Risk Management Bulletin

Municipalities, the governing body of a district or community, employ a variety of workers. Employment practices liability insurance protects those employees and the municipality, making it an essential product. If you operate or work for a municipality, learn more about municipalities employment practices liability insurance.

What is Employment Practices Liability Insurance?

Also known as EPLI, employment practices liability insurance covers numerous employees, including municipality directors, officers, management personnel and employees. It’s designed to cover legal rights violation claims employees may make against their employer, the municipality. An EPLI policy can cover claims related to:

• Breach of employment contract
• Defamation
• Deprivation of career opportunity
• Discrimination
• Failure to employ or promote
• Invasion of privacy
• Mismanagement of employee benefits
• Negligent evaluation
• Retaliation
• Sexual harassment in all forms
• Wrongful discipline
• Wrongful infliction of emotional or other distress
• Wrongful termination

When you file an EPLI claim, the policy reimburses your municipality for the legal costs of defending the lawsuit in court. It also covers judgments and settlements whether you win or lose the case.

In most cases, an EPLI does not cover civil or criminal fines, punitive damages or liabilities covered by other insurance policies such as workers compensation. Other exclusions typically include bodily injury, property damage or intentional and dishonest acts.

Review your municipality’s EPLI policy for coverage and exclusion details. You may be able to customize your policy based on your municipality and employees’ unique needs.

How to Purchase EPLI

When purchasing municipalities EPLI, choose a reputable insurance company with an excellent customer service reputation and reviews. The company should understand your unique needs and be available when you have questions, want a consultation or need to file a claim. The right insurance and company gives you peace of mind and valuable protection.

In most cases, your municipality can purchase EPLI in several ways.

1. Purchase it as part of your management liability package policy.
2. Purchase it as stand-alone coverage.

Discuss your options with your insurance company to ensure all your municipality employees’ needs are met and reduce your municipality’s liability.

How Much Does EPLI Cost?

Several factors affect the cost of an EPLI policy. They include:

• Your type of business
• Number of employees
• Various risk factors, including previous employment practices lawsuits

For specifics on the cost of your municipality EPLI, talk to your insurance company or agent. They can create a customize quote for your municipality, employees and needs.

Municipalities employment practices liability insurance offers valuable protection. Understand the coverage and ensure you purchase adequate coverage.

There is an unbendable and unbreakable law of economics that states that wealth is created in one of only two ways: People working, or money working. Many have attempted to break this law, and usually the results have violated both civil and criminal laws. These days, everyone is anxious to put their money in a safe place. This “safe place” would also preferably have low risk, high returns and tax advantages as well as be ready and waiting for them when they retire.

Does such a “safe place” exist? A respected commentator in the sports world says, “Let’s take a look.” It was not too long ago that investors were looking for returns in the 5% – 12% range. Today, those return expectations are greatly diminished, even if the willingness to take on risk has begun to come back.

As of this article, the current interest rate on a 10-year United States Treasury bond is 3.24%. High-quality 10-year municipal bonds are only paying 2.99%. Ten-year corporate bonds at the highest rating level are paying 3.6%. Keep in mind that these variables can change daily as investors vote their bond holdings up or down in response to political and economic developments, both foreign and domestic.

Meanwhile, certificates of deposit, which were once considered to be the safest of all investments among the older generations, have now sunk considerably in terms of interest payouts. One-year CDs these days are paying roughly 1.5% and five-year CDs maybe 3%. Previously CD investors could expect to see interest rates as high as 4%-6% or even higher. What’s more, even to get the highest rates, investors need to park their money for a long time, as one can see in the case of the five-year CD.

So, the basic concerns have really not changed. They are, in no particular order:

1. Principal safety
2. Return rate
3. Liquidity, or access to funds on short notice
4. Flexible term, which depends on when the investor wants the money
5. Tax-free
6. Reliability and trustworthiness

Taking all of these factors into account, is there an investment that can satisfy all of them? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. It is an instrument known as a fixed annuity. An annuity can guarantee the safety of both the payments and the principal by contract to the policyholder, in addition to guaranteeing that the owner will not outlive his money if he chooses to annuitize the contract. Annuities, in this respect, are unique as financial instruments. Currently, credited interest paid on an annuity is not taxable until distributed. Unlike CDs, this allows the capital to grow through compound interest without any interference.

There are many annuity programs, such as equity-index annuities, that provide even more benefits like interest rates that are double-tiered, which means that the owner has a guaranteed minimum rate while also being allowed to participate in the stock market’s returns, if any. In the final analysis, annuities can offer investors a better return than most instruments today.

Although annuities have always been attractive vehicles since their introduction, in an economic climate such as this, they are even more so.

(* Interest data from the WSJ 06/18/2010). Liquidated earnings are subject to ordinary income tax, may be subject to surrender charges and, if taken prior to age 59 1⁄2, may be subject to a 10% federal income tax penalty. Guarantees and payment of lifetime income are contingent on the claims paying ability of the issuing insurance company.

Safety in your everyday small business operations is essential for your employees, customers and success. Understanding and maintaining safety guidelines can be challenging, though. OSHA offers numerous resources that benefit your company. Take advantage of these resources as you ensure your small business maintains safety guidelines and stays compliant with current laws at all times.

OSHA’s Cooperative Programs

Your small business must cooperate with OSHA to maintain safety and remain compliant with laws, but you may not know where to start. OSHA offers five cooperative programs that help your small business prevent workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities. Available programs include:

• Alliance Program
• OSHA Strategic Partnership Program (OSPP)
• Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP)
• OSHA Challenge Program
• On-site Consultation Program’s Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP)

All states with OSHA-approved programs offer this cooperative program option, and you can search the website to learn more about each program.

On-Site Consultation Program

Get personalized advice with a free and confidential on-site consultation. The consultant will not give penalties or citations because the purpose of the consultant’s visit is solely to:

• Identify workplace hazards
• Share advice on how to become compliant with OSHA guidelines
• Implement injury and illness prevention programs

While the program prioritizes high-hazard worksites, it’s available to all small and medium-sized businesses and is completely free.

Diverse Workforce/Limited English Proficiency Coordinators

When your workforce employs Spanish speakers or a diverse workforce, you may need education, outreach and training assistance. Schedule a seminar or workshop with an OSHA Diverse Workforce/Limited English Proficiency coordinator. Every 10 OSHA regions has one coordinator who can help you train and prepare your employees effectively.

Compliance Assistance Specialists (CAS)

When you’re ready to host a seminar or workshop on safety challenges or compliance issues, contact a CAS. In states under federal jurisdiction, the OSHA area offices have a CAS on staff who will provide training resources and promote OSHA cooperative programs.

Training Institute (OTI) and Training Education Centers

Access a variety of OSHA trainings, including technical advice, seminar and workshop speakers, or audiovisual aids, through the Training Institute and Training Education Centers. This resource provides basic and advanced safety and health courses as well as small business seminars.

Penalty Reductions

Non-compliance with OSHA guidelines can result in large penalties. However, your small business’s size and number of employees may reduce the penalties. Learn more as you assess your eligibility for penalty reductions.

OSHA safety guidelines protect your employees and small business since they reduce injuries, illnesses and fatalities. OSHA guidelines can be confusing, though. Maintain compliance when you take advantage of these OSHA resources. They help your small business remain safe and successful.

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?

Commercial auto insurance is essential for many businesses, including fire and rescue companies. Like passenger vehicles, your fire and rescue vehicles are subject to accidents, theft, vandalism and other circumstances. Protect your property with commercial auto insurance.

Why Purchase Commercial Auto Insurance

Because fire and rescue vehicles play an important role in protecting the community, they must be properly insured. Like individual auto insurance, commercial auto policies provide liability and other coverage for vehicles and their driver and passengers. However, these policies often include higher limits and must meet special laws and circumstances that apply to commercial vehicles.

Which Vehicles are Covered

Commercial auto insurance can cover a variety of fire and rescue vehicles before, during and after an emergency. It also covers employees and volunteers who drive, ride in or use the vehicles and equipment and other special circumstances, depending on the policy.

The vehicles covered include:
Fire trucks
Water tankers
Ambulances
Rescue squad vehicles
Non-emergency medical transportation trucks
Medical provider courtesy vehicles
Fire chief vehicles
Traffic coordinator vehicles

How Much Coverage do you Need

Every fire and rescue company will need different coverage. The number and type of vehicles, average number of calls each month, amount of equipment on each vehicle and number of employees are factors that affect the amount of coverage you purchase.

Additionally, consider state insurance requirements. The required limits may vary depending on where you live, but in most cases, you’ll need these coverage types:
Bodily injury – Pays medical expenses for victims when you cause the accident.

Property damage – Covers any property repairs your vehicle damaged.

Personal injury protection – Covers medical expenses, wage loss and other expenses incurred if the driver or passengers are injured.

Uninsured/Underinsured motorist – Pays expenses if the vehicle is involved in an accident where a driver does not have auto insurance or adequate insurance to cover damages.

Comprehensive – Covers vehicle repairs due to non-accidental circumstances such as fire, theft, vandalism, missile objects, animal collisions or natural disasters.

Collision – Pays to repair damages to your vehicle after an accident.

Roadside assistance – If the vehicle breaks down, blows a tire or otherwise is stranded, this coverage gets your vehicle back on the road.

Personal effects – With this coverage, employees’ personal belongings are covered if they’re stolen from the vehicle.

How to Purchase Commercial Auto Insurance

Purchase commercial auto insurance coverage from a licensed insurance agent. Contact several companies for a quote, and compare their policy price and coverage options, customer feedback and financial standing. Discuss optional coverage, too, to ensure all your needs are met.

Commercial auto insurance for fire and rescue companies is essential. Understand this coverage as you protect your equipment.

The disastrous Japanese earthquake/tsunami of March 2011 drowned thousands of people – but the toll would have been far higher without the nation’s comprehensive warning system, which combined radio broadcasts, text messages, and sirens with firefighters’ door-to-door calls.

Every business needs an effective emergency communications notification system that has low-tech and high tech elements. Here’s an overview of the advantages and disadvantages that each type offers:

• Low-tech systems can be effective, but have serious limitations. Although calling trees are valuable for mass communications, they’re slow, subject to errors, and breakdowns.

  Sirens and alarms provide immediate warning and can alert everyone who’s in a dangerous area; however, they can’t provide much information and have a limited range. Intercom systems are reasonably fast and can communicate detailed information, but usually operate in only one building.

• High-tech systems provide automated mass notification of detailed warnings rapidly and accurately to a wide range of devices, including phones (land line and cell) and computers (e-mail and instant messaging) through multiple communication networks. High-tech systems can also target messages to individual groups, such as first responders.

  However, they don’t offer a panacea. For one thing, cell phones might be turned off. Although communication with cell phones is available by voice mail or text messaging, these systems are vulnerable to a general outage of communication networks. Their “call capacity” might be a serious limitation, especially for larger firms.

For most businesses, a warning system that blends low tech (alarms and sirens) with high tech (automated notification) can provide effective communication when an emergency strikes. When choosing a system, you should also weigh such factors as cost and ease of use.

Our risk management experts would be happy to offer you their advice.

If you love boating and live near an exotic vacation spot, ocean, local marina or lake, you may operate a boat rental business. It allows you to share your passion with others as you make a living doing what you love. Whether you rent boats to the local residents or vacationers by the hour, day or week or own a marina and rent boats to guests, know as much as possible about boat rental liability insurance as you protect your business and personal assets.

Why Do You Need Boat Rental Liability Insurance?

If someone who rents a boat from you causes an accident, injures someone or is injured while operating or riding in the watercraft, you are liable for the repair or medical payments. These expenses add up quickly, and you could lose your business and personal assets.

With boat rental liability insurance, you decrease your risk and protect your assets since it covers any damages or injuries caused by your watercraft. It also can cover repairs to your watercraft after an accident a renter causes. Boat rental insurance can also improve your business because customers are more likely to rent a boat from a company with liability coverage that protects their personal assets.

What Does Boat Rental Liability Insurance Cover?

Typically, boat rental liability insurance covers a variety of watercraft, including:

• Sailboats under 26′
• Powerboats
• Houseboats up to 65′
• Canoes
• Kayaks
• Pedal boats
• Water bikes
• Mini jet boats
• Personal watercraft

All liability coverage is customizable based on your needs. Your coverage may include:

• Watercraft Liability with varying levels of coverage
• Premises Liability that covers events that occur on your boat rental business premises
• Hull Coverage that pays for physical damage to your watercraft’s hull and possibly the engine and equipment

How Much Boat Rental Liability Insurance do you Need?

Every boat rental business is different, and your unique circumstances affect how much liability insurance you need. As your risk increases, your costs increase. For example, the size of your fleet, cost of your boats and amount of business you do affects your premiums.

Where do you Buy Boat Rental Liability Insurance?

Specialized insurance agencies provide boat rental liability insurance. When you contact them, provide details about your business, including a copy of the watercraft rental agreement and checkout procedure. You’ll complete an insurance application, which is evaluated by a commercial marine expert, and will receive coverage details after your application is approved.

Protect your boat rental business and personal assets with boat rental liability insurance. Contact your insurance agent for more information and a customized quote today.

It’s always difficult to terminate an employee – especially in this age of employment litigation and privacy concerns. Even if a worker leaves voluntarily, you need to make sure that he or she no longer has access to confidential information

The key to making sure that you’ve covered all bases of your bases is to follow a Departure Checklist:

• When an employee leaves, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, notify all staff immediately to help reduce rumors, hurt feelings, and concerns. Keep the announcement positive.
• Remove the employee from your facility soon as possible. Offering to have the person stay is nice, but might not always be helpful. If you decide to let the employee stay for the customary two weeks, assign him or her specific tasks to complete. Collect keys immediately and assign someone to work with the departing employee for the duration of their stay.
• Once the decision has been made, restrict the employee’s access to sensitive company information at once; be sure that this restriction includes any VPN or private access.
• Have the employee review all items on which he or she is working and write a synopsis of what’s needed to complete each item. Then review these items to create a specific workload transition plan, and assign them to other employees. The sooner you do this, the better.

The more you think through this process before a problem arises, the more effectively you’ll be able to deal with it. We stand ready at any time to help you develop and implement an effective plan that can go a long way to help you protect your business from this risk.

Given the dramatic impact of social media on the speed and delivery of news and information, it makes sense to make this fast-growing technology part of your risk management program.

More and more reputational crises — such as the recent stranding of the Carnival Triumph cruise ship — are born on social networking platforms and can grow exponentially if mishandled. Consider how Apple Inc. responded to consumer displeasure with the iPhone 4 shortly after its 2010 introduction. Negative comments about the product spread quickly over social media channels, but were largely ignored by Apple executives until mainstream news outlets began reporting on its flaws.

Failing to actively engage social media users in conversations about crisis or business practice of your company means losing an invaluable opportunity to protect your reputation. Otherwise, you risk having other people tell your story.

Social media participation gives you a way to enhance this reputation through regular interaction with customers, business partners and the public. Using this tool to develop relationships and help people, rather than just sell products and services, can create some valuable allies.

Encouraging your employees to participate in social media offers a great way to use them as advocates for your company. A 2012 poll of more than 1,000 registered voters by Hill+Knowlton Strategies found that a corporation’s employees are the second-most trusted source of information about its business practices, second only to friends and family members.

A lack of maintenance or poor quality maintenance causes thousands of on-the-job accidents every year. What’s more, maintenance workers face significant risks associated with their jobs.

According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics job fatality report, deaths due to poor maintenance rose 14%, year to year, in 2011, the highest level since 2006. Accidents from maintenance have a variety of causes: everything from falls caused by working heights, confined spaces or harsh environments associated with accessing equipment, and shocks and burns if power is not properly isolated, to injuries from moving machine parts, musculoskeletal problems caused by working in awkward spaces and exposure to asbestos and dangerous chemicals.

There are three types of maintenance:

1. Routine or preventive maintenance keeps equipment working – such as a scheduled overhaul or replacement.
2. Corrective maintenance gets broken equipment up and running again.
3. Predictive maintenance uses tests for maintenance that is or will soon be needed.

To make your maintenance activities safer and more productive, follow these guidelines:

• Emphasize planning and scheduling on every maintenance task.
• Invest in affordable technology such as a thermographic camera (around $1,000) to detect variations of temperature that can reveal when a machine motor is not running properly.
• Make sure that supervisors convey the right message consistently. Employees need to be told that accidents happen as a result of short cuts, such as failing to lock out a piece of equipment before performing maintenance.
• Teach workers to intervene. If an employee walks by a piece of equipment that’s making an unusual noise and doesn’t tell their supervisor, it’s the same as ignoring a co-worker who is working unsafely.
• Get employees engaged and accountable. This can lead to culture change which makes safety the responsibility of everyone – not just of the safety and maintenance department.

For more information on maintaining your safety maintenance program, just get in touch with us.