause allergic reactions or are they known for anaphylaxis reactions?

Step two: if any pathway is possible, contain that product to your work space.

Step three is to set up work zones, decontamination zones and clean areas for employees to enter, dress and store personal items, and clean-up after work. Use a buddy system to be sure all potentially affected areas are decontaminated properly and completely.

Unfortunately, you cannot control the health of all the people your employees contact, or even their families. Some common cleaners and relatively benign chemicals can cause serious distress in sensitive people.

Employers liability has historically been a rare claim; however, as more people suffer allergies, reactions to chemicals, or just gain knowledge of their personal environment, these claims promise to become more frequent.

Controlling these exposures now will reduce future costs. There are virtually no statutes of limitations for claims. Besides, you don’t want to make kids sick, and they are the most sensitive to low doses.

 
Jun 03
Love0

Proper Lifting and High Storage: management that pays for itself

By Workplace Safety

Proper lifting technique begins with proper delivery and storage. Plan incoming deliveries when enough labor is available to assist without straining. According to Liberty Mutual’s five year study, overexertion is the number one cause of on the job injuries. We can manage and do better.

Check supplies in, and then put them where they belong. By storing materials quickly, hallways, loading docks, and work areas stay uncrowded. And, employees know where to store and find supplies.

Muscle pulls can occur with relatively light weights. To reduce the frequency of these pulls, try to organize storage so a minimum of reaching high or bending low is required, especially with heavier objects.

Store twenty pound objects at waist height. Any object weighing more than twenty pounds should be stored where hand trucks can be used to move the objects. Do not store objects higher than five feet. People should not reach over their heads to retrieve an object. Reaching risks dropping a load on the employees head.

Sounds like you need more storage space? First, try disposing of all that top shelf long-term stuff. Everyone in business has a certain amount of clutter that accumulates over the years. It’s similar to the attack or garage. Space tends to fill up with stuff. Clean it out. Psychologically, it will make you feel leaner as a company.

Do not overcrowd storage areas. Overcrowding promotes two bad hazards. Trips and falls occur more frequently in overstuffed storage areas. Unusual twisting and bending of the torso occurs more frequently in disorganized or overcrowded storage.

Design and designate storage space so adequate supplies or materials can be on hand without employees needing to twist, turn, strain or trip and fall to get them. Organized, safe storage promotes more professionalism. People tend to maintain inventory as they find it. Safety is the result of proper planning and implementation of storage management.

Jun 03
Love0

A Safe Workplace is the Number One Employee Benefit

By Workplace Safety

You don’t think of safety as an employee benefit? Reconsider it.

Health insurance provides medical care in the event of disease or injury off the job. Workers’ compensation covers post injury and illness medical costs on the job. Short-term and long-term disability reacts to injury or illness off the job.

Employers now add gym memberships and preventative medicine as benefits.

Why not preventative measures for on the job injuries as a benefit? Get your employees home safe after each shift. Great benefit for their families and themselves.

How do you institute a safety policy as a benefit?

1. Make a corporate-wide decision that safety is a core ethic. Top management must embrace and lead the effort.

2. Safety meetings do not require time wasting. Create brief topics, under five minutes, that can be incorporated in every shift meeting. For example, proper use of protective eyewear – leave it on, or how to fit a hard hat.

3. Reducing the number of injuries on the job is a cost savings. Having a well known safety record, or more important a safety ethic, helps attract the best professional employees. Just as a wellness benefit attracts quality help, a safety record or effort invites serious workers to apply.

4. Reducing the severity of claims, think protective eyewear, saves the company a fortune. Consider that insurance companies view injury frequency as more vital than injury severity in predicting costs. Safety awareness decreases frequency, proper equipment and techniques decrease severity. Invest wisely in safety.

5. Communicate the human value of safety to your employees. Tell them how much money you spend on safety every year. In fact if you are not doing so, communicate to each employee how much all their benefits cost you. How much is their hidden paycheck.

Safety is the number one benefit you can offer. Believe it to your core and live it

May 01
Love0

HIRING THE MENTALLY IMPAIRED

By Your Employee Matters

Approximately 58 million Americans — one in four adults – experience a mental health impairment in a given year (National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2007). One in seventeen individuals lives with serious mental health impairment (National Institute of Mental Health, 2008). So the chances are that at some point you’ll be interviewing or hiring someone with a mental impairment. How should you handle it?

It takes the EEOC 56 pages to define a mental disability; and the list of potential disabilities is long: bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, PSTD, schizophrenia, and dozens of others. The bottom line: Every one of the maladies has a limitation associated with it, such as an inability to concentrate, interact with others, remember things or handle stress.

Before making a job offer, an employer can ask if an applicant has the ability to meet the essential job functions of the position- with or without accommodation. If their disability is immediately noticeable, you may ask if you need to adjust any interview or testing formats to accommodate them.

Once an offer is made, you can dig deeper into any limitations to determine if the person is mentally “fit for duty.” Your best bet is to work with a certified occupational medicine physician when conducting this analysis. Also consider JAN for mental accommodation ideas.

May 01
Love0

THE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT REVIEW: HOW DO YOUR WORKERS FEEL ABOUT WORK?

By Your Employee Matters

Companies usually use some type of employee performance evaluation to assess successes and gaps in performance and convey these assessments to employees. Although this might be helpful, it’s not enough. If you want your employees to be more engaged and productive, you need to understand their intrinsic motivations.

To do this, consider adding these questions to the employee performance review conversation. (Notice that we use the word “feel” a lot because it’s the employee’s emotions that should concern you.):

  • How do you feel about your job?
  • How do you feel about the direction of the company?
  • Do you feel that you have improved your skills over the last year?
  • To what extent do you feel that you have grown as a person while working for us during the past year?
  • What do you feel is the most valuable thing you do at work?
  • Where do feel you can add more value to the company?
  • Out of curiosity, have you looked at other job opportunities or are you completely satisfied here? If not, what would it take to satisfy you?
  • Do you feel you’re being paid fairly? If not, what do you feel you should get paid and what do you base that on?
  • Do you feel we have exhibited a management style that’s caring and supportive? If not, how can we do a better job of this?
  • Is there anything that we haven’t spoken about that feels unfair to you and might get in the way of our working relationship or your success at this company?
  • Is there anything else you would like to share that we haven’t talked about?

These are brave questions to ask because most managers really don’t want to dive into the emotional landscape – which is a big mistake. As Daniel Goldman reminds us in Emotional Intelligence, it’s your E.Q., not your I.Q., that’s most important to becoming a great leader or manager.

Consider having this conversation outside of your office where it might feel safer for the employee. For example, “Now that we’ve discussed your performance I like to have a little deeper conversation about your work here and I don’t want to do it in the office. Where would you like to go talk about this? ”

You don’t have to buy this idea wholesale. Test it out. Play social scientist and begin with just one employee. Let him or her know that you’re opening up to a more meaningful conversation; and that because you’ve never tried this before it will be a learning experience for both of you!

May 01
Love0

A CLASSIC RISK MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

By Your Employee Matters

I recently came across a question which exposed a recurring problem in many organizations – management protecting top producers who bully other employees or push them around. The belief is maybe that’s what it takes to succeed in this competitive business world.

This approach is asking for disaster. Companies that are aware of such a situation and ignore, bury, or deny it, are exposing themselves to significant risks down the road. Hopefully they saved some of the dollars that their “breadwinner” generated to buy an EPLI policy for the inevitable lawsuit.

Consider this letter:

“I work in retail sales. My coworkers and I feel harassed every day by the senior salesperson, who is the top salesperson and feels she is untouchable. In fact, she almost is, because our manager won’t correct her even though we have complained about her misbehavior several times. This salesperson threatens and, harasses us, and jeopardizes and poaches our sales, leaving us miserable and stressed. She wants all the sales to herself and will retaliate when she can’t have her way. She has made the workplace hostile. Although we have complained about her in our annual self-assessments/reviews, we haven’t had a response from corporate. Now we all are planning to send a letter straight to corporate HR. Is this the right thing to do, or is there a better option? Of course, we’re a bit nervous that we could jeopardize our employment, because corporate might side with her as the top seller. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.”

What would you advise this person to do?

May 01
Love0

EDITOR’S COLUMN: WHEN IS GOSSIP INFORMATION?

By Your Employee Matters

I listened to an interesting Freakonomics podcast about gossip (http://www.wnyc.org/story/everybody-gossips-thats-good-thing/ )’ According to the podcast, often one person’s gossip is another person’s information. Much of this, of course, depends on one’s point of view. Companies don’t want gossip that’s distracting to productivity, but at the same time they need to identify blockages to productivity, and maybe even wrongdoing. As the saying goes, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Speaking of sayings, one of my favorites is “light is the best disinfectant.” Another metaphor I refer to is “problems are better solved when they’re on top of the table than when they remain underneath.” So, how can we put gossip that’s informational on the top of the table, where it’s in the light, and ignore gossip that’s nonproductive?

There are three basic ways to get at informational gossip:

  1. Be a good listener. If you show you care, then your employees will be more likely to share.
  2. Have one-on-one conversations that give employees the emotional space to express themselves. One of my favorite questions is “does anything feel unfair to you about your work experience?” Group conversations (focus groups) work, too. Just make sure to have them in an environment that feels safe.
  3. Survey employees. I recommend the Employee Compliance Survey that HRThatWorks created because it lets you know if there’s any smoke or fire in the environment. When it comes to surveys in general, those that are anonymous or that have “1 to 5” responses don’t provide much useful information. Instead, ask what’s going well and what could go better. (PS: If you want this form, email me dphin@thinkhr.com)

Here are three ways to prevent nonproductive gossip:

  1. Let the workforce know that this stuff wastes time. Whether the gossip is online or face-to-face, limit it to rest and meal periods
  2. Keep people busy. When employees have a sense of urgency, there’s little time for gossip
  3. Give them something positive to focus on: Positive gossip. Positive drama.

Gossip will never go away – but the energy behind it can and should be channeled into more productive pursuits.

May 01
Love0

What’s the difference between Commercial Automobile and Business Automobile Coverage?

By Business Protection Bulletin

The difference between personal automobiles and business automobiles is the name under which it is titled. If you use your personal automobile in business, the business should have hired and non-owned automobile coverage to cover the business’ liability of your driving.

If the business owns the car, you should either have a personal automobile policy or a “drive other cars” endorsement on the business policy to cover your liability for driving a company car. The car owner and driver are often both sued.

So, what’s the difference between Commercial Automobile and Business Automobile?

Commercial automobile coverage includes several policy forms. Garage, business auto, and motor carrier are each forms of commercial auto.

Business automobiles are cars, pick-ups, small trucks, large trucks, dump trucks, even ambulances can be on the fleet list. Business automobile is for standard usage owned vehicles for businesses.

Garage forms are used for public repair shops, dealerships, attended parking lots, any other situation where the general public might drive the business vehicle or you have care, custody or control over other people’s vehicles. The risk is different from business auto because either the cars or drivers do not belong to the same organization. Garage liability also covers towing other vehicles.

The garage form, simply stated, anticipates the owner of the vehicle and the operator will be different people on a regular basis, as part of the business.

Motor carrier forms anticipate different ownership of either the power unit or the trailer it hauls. The nature of long haul trucking is independent contractors “owner operators” hook to other business’ trailers and move them from one spot to another.

Motor carrier coverage is designed to cover the nuances of the independent operator system. Long-haul trucking has different exposures than the average salesman’s vehicle, and needs different coverage.

Of course, these commercial forms can confuse. Please call us today to assure you are covered properly. We appreciate your business.

May 01
Love0

What’s the best way to cover your business equipment?

By Business Protection Bulletin

Business equipment covers a variety of assets. Word processing, production machinery, air conditioners, boilers, even bulldozers and excavators describe business equipment. So let’s answer this question by going through the different property policies.

    1. Contents policy. This coverage, generally found in the property section of your package policy (general liability and property combined), protects you from losses due to covered perils (fire, lightning, smoke, hail, windstorms, civil commotion, and others). Generally, office equipment, laboratory equipment, production equipment or any other device or machinery that stays on location is best covered under contents. The policy is designed for exactly this purpose.

 

    1. Inland Marine. This policy form covers the property value of equipment that moves. For example, construction equipment like backhoes or bulldozers travel to and remain on jobsites. Contents policies limit the value of some types of property off premises; inland marine allows transportation and off-premises usage.
    1. Boiler and Machinery. This property coverage has elements of liability as well. Basically, boiler and machinery policies provide an inspection service for equipment to assure it is in good working order. Then, if a boiler breaks down or explodes, the policy covers damage caused to others and mechanical breakage of the boiler.

 

  1. Cargo. This policy covers your property while in transit. For example, if your shipping machinery across the country or an ocean. Contents policies have exclusions and low limits on in-transit goods. The policy does not anticipate this type of risk. Cargo policies do, and they are designed around freight carrier responsibilities in the event of a loss.

Property coverage seems like it’s simple, but many subtle clauses create niche coverage issues. Call us today!

May 01
Love0

What Is Boiler and Machinery Coverage, and What Are the Advantages?

By Business Protection Bulletin

Boiler and Machinery policies provide two major services. Insurance in the form of property coverage for damage to buildings, boilers, machinery and additional liability coverage in the event of an explosion. Second, a valuable inspection service for the covered property, which enables mechanical breakdown coverage to be provided.

This coverage is not available under other insurance policies. In many insurance companies, boiler and machinery has been re-titled equipment breakdown to reflect the more modern application.

Mechanical breakdown insurance provides loss of refrigeration coverage for food spoilage, loss of revenue due to emergency generator malfunction, and extra expenses to keep the operation temperature controlled during machinery outages. Good loss control in these matters begins with avoidance – well running machines.

The inspection service meets requirements of local and state authorities. More importantly, the inspector gives solid loss control advice to avoid the breakdown of machines and boilers at inconvenient times. The inspectors review the system as a redundant check on the owner’s own maintenance program. Losing power, heat, cooling, or ventilation creates production problems for any business.

Boiler and Machinery coverage applies to almost any business. The image of huge steam boilers may come to mind, but refrigeration, modern HVAC systems, or emergency power generators should instead. Think turbines, engines, fans, all the gears and shafts which make them work, and any other mission critical machinery. Think about heat pumps, air conditioners, even elevator equipment.

Ask your professional agent to help compile a list of equipment that may be exposed to mechanical breakdown to the detriment of your operations. It is likely that your company has an exposure that is not being properly addressed. With this coverage, the loss to the equipment is secondary to the consequential loss of income or the extra expense brought on by the mechanical breakdown. Your professional agent can help you design the correct coverage.

Close Menu