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Top 10 Men’s Health Risks

By Life and Health

1606-LH-2Men are less likely than women to visit the doctor, but men do face several serious health concerns. Learn the top 10 risks as you stay healthy this Father’s Day and all year.

    • Accidents and Unintentional Injuries

      Men tend to take more risks than women, and that increases their chances of being injured from accidents. Slow down while driving, don’t overestimate your abilities and think before you act as you avoid accidents and unintentional injuries.
    • Heart Disease

      More than one in three men suffers from a form of cardiovascular disease, according to the America Heart Association. Keep your blood pressure in check, eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly and get routine physicals as you keep your heart healthy.

    • Respiratory Diseases

      Smoking, asbestos exposure and environmental toxins can lead to respiratory diseases like emphysema, COPD and lung cancer. Stop smoking, eat a balanced diet and avoid environmental triggers as you reduce your risk.

    • Liver Disease

      The size of a football, your liver digests food, absorbs nutrients and gets rid of toxins. Protect it from cirrhosis and cancer when you avoid alcohol and smoking.

    • Diabetes

      Anxiety, depression and sexual impotence result from high blood sugar. It can also cause nerve and kidney damage, vision problems and heart disease or stroke if it’s not treated. Exercise and eat a nutrition diet to combat this health risk.

    • Prostate Cancer

      One in six men develops prostate cancer. It’s not aggressive, but gets regular screenings as you protect yourself.

    • Skin Cancer

      Men over 50 face a high risk of developing skin cancer. Lower your risk when you wear long sleeves, pants, a hat and sunscreen while working or playing outside, and see your doctor about any suspicious spots.

    • Flu and Pneumonia

      Flu and pneumonia can affect any man, but it’s more common if you already have a compromised immune system. Get the flu shot and avoid anyone who’s sick as you stay healthy.

    • Alcohol

      Drinking too much alcohol can lead to chronic illnesses like oral, liver and colon cancer. It also interferes with reproductive health and increases aggressive behavior. Never binge drink, cut down on your alcohol consumption and address any underlying issues like depression that cause you to overindulge.

    • Depression As many as six million men suffer from depression, including suicidal thoughts, reports The National Institute of Mental Health. Stay connected to friends, exercise regularly, get enough sleep and seek professional help if you’re struggling with this health challenge.

This Father’s Day, give your loved ones the gift of health when you address the top 10 health risks for men. Visit your doctor for regular physicals, and discuss ways you can get and stay healthy.

How to Choose the Right Exercise Ball

By Life and Health

1606-LH-1Exercise balls are popular with personal trainers and physical therapists because they strengthen your core muscles, improve your posture, relieve sore upper back muscles and improve flexibility. Because they’re available in several sizes, you need to choose the right one for you. These tips will help.

    1. Stand Beside It

      When you stand beside the exercise ball, it should come to your knees. This height chart can assist you in finding the ball with the correct diameter.

      • Under 5′: 45 cm
      • 5’1″ to 5’8″: 55 cm
      • 5’9″ to 6’2″: 65 cm
      • 6’3″ to 6’7″: 75 cm
      • Over 6’8″: 85 cm

      In certain instances, you’ll want to choose a larger or smaller ball. Select a larger ball if you have long legs, are overweight or have back problems. A smaller ball is a good fit if you have shorter legs or are at the lower end of the height range.

    1. Sit On It

      Sit on the ball before you buy it to make sure it’s the right size for you. If your ball is too small, you won’t get the full benefit of it because your pelvis and hips will be unaligned. If the ball is too big, you’ll be unstable.

      You’ll know the ball is the right size if your feet are flat on the floor for even weight distribution. Also, your knees must be slightly lower or level with your pelvis, and your ears, shoulders and pelvis should be aligned vertically.

    1. Stretch Your Arm

      The length of your arm from your shoulder to your fingertip can be another way to be sure you buy the right size ball, especially if you’ll be picking it up for aerobic exercises. Use this chart to help you choose wisely.

      • 22″ to 25-1/2″: 55 cm
      • 26″ to 31-1/2″: 65 cm
      • 31-3/4″ to 35-1/2″: 75 cm
    2. Buy Quality

      Most exercise balls range in cost from $20 to $40. While you may be tempted to choose a cheaper brand, keep the quality in mind. You don’t want a ball that will lose its elasticity or air quickly.
  1. Keep it Inflated

    As the exercise ball ages, it will naturally deflate. You can also deflate the ball slightly if it’s too big. However, deflation lowers its effectiveness. Keep it inflated to the proper pressure to provide the right resistance, balance and stabilization for you.

An exercise ball gives you a variety of benefits and can replace your office chair and sofa or be used during your regular workouts. Choose the correct size as you strengthen your body and get fit. For more information and to ensure an exercise ball is right for you, talk to your doctor.

Keeping Your Team Safe With Conflict Resolution

By Construction Insurance Bulletin

1606-CON-4The easiest way to create an unsafe workplace: When you see a couple of employees butting heads, just turn a blind eye to it.

You can follow all the safety guidelines, you can wear your hard hat and your goggles and tuck your sleeves when you use the table saw, but if tempers are hot, if you’ve got people who just can’t work together, then it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt. Part of being a leader means knowing how to bring your people together for a common goal without letting personal differences get in the way. Some conflict is normal, but you need your team to be able to handle disagreements in a mature manner. Here are some tips for ensuring that we all can just get along:

Don’t Be Afraid To Talk It Out

It can be tough getting hotheaded team members to sit down and talk it out, but this isn’t exactly marriage counseling. You don’t need to be best buddies with your coworkers, but starting a discussion can make a couple of things clear to everyone involved, the first of which being the root of the problem. Once you figure out why these guys are butting heads, you can do something about it. The second thing being that you can’t allow anyone to jeopardize the project, and they’re going to have to figure it out if they want to keep working here.

Don’t Pull Rank, But Be Clear About What Is And Isn’t Non-Negotiable

You’re not going to fire the other guy because he accidentally borrowed someone’s hammer without asking, but you can work something out. Try and come to an agreement that both parties, and you, can be happy with.

Follow Up On The Resolution

Keep tabs on your team and make sure that they’re still getting along. If they’re playing nice when you’re around but cussing each other out the minute you’re out of earshot, then the conflict hasn’t really been resolved, and if that’s the case, you may need to…

Just Split Them Up

If two guys really just can’t get along, move them around the jobsite so that they’re not going to be in one another’s way.

Should all else fail, there’s always the threat of the walking papers. You don’t want to have to resort to scaring your people into toeing the line, and it usually won’t come to that, but every now and then you’ll hire someone who’s ability on the job doesn’t quite make up for their hardheadedness.

Staying Safe on a Multilingual Worksite

By Construction Insurance Bulletin

1606-CON-3Working construction, you tend to pick up a lot of people who may not speak English as a first language, if they speak much English at all. Getting the proper safety procedures across in this sort of work environment can be a little tricky. It’s easy enough to ask a Spanish-speaking gofer to grab three 2×4’s by pointing at the 2×4’s and holding up three fingers. Teaching them your 911 procedure is a little trickier. Here are some tips to ensure that everyone on staff knows how to stay safe and knows how to handle an emergency.

Keep Some Bilingual People On Your Crew

Keeping at least one or two people on your crew who can speak multiple languages fluently is always a good idea, ensuring that you’ll never be at a loss when you need to get some information across to your people. Tell your translator what your people need to know, and have them pass it on.

Distribute Multi-language Safety Material

You might not be able to explain how to safely use the SAWZALL to a Spanish-speaking worker, but the instructions were probably printed in multiple languages. Any safety material that you have, from signs to manuals to the instructions on the first-aid kit, make sure that you have a copy printed for every language spoken on your work site.

Teach, And Learn, Some Basic Phrases

“Estar atento” or simply “atento” is a Spanish phrase that basically means “Watch out!” It comes in very handy when someone drops a bucket off of a scaffolding. Failing that, there’s always the universal “AAAAAHHH!” when something goes wrong. You don’t need to be able to read Don Quixote in the original Spanish, but learning a few basic phrases may be a tremendous help in safety situations. The good news is that this will tend to happen naturally. It’s not uncommon for a job site to develop its own unique vernacular based on the languages of everyone on staff so that a basic working language is in play.

When hiring a crew for any job, you’re looking for people who are dependable, professional, and experienced. Construction work offers a great opportunity for people who don’t speak English as a first language to make a decent living in an English-speaking country. But,communication is key no matter what line of work.

Covering Risks on the Way There and Back

By Construction Insurance Bulletin

1606-CON-2If an employee is in an auto accident while on the way to or from work, then that’s their insurer’s problem, right? And of course, if they have an accident while they’re driving a company car, then your commercial auto insurance provider is the one that foots the bill. Now here comes the tricky gray area: what if they’re in their own car, but they’re on company time, doing something that you asked them to do?

Here’s the short answer: Usually the driver’s insurance will wind up covering any costs incurred from the accident. But, there are plenty of exceptions.

Livery

“Isn’t that where the horses are stored for the night in the old westerns?” Yes, but also, in insurance terms, it refers to drivers who are transporting other people for a fee. If it’s two employees sharing a car, that doesn’t count. Livery just refers to transporting people who are paying for the ride (and not just “pitching in a couple bucks for gas”).

Delivery

Certain types of delivery services will invalidate the driver’s coverage, depending on their policy. Some providers won’t over pizza delivery men at all, for instance.

General Business Use

Picking up supplies, driving clients around, uprooting tree stumps, this is generally not covered under an employee’s personal insurance policy.

In short, here’s what you can be absolutely certain your employee’s personal insurance will cover: Themselves, their vehicle, and their passengers when driving around, whether that be on lunch breaks, to and from work, picking up another employee from their home, and meeting other basic transportation needs. If they’re on company time, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be held responsible, but if they’re doing paid company work with their vehicle, then that may fall under your business insurance policy.

This is, in part, why it’s very important to ensure that safety procedures are followed off the job site as well as on the job site, and why you really do need to be careful about who you’re putting your trust into when it comes to even the simplest tasks. Turning a blind eye to an employee who has a beer with lunch might not be such a big deal, but you don’t want him picking up building materials for you.

Basic transportation is covered under your employee’s personal insurance policy, but make sure that you have the right provisions on your business insurance before asking a worker to tow the cement mixer back to the lot.

People Who Walked Away From Extraordinary Disasters

By Construction Insurance Bulletin

1606-CON-1You should always make sure that your team is following safety guidelines as close to the letter as possible. But, if something does go wrong, maybe they’ll go lucky, like these people did:

Reshma Begum

When Reshma Begum was 19 years old, she was working as a seamstress in a building near Dhaka in April of 2013. The factory collapsed right on top of her. Seventeen days later, rescuers had all but given up hope, when they heard a banging sound amid the ruins. Begumhad survived for over two weeks on dried food and what little water she could find.

Howard Ulrich and Son

Howard Ulrich and his eight year old son were out fishing one night in 1958 when, like something out of a disaster movie, they heard a distant rumbling. Looking around they saw a literal wall of water racing towards them, the highest wave in recorded history at 1,720 feet, created by an 8.0 earthquake dislodging a rock face. Ulrich couldn’t get the anchor up in time before the wave hit them dead on, amazingly lifting them atop the wave and dropping them safely back into the bay.

Zahrul Fuadi

Indonesian Zahrul Fuadi has either the worst or best luck in the world, having survived first the Boxing Day tsunami in the Aceh province, and then, moving to Sendai, Japan, the massive tidal wave that hit the country in early 2011. Fuadi tells reporters that he’s still scared that another tsunami might come along to finish the job any day now, and we have to say that we can’t quite blame him for being a bit phobic on the subject.

Peter Skyllberg

Now, there’s a chance that this guy made the story up, we can’t be sure, but some scientists take him at his word: Trapped in his car under a snowdrift for two straight months in 2012, the Swedish man claims to have survived by eating snow. As crazy as that sounds, some experts believe that he may have gone into a hibernation state that kept him alive for 60 days, while taking shelter in the igloo-style insulation that the snow had created around his car. It seems as if Jack Palance should come out at this point and ask that you “Believe it… or not!”

Surviving a disaster unscathed can happen, but if it were the norm, they wouldn’t call them disasters, they’d call them “uh oh’s.” Don’t take this list as a license for carelessness, but as a reminder that people can persevere through the worst of conditions.

Do I Need Habitational Insurance?

By Business Protection Bulletin

1606-BB-4Running a rental business brings its own unique risks and challenges. You’re not just responsible for your property, your apartment and condominium complexes, you’re also responsible for the people who live in them. Habitational insurance combines elements of home insurance, business insurance with all manner of liability concerns.

Anyone who runs a business in a building where customers and clients can come to visit in the flesh knows that they’re going to need liability should anything happen to their visitors. With habitational insurance, even more so than hotels and other homes-away-from-home, you’re looking at more long-term risks. Brief exposure to toxic mold,  for instance, isn’t so dangerous, but leave a moldy spot in a tenant’s bathroom for too long and you could be looking at some major health expenses.

A question worth asking: Who needs habitational insurance?

The answer is: Just about anybody who owns a rental property. Of course, the more tenants you’re servicing, the more important habitational coverage will be, but even if you’re just renting out a single house to a small family, habitational insurance will cover you for risks that are not covered by basic homeowner insurance. A solid habitational policy can also cover risks that you’d be more willing to pay for out-of-pocket for your own home. Vandalism, for instance, may be considerably more expensive to clean up and paint over when you are running an apartment building than when you only have one house to worry about. You can take a bucket of paint and get rid of the graffiti on your own garage door with about a half hour’s worth of work. A group of teenagers breaking all the light fixtures in an apartment building, on the other hand, will be a little more expensive.

There are also risks that don’t exist at all for homeowners. Loss of rental income, damage to outdoor signs, accounts receivable losses, insurance to cover your association directors and officers in a condominium community and so on.

Habitational policies are there to keep you covered when you need business insurance, and your business is in homes. You are responsible not only for the building where you rent units out to tenants, you are also responsible for tenants and their visitors, as well as any employees you may have helping you maintain your business. If you’re renting out so much as a single room to a single tenant, it’s not a bad idea to look into a habitational policy.

Driving For A Living: Covering All Your Bases

By Business Protection Bulletin

1606-BB-3If you’re a part time passenger transportation professional, whether that means driving a taxi on weekend or picking up an Uber passenger when you’re already going in that direction, you probably don’t want to be driving any customers anywhere without getting covered under some form of taxi cab insurance provision.

Okay, maybe you can take that hitch hiker up on his offer to pitch in for gas and not have to worry about it. The chances of something happening that will lead to you being held liable in a professional capacity in that instance are relatively slim. But if you’re driving passengers around on even a semi-regular basis, you’re increasing your risk of paying extensive costs out of pocket with every new customer you pick up. Here’s what you’ll want to do to make sure that your bases are covered:

Make Sure Your Insurer Knows What You’re Up To

Here’s the good news for Uber drivers: For anything that happens while the app is on, Uber provides supplemental insurance. Lyft offers similar coverage for all of their drivers. If you’re driving a taxi, different states legislate the industry in different ways. In some states, you’re not allowed to work as a private taxi driver at all, in others, you might not even need a specialty license to do some part time cab work. The taxi driver insurance requirements from state to state are just as varied. For instance, if you have a history with drug or alcohol problems, if you’ve ever been convicted on weapons or ATF charges, you might not be allowed to buy taxi insurance in the first place. Uber driver insurance requirements are more lenient in some ways, but Uber won’t hire people with certain convictions on their record.

Keep Your Own Tabs

You get mixed up with all sorts of people when driving for a service like Lyft or Uber. Keeping your own personal records can help keep you out of hot water in the future. There are all sorts of recording apps out there that can be used for security against would-be thieves, and even to prove your own innocence should you be implicated in a crime. A Muslim cab driver accused of a knifepoint assault in the UK back in 2013 exonerated himself with a voice recording app that he had been using for security purposes. Your employer’s first concern is protecting their own business. Your own safety is, to some extent, in your own hands.

Hopefully we’re not painting too grim a picture of driving for a living here. The instances where things go wrong are far outnumbered by the instances where things go right, but that’s what insurance is for, isn’t it? To protect you when things do go wrong, no matter how common or uncommon those instances may be.

Why Some Insurers Won’t Cover Delivery Professionals

By Business Protection Bulletin

1606-BB-2Kitchen fires, food poisoning, liability, spoilage. People who run sit-down restaurants have it easy. The real nitty gritty insurance risks come when you start delivering food to people’s homes. It’s like the wild west out there, anything can happen.

You’re ready to look into franchise delivery restaurant insurance as soon as you start running a business that delivers. If there’s one exception, it may be when you’re the only person doing the delivering, and you don’t mind paying any unforeseen expenses out of pocket. If you have people delivering for you, then you’re responsible for the restaurant, for the food, for the customer, for the driver, and, to an extent, for their car. Their personal insurance might help to cover a lot of what might happen out on the road, but whatever your drivers do on company time may wind up costing company dime.

In some instances, your driver might be totally covered under their own policy, for their own expenses, that is. Their insurer isn’t likely to be the one paying out if they are robbed while delivering for you, and their policy might protect them, but it might not protect you if they are found at fault in an accident that occurred while they were on the job. Furthermore, some insurance providers won’t cover delivery drivers in the first place, forcing these drivers to seek specialty insurance or, in some cases, drive a company car under their employer’s policy. Many insurers cite the high mileage that comes with the job. All those little ten minute trips to and from the customers’ homes may not seem like much throughout the day, but by the end of the month, a pizza deliverer has racked up more miles on their car than some of us drive in a year.

If your employees are driving company cars, then you’re going to be looking into commercial auto insurance. If your drivers are using their own personal vehicles, then you’ll need to make sure that they have full coverage for themselves, including some form of pizza delivery insurance to cover their own end should something happen to them on the job. You will also need to ensure that your insurer knows that you’re employing delivery drivers, and talk to them about what sort of coverage they can offer you, from data compromise insurance to employment practices liability to food contamination and, if you serve alcohol, liquor liability, as well.

Why the American Railroad is Still as Relevant Today as Ever

By Business Protection Bulletin

1606-BB-1Railroad insurance. Now there’s something that most people don’t think about very often. To the average American, the railroad is something from the old west. Of course the truth is that after a couple hundred years, we still haven’t figured out a better way to get a whole bunch of stuff across the country quickly than the railroad. Trains and tracks are as relevant in 2016 as they were in 1916, still the backbone of the North American economies, and still the most beautiful way to see the country.

With advances in technology, trains are safer than ever, but, the risks have, if anything, become greater. If a truck turns over on the highway, you lose a truckload of product. In a train accident, you may lose several miles worth of product and millions of dollars in equipment. In other words, while a major railroad crisis is less common now than it was a hundred years ago, it’s still going to be too expensive for anyone but King Midas to pay for out of pocket. There aren’t a lot of minor disasters in the railroad business, and there aren’t a lot of inexpensive ones, either.

Although the public generally doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the train industry when everything goes right, it seems like they can’t think about anything else when something goes wrong. A disaster resulting from a defective part will have people on Facebook and Twitter speculating and debating as to who’s really to blame on this one and proudly declaring that this is why they choose to drive everywhere. It’s for this reason that you won’t meet a lot of railroad professionals who don’t have a crisis management expense reimbursement provision in their policy along with railroad protective liability and rail servicing liability. When you have a fender bender in your private vehicle, nobody needs to know about it but you, the other driver, and your insurance companies. When something goes wrong on the track, a lot of time, effort and money goes into protecting your reputation in the public eye.

While people tend to think of the railroad industry as something of a relic, the truth is that few professionals put as much time and effort into pushing their technological boundaries as those who run trains for a living. With the tremendous risks and liabilities that come with railroads, the ceaseless push for safer, smarter ways of transporting cargo is absolutely vital.