Risk Management Bulletin

Although your workers might associate cancer worries with the food they eat or the air they breathe, the workplace poses significant cancer risks, including UV exposure for outdoor workers, secondhand smoke exposure, and carcinogenic chemical exposure. If you have outdoor workers, advise them to report to their supervisor immediately if they notice any of these changes to their skin: (1) Any change in the size or color of a mole or other darkly pigmented growth or spot, or a new growth; (2) scaliness, oozing, bleeding, itchiness, tenderness, or pain; and (3) dark coloring that spreads past the edge of a mole or mark. They should also see a dermatologist, because these symptoms might indicate skin cancer. Review your workplace precautions and protection procedures with your outdoor workers.

The American Cancer Society (ACS – www.cancer.org) observes its annual Great American Smokeout day of encouragement and empowerment for smokers to quit. Remind your workers of these statistics from the ACS on how stopping smoking can increase life expectancy.

• Smokers who quit at the age of 35 gain an average of 8 years of life expectancy
• Quitting at 55 gains about 5 years
• Quitting at 65 gains 3 years

The ACS Great American Smokeout Web site offers a variety of tips, programs, and calculators to help smokers quit. Encourage your workers to visit this site.

Millions of U.S. workers face exposure to chemical materials that could be carcinogenic. If any of your workers are in this group, train them to take these steps to protect themselves from carcinogen exposure:

• Enter regulated areas only assigned and authorized
• Wear assigned, undamaged personal protective equipment (PPE)
• Inspect PPE before use to be sure it’s undamaged and fits properly
• For standard operations in a regulated area, wear full-body protection (coveralls, a smock, long-sleeved shirt and pants), gloves, shoe covers, and a half-face, filter-type respirator
• For tasks with risk of direct carcinogen contact, wear impervious clothing, gloves, and boots, and a continuous-air supplied hood
• Don’t keep or use food, beverages, cosmetics, smoking products, or chewing gum in regulated areas
• Remove PPE properly when you leave a regulated area
• Leave used PPE in area assigned for decontamination and/or disposal
• Wash hands, forearms, face, and neck before leaving the area
• Shower at the end of the shift or immediately after direct exposure
• Put on street clothes in the clean change room – do not take contaminated clothing, PPE, or materials home
• Follow decontamination procedures for materials and equipment

For more guidelines on reducing the risk of carcinogens in the workplace, please feel free to get in touch with our risk management professionals.

In the age of instant Tweets and impulsive Facebook posts, more companies are trying to figure out how they can limit what their employees say about work online without violating the law.

Confusion about what workers can or can’t post has led to a surge of more than 100 complaints at the National Labor Relations Board — most within the past year — and created uncertainty for businesses about how far their social media policies can go.

The number of cases spiked last year after the NLRB sided with a Connecticut woman fired by an ambulance service firm for criticizing her company on Facebook. The board ordered the company to change its policy that had banned workers from discussing the company online. In Fall 2011, an NLRB administrative judge ordered a non-profit group in New York State to reinstate five workers it had fired for posting Facebook complaints about working conditions.

The National Labor Relations Act protects all workers engaged in “protected concerted activity” – such as a discussion of working conditions. However, companies are concerned about the effect of disparaging online remarks that hundreds or thousands of people might see. What’s more, not everything workers write on Facebook or Twitter is necessarily legal just because they’re discussing their job; the test is whether the message calls on fellow employees to take some group action or goes “over the top” in criticizing a supervisor or employer.

Our risk management professionals would be happy to discuss this tricky issue with you.

It’s tough to run a company. However, taking steps can make your job easier and your workplace safer. You’re probably already doing most or all of these things, but just in case, here’s a quick review:

1. Ensure compliance with safety and health standards. Comply in detail with OSHA standard that applies to your operations and your workplace. Check state regulations, which take precedence, if they’re stricter than federal standards. Enforce compliance with your own safety policies.
2. Keep employees informed about hazards. Identify every hazard in every work area and in every job, and make sure employees with potential exposure know what the hazards are, how they’re dangerous, how to protect against them, and what to do if they’re exposed to a particular hazard.
3. Take appropriate steps to minimize risks. This involves many things, including:
   • Well-conceived and implemented workplace safety and health programs.
   • Routine and thorough inspections and safety audits.
   • Effective engineering, administrative, and work practice controls.
   • Frequent and effective employee training.
   • Routine workplace maintenance.
4. Teach employees to work safely. Train frequently to keep workers up to date on workplace and regulatory changes – and to keep them aware, alert, and prepared to work safely.
5. Monitor performance and provide feedback. Don’t assume that workers will use what they learn in training or do what their supervisors tell them to do. For all kinds of reasons, workers will decide to take risks or ignore warnings and instructions. Make sure your supervisors monitor safety performance and provide feedback to maintain safe and healthy behavior.
6. Pay attention to employees’ suggestions and complaints. Although you might not be able to use all their suggestions or be thrilled about their complaints, listening to employees is essential to get them on board with your safety and health programs and following your safety rules. The big plus here is that employee participation leads to employee ownership, which leads to employee-driven safety and a safer workplace.
7. Correct problems quickly. Foot-dragging over hazard abatement tells your employees that you don’t care about their safety. Whenever a safety or health problem comes to your attention, take swift and effective action.

More and more risk managers are considering multi-year insurance contracts as a way to lock in beneficial terms, conditions, and pricing before today’s “soft” market hardens. Before you make a decision, consider these facts.

A multi-year policy offers significant advantages:

• Locks in favorable rates and coverages. Some insurers are slashing rates as much as 25% to attract buyers. The long-term potential for savings can be highly advantageous.
• Lessens hassle. Because multi-year policy renewal dates are several years apart, you’ll avoid the time-consuming, costly process of annual policy renewals.
• Strengthens relationships. A multi-year policy can help build long-term relationships among you, your agent, and your insurer. You’ll probably enjoy better rates, terms, conditions, or claims services than under single-year coverage or a three-year cancelable policy.

Here’s the downside of multi-year coverage:

• Vulnerability to market timing. A multi-year contract leaves you locked in to specific terms, conditions, and rates for an extended period – which can prove frustrating if the cost of coverage continues to drop.
• Cancelable or adjustable rates. Many “non-cancelable, multi-year” policies contain one or more clauses giving the insurer an out. Even if a policy is non-cancelable, it might still allow the company to raise rates based on your loss history or other factors.
• High up-front costs. The entire premium is often due at inception. Although you might get attractive premium-financing terms, lost opportunity costs on your company’s internal rate of fund returns might offset premium savings.
• Fragility of the relationship. Relationships grow from trust and experience over long periods, not from a single multi-year policy from an insurer with whom you might have little experience.

True guaranteed-rate, non-cancelable, multi-year polices can provide a variety of benefits not available with traditional annual policies. However, in some instances, these policies might be little more than marketing gimmicks designed to lure you with the possibility of substantial savings.

For an evaluation of your situation, feel free to get in touch with our risk management professionals.

This real-life case reinforces the need for every business to provide OSHA-required training.

A West Virginia company assigned a new employee – call him Jim – to drive a forklift, even though he had no experience or training in forklift operation “There’s nothing to it,” his supervisor told Jim. “It’s just like driving a car.” However, his first few weeks on the job turned out to be bumpy. Several times on each shift, while driving the forklift, he would knock things over. Although the supervisor warned Jim to be more careful, he continued to bump his way through the workday, leaving a trail of destruction wherever he went.

About three weeks after being hired, Jim’s supervisor instructed him to drive down a narrow aisle between two rows of stacked, loaded pallets. After objecting, Jim reluctantly proceeded down the aisle. His left foot, which was dangling outside the forklift where it shouldn’t have been, became pinned between the forklift and the wall of pallets. Jim suffered multiple fractures of the foot, together with a badly twisted knee; both injuries required surgery. Instead of going back to work, Jim went to court, filing suit against his employer and his supervisor for negligence.

His argument was clear: The company and his supervisor failed to provide safety training that could have prevented the accident. Jim’s attorney told the court that, although OSHA regulations mandated specific training, testing, and certification for forklift operators, the company had not trained, tested, or certified him. This meant that Jim should not have been operating a forklift – and if he hadn’t been doing so, the accident would not have taken place.

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia agreed, ruling there was sufficient evidence to prove that both the employer and the supervisor were negligent. When they hired the employee; they knew that federal law required proper training or certification of forklift operators. Allowing Jim to drive a forklift without proper training was an act of negligence.

The message: Failure to provide OSHA-required training is a huge mistake. Whenever you hire new employees or assign workers to new jobs with new hazards, make sure that they receive proper training from the get-go. Never allow an employee to operate dangerous equipment or perform any other hazardous job until they have completed the required training and demonstrated competence, as well as understanding the hazards and necessary precautions.

A debate over the value of incentive programs has split the workplace safety community. Advocates say that using some type of “carrot” that encourages employees to choose safe behaviors over unsafe ones can help them stay focused on avoiding hazards – an awareness that contributes to long-term behavior change and fewer accidents. Opponents argue that these programs offer a poor substitute for good safety management and only encourage employees to underreport injuries.

Seth Marshall is president of Safety Pays, a company he founded in the 1990s targeting employees who found safety messages dry, and those who already considered themselves safe workers. Marshall took an off-the-shelf bingo game and kicked it up several notches to entertain workers and keep them engaged while communicating essential safety messages and best practices, integrating safety into daily consciousness, and making employees feel a sense of ownership over what occurs in the workplace.

The mechanics of the Safety Pays game are relatively simple. The bingo-style game usually has a relatively small number of people – a work group, team, or division. At the start of a round, every player receives a bingo card with a safety message, and one number is called per day. The jackpot is set at $25 at the beginning of each new game. The prize increases by $1 a day until there’s a winner. At that point, the next game starts, with the jackpot in the amount at which the last game ended. The prize increases up to a limit preset by management. However, if job-safety incident (as defined by the company using the game) occurs, the jackpot reverts to $25.

“What’s going on here,” Marshall explains, “is that every day there’s a reason to think about safety because employees know they’ll be going to the bingo board.” The board not only reveals the day’s number, but also is located near an attractive display that features safety advisories on selected topics and other information.

Safety Pays is working well, according to Marshall. The approximately 10,000 companies that have used the game have seen workplace safety loss reductions of 50%, according to such metrics as injuries, dollars, and claims frequency.

As for the criticism that safety incentive programs encourage employees to “bury” incidents, Marshall says he’s never seen it in the businesses he serves, in part because the system guards against the practice. When employees sign in for a new card, they also sign a statement that says they have not experienced an incident during the previous game round.

Worker stress levels have increased within the past few years as the economic downturn has led to layoffs, heavier workloads, a higher percentage of workers taking second jobs to make ends meet, and declining household incomes, due to family members’ lost wages.

In a recent “Stress in the Workplace” survey by Buck Consultants (www.buckconsultants.com), more than four in five participants (82%) reported that employee stress has a significant or moderate impact on their company’s healthcare costs. A large majority of respondents also said that stress has had a significant or moderate impact on absenteeism (79%) and on workplace safety (77%).

In response to rising employee stress levels, many employers are taking steps to help their workers manage stress. According to the Buck Consultants survey, 66% of participants have implemented four or more programs to reduce on-the-job stress, while 22% have at least eight programs in place.

The survey listed these Top 10 stress-reduction strategies:

1. Employee assistance programs (78%)
2. Flexible work schedules (63%)
3. Work/life balance support programs (46%)
4. Leadership training on worker stress (45%)
5. Online healthy lifestyle programs (45%)
6. On-site fitness centers (43%)
7. Physical activity programs (38%)
8. Stress awareness campaigns (35%)
9. Financial management classes (32%)
10. Personal health/lifestyle management coaching (29%)

The more effective these programs, the lower the stress on your workers – which adds up to higher productivity and a healthier return on investment.

They might not be exciting or high tech, but safety signs in the workplace can be worth their weight in gold! Says a recent article on businessknowledgesource.com: “The importance of workplace safety signs can’t be stressed enough. [If properly designed and used], “signs can overcome a number of losses due to language barriers, reading abilities, and insufficient work experience. Wherever there’s need for general instruction, there should be a safety sign to help avoid potential injury.”

Of course, even the best signs won’t help if poorly designed or improperly used. Although OSHA uses ANSI standards to specify the design of such common signs as EXIT or CAUTION, there’s no way to regulate how every sign will be made and used.

An effective safety signage program should meet these standards:

• Visibility. It sounds basic, but signs can’t do any good if people can’t see them. There are plenty of reasons they might not be able to. Check your break room bulletin board. Is one sign plastered over others? Are the signs so old they’re now the color of the Declaration of Independence? Are they hidden in corners or in hard-to-reach places on the equipment they’re designed to explain? To enhance visibility, especially from a distance, choose such contrasting color choices as yellow on black and put borders around every sign.
• Noticeability. Qualities that make a sign stand out include shape and color – most people recognize a “stop” or “yield” sign without even reading it. Perpendicular signs are among the most noticeable, which is one reason that stores use them to stand out in a streetscape, and why they can help identify areas of special hazard.
• Legibility. One reason it’s hard to read government regulations as published in the Federal Register is the size and grayness of the type. In the same way, type size can make important safety signs stand out more, as does spacing between words and individual letters. Printing a sign’s message in a second color improves retention of the message by 82%.
• Durability. Signs need to survive the environment in which they’re placed. High heat, humidity, or corrosives can wilt or stain a sign beyond recognition. Don’t use cardboard when sheet metal is required.

Even if your signs meet all these criteria, OSHA still requires you to post and maintain them properly. This leads to the classic compliance issue of how to make sure that workers are observing all regulations when you can’t be everywhere at once to check.

Falls on the job can cause a variety of injuries and can spike your Workers Compensation costs. However, the scope of the problem might surprise you:

• Falls kill some 21,000 Americans a year. That’s more than from electrocution, drowning, and firearms incidents combined.
• Falls carry an astronomical annual price tag of $60 billion to $80 billion, including litigation, insurance and comp claims, medical costs, and other indirect expenses.
• Falls are the nation’s leading cause of emergency room visits (more than 2 million a year)
• Falls cause one death and 183 emergency room visits every hour.

There’s nothing new about the prevalence of workplace falls. As far back as 1937, National Safety Council records reveal that falls caused more lost time than any other class of compensable occupational accidents.

Safety experts recommend a variety of steps for employers to reduce this exposure. For example, businesses work hard to make the guest lobbies of their buildings pleasant and welcoming. Unfortunately, they rarely consider the potential for falls. It’s essential to have a proper mat just inside the outside doors. When it’s raining people shake their umbrellas and water comes off onto the smooth terrazzo or other type of floor, creating a hazard. To reduce the risk, provide signage, add extra mats during inclement weather, and have an individual with a mop keep entryways dry on wet days.

Although commercial business codes forbid single-step risers or one-level changes, they’re responsible for a large number of falls. To minimize this hazard, employers should provide a contrasting paint, or install a handrail or step light. Another exposure involves “curve ramps” (ADA-compliant ramps in businesses and public spaces), which are often too steep or sloped on both sides, causing people walking on them to twist their ankles and fall. The solution: restructure the ramps.

It’s all too easy to concentrate on the danger of falls in industrial spaces, while ignoring potential hazards in administrative areas. Office workers often trip over wires, cords, and other items. To minimize these dangers, it’s essential to schedule thorough, safety inspections at regular intervals.

Don’t limit your slip, trip, and fall program to the work site – extend it to workers’ homes. Cultivating the same safety mentality at home as you’re trying to encourage in the workplace benefits everybody. Huge numbers of costly accidents occur at home where individuals feel comfortable, think they know the dangers, and consider themselves immune from accidents. Unfortunately, spending a lot of time in a place doesn’t reduce these risks.

If you’d like more information on keeping your workers safe from slips, trips, and falls, feel free to get in touch with the risk management professionals in our agency.

An estimated 785,000 Americans had a new coronary attack in 2010, while about 470,000 suffered a recurrence This averages out to one “sudden cardiac event” (SCA) every 25 seconds – and one fatality a minute. A significant percentage of these events occur in the workplace. That’s why more and more businesses are providing automated external defibrillators (AEDs) as a vital first-aid tool to help protect their workers on the job.

AEDs are computerized electronic devices that can check a person’s heart rhythm, recognize a rhythm that requires a shock, and advise emergency responders when a shock is needed. AEDs use voice prompts, lights, and text messages to instruct rescuers. According to experts, prompt treatment with an AED can restore normal heart function in up to three in five cardiac arrest victims.

Heart attacks, electrocution, and asphyxiation are the most common causes of cardiac arrest – defined as heart stoppage or “ventricular fibrillation” (the uncoordinated beating of the heart). Normal rhythm can be restored if treated early with electric shock. After an AED delivers a shock, it often prompts the operator to continue CPR while the device continues to analyze and monitor the victim. Make sure that employees designated to operate AEDs have thorough training in proper operation of the defibrillator. They should also be certified in CPR.

The sooner defibrillation is started, the better: the chances of survival diminish by 7% to 10% for each minute without defibrillation or CPR .The optimum time for defibrillation is three to five minutes after the onset of cardiac arrest. Because it can easily take longer than this for an ambulance to arrive, having an AED on-site can literally be a life saver. Of course, even with an AED on hand, an immediate call should be put in to 911 any time an employee goes into cardiac arrest on the job. Follow-up treatment at a medical facility will be required.

Although the cost of AEDs varies, many models are available for between $1,500 and $2,000 – a minimal investment that can pay huge dividends in saving lives and returning stricken employees to productive work.