Workplace Safety

With businesses hiring more temporary workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is encouraging companies to beef up their efforts for keeping contract employee safe on the job.

According to OSHA, at least 14 temporary blue-collar workers died during their first day at a new worksite in the previous 12 months. As a result, OSHA inspectors have begun asking contract employees whether they’ve been trained about safety protocols, such as lockout-tagout procedures. The agency also is working with the American Staffing Association and employers that use temporary staffing agencies on an initiative to protect contract workers.

A number of factors make temporary workers particularly vulnerable. In many cases, there’s a conflict between staffing companies and employers about who should provide safety training. Although employers are required to train all workers in safety procedures, some businesses don’t invest in training contract workers because of uncertainty about how long they’ll stay on the job. Also, while staffing companies are required to provide general safety training for temporary employees, the employers they work for are responsible for training them in their specific job responsibilities.

Unfortunately, employer negligence can also contribute to workplace mishaps involving contract employees. Some businesses hire and train temporary workers to do one job, and then later assign them to perform dangerous work for which they’re untrained, believing that any injuries will increase the staffing company’s Workers Compensation experience modification factor without affecting the employer’s Comp costs.

According to safety experts, if you use contract workers, the best way to protect them on the job is simple: Provide them with the same training and workplace practices as you would for your own employees!

Sounds like sound advice.

For more information, just give us a call.

If you think that workplace safety and discipline are incompatible, think again.

Although discipline is essential for safety, many employers just aren’t imposing it. For example, a study by the Fisher & Phillips labor law firm found that 56% of large general contractors were unsatisfied with how often supervisors disciplined employees for unsafe actions.

This can create problems for several reasons. Without a record of disciplinary action, you might not be able to demonstrate to OSHA that you’re operating an effective safety program. Failure to discipline safety violations also makes it harder to use the “unpreventable employee misconduct/isolated incident” defense, which argues that an employee acted unsafely, despite your efforts to run an effective program.

Some supervisors fail to discipline unsafe workplace behavior because they fear that imposing discipline will cause trouble for the employer. Others only penalize unsafe behaviors that lead to accidents or injuries, but turn a blind eye to ‘minor violations of safety rules. The Fisher & Phillips survey also found that most companies make little effort to train supervisors on when and how to discipline employees.

The bottom line: disciplining workers for safety violations has a “pro-employee” purpose and should play a key role in keeping your workplace safe by:

• Removing poor performers
• Creating limits for employees
• Improving morale when employees see that management recognizes safe and unsafe behavior
• Limiting potential negligent retention and negligent supervision claims
• Providing the accountability that’s essential for an effective safety program
• Avoiding the appearance of discrimination and unfairness when applied consistently
• Reducing your Workers Compensation premiums

What’s not to like?

Your safety committee plays an essential role in keeping your workplace safe. However, all too many business undercut the effectiveness of their committees by making these mistakes:

• Unclear roles. Have a written agreement that the committee meets regulatory requirements and communicates with all employees about its activities.
• Inadequate budget. Invest in financial resources for member training, safety and health fairs, and other activities.
• Unwieldy size. Structure the committee based on the size of your business and the hazards workers face. Keep it relatively small so that members can participate actively. If needed, set up subcommittees for special projects.
• Failure to orient new members. Because newcomers might be unaware of group dynamics and past issues, the committee should bring them up to speed by providing minutes and other documents. If possible, have departing members orient newbies.
• Lack of follow-up. Committees rise and fall depending on their reputation for doing what they say they’ll do. Leaders should request status reports and review assignments at the end of the meeting to keep everyone on the same page. Many committee agendas list both the topic and the person responsible for implementing it.
• Lackluster participation. The best members are active, involved participants who eagerly share their passion for safety with their co-workers. Leaders should find ways to get all members fully involved representing their department or work group.
• Same old, same old. Committees must innovate to maintain interest and involvement. Encourage leaders to learn about successful committees at other businesses and borrow good ideas. Canvass all employees to make sure their good ideas are getting through.

To learn more about making your safety committee as effective as possible, feel free to get in touch with our agency at any time.

The bad news: slips, trips, and falls are one of the nation’s leading causes of workplace injuries. The good news: working with safety professionals can help prevent these accidents – and keep your Workers Compensation costs under control.

Falls on the same level (in which workers slip and fall on the surface on which they’re standing) cost Workers Comp insurance companies a hefty $8.61 billion in 2010, accounting for 16.9% of their total claims. That’s the word from Wayne Maynard, Manager of Technical Services and Product Development for the Loss Control Advisory Services unit of Liberty Mutual, the largest Comp carrier in the nation.

According to the Liberty Mutual 2012 Workplace Safety Index, “bodily reaction” injuries – which includes those caused by slipping or tripping without falling – represented $5.78 billion of Comp costs in 2010, or 11.4% of the overall burden,. Falls to a lower level in that year accounted for another $5.12 billion, or 10% of claims.

These costs are rising, due in part to an aging workforce (older worker tend to have more balance problems). Falls on the same level increased 42.3% from 1998 to 2010, while bodily reaction injuries increased 17.6% during this period.

You can help reduce the frequency of slips, trips, and falls by taking such ergonomic enhancements in the workplace as 1) adding slip-resistant flooring; 2) eliminating raised surfaces that might cause tripping; and 3) installing handrails on stairs. Also make sure that your employees take immediate steps to clean up spills that could create slippery floors.

Our agency’s professionals would be happy to provide a complimentary “slip, trip, and fall” safety review of your premises – just give us a call.

The use of narcotics in treating injured workers faces heavy scrutiny today – and for good reason. The latest National Council on Compensation Insurance, Inc. (NCCI) Annual Issues Symposium found that:

• The average cost of narcotics per Workers Comp claim rose from $39 in 2003 to $59 in 2011. This is a rate of 0.79 narcotic prescriptions per claim, up from 0.56 in 2003 – a 14% increase in eight years.
• More than 5% percent of Comp claims that resulted in at least one prescription for if any medication included five or more narcotics prescriptions.

To curb the prescribing of narcotics for your injured employees, start by choosing the right Workers Comp physician.

In most states, businesses have the legal right to designate the physician that injured employees must use. To find a physician in your area who is board certified in Occupational Medicine, go to http://www.acoem.org/. If none is available, look for a doctor who takes patients on Workers Compensation. In many cases, urgent care clinics make great partners. Once you find a physician, talk to him or her about your business, discuss your return-to-work program and the types of transitional jobs you offer – and ask about their attitude toward prescribing narcotics.

Even if state law prohibits you from requiring injured workers to see a specific physician, you can still suggest that they do so. For example, you might say, “Doctor Joan at Acme Urgent Care has treated many of your co-workers and they’ve gotten better quickly.”

Selecting a doctor who doesn’t dispense drugs and only prescribes narcotics when they’re are absolutely necessary can go far to help injured employees get back to work and be healthy and productive as swiftly as possible – while keeping your Workers Comp costs under control.

If you held your last fire or emergency evacuation drill more than six months ago, it’s time to think about staging another. Careful planning and evaluation can help you get the most out of these exercises, enhancing your employee’s chances of a safe evacuation.

Bear in mind that unannounced drills give you an idea of how workers might actually react in an emergency situation. On the other hand, announcing drills offer them the opportunity to prepare for and practice specific skill sets they would need.

Before a fire emergency arises, workers need to know:

• How to activate the appropriate alarm system(s).
• How and when to contact the fire department.
• What to do before they evacuate—such as shutting down equipment.
• Their role in the evacuation. For example, they might need to assist disabled co-workers, help contractors or visitors on the premises, bring essential items such as visitor logs that can be used to verify that everyone is out of the building, provide first aid for injured co-workers, or act to prevent or minimize hazardous chemical releases.
• How to evacuate their work area by at least two routes.
• The locations of stairwells (workers should not use elevators to evacuate).
• Places to avoid – such as hazardous materials storage areas.
• Assembly points outside the building.

After the drill, evaluate the exercise to determine which problems need addressing. Ask such questions as:

• Did anyone ignore the alarm?
• Did everyone know what to do?
• Did everyone make it to the assembly point?
• How long did the evacuation take?
• Are there any gaps that need filling? For example, is at least one worker trained in first aid available on every shift?

If you’d like advice on implementing or reviewing your fire evacuation plans, our agency stands ready to help.

In the 18 states that permit using marijuana for medical purposes, more and more injured employees are obtaining legal prescriptions for the drug to treat symptoms and conditions covered under Workers Compensation – which raises a number of issues:

For starters, the federal prohibition against using medical marijuana (MMJ) creates a clear conflict with state laws that can lead to lengthy litigation.

On the state level, Workers Comp regulations are silent about MMJ usage, and cases have been challenged with mixed results. says Jim Andrews, Executive Vice President of Pharmacy Services at Healthcare Solutions, an Atlanta-based medical cost management company, For example, when an Arizona man who smoked marijuana as a recreational drug filed a request for opioids to reduce pain from a work-related injury, his insurance company convinced state regulators to rule against providing coverage on the grounds that using opioids and marijuana together is medically contraindicated.

Because MMJ is a relatively new treatment for on-the-job injuries, there’s little data on whether it’s safe, helpful, or medically appropriate. According to Andrews, “We might find that the downside of MMJ will be demonstrated long after the public starts using it.” He recommends giving injured workers urine tests to make sure that they’re using MMJ and other medications as prescribed. If their test results don’t confirm this, there’s a strong case that they didn’t need the drugs in the first place.

As using IMMJ to help alleviate work-related injuries becomes more widespread, insurance companies will be working with pharmacists to and monitor packaging (i.e., providing childproof containers) and product quality – and to standardize reimbursement.

To learn more about this complex issue, please feel free to get in touch with us.

A study commissioned by the British government found that for every lost-time injury of more than three days, there were 189 non-injury cases. No business can afford to ignore these near misses, which provide invaluable opportunities to identify and correct safety hazards on the job before they lead to accidents or injuries.

However, according to an article in the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) journal, employees often resist reporting these close calls for such reasons as fear of management retaliation, peer pressure, concern about a safety record, complicated reporting forms and lack of feedback.

To encourage employee reporting of near misses in the workplace, experts recommend these guidelines:

1. Provide your employees with safety training.
2. Develop strategies to measure how reporting near misses improves safety performance.
3. Recognize and reward employees for proactive safety engagement.
4. Have your safety committee oversee the reporting process.
5. Provide incident investigations training for all managers that includes mentoring help for new staff members.
6. Investigate everything! The time you spend investigating near misses will yield long-term rewards by eliminating the time, expense, and hassle of dealing with major (possibly fatal) injuries or property loss – not to mention the impact on productivity and workplace morale.
7. Conduct comprehensive follow-up on corrective action plans. Ask who, what, and by when – and make sure that these changes are made.
8. Report on all investigations. Making sure that every employee hears about every near miss will encourage reporting of future incidents, as workers realize that speaking out will help them do their work more safely.

Our agency’s specialists would be happy to provide their advice on encouraging your employees to help keep their workplace safe. Just give us a call.

You’re probably doing everything you can (from detailed job descriptions through physical exams to comprehensive workplace safety programs) to minimize job-related injuries.

However, accidents happen, despite your best efforts. The sooner employees injured on the job return to work, the less it costs your Workers Compensation insurance company to treat them, the lower your “experience mod” – and your premiums.

The first step in the process is to make sure that workers report any injuries to their supervisor as soon as possible – definitely before the end of their shift.

Once an injury is reported, it’s essential to get the proper treatment. To find a list of board-certified occupational physicians in your area, go to www.acoem.org. If no specialist is available, choose a doctor who is familiar with the physical demands on workers in your business and knows what type of jobs you can provide to transition injured employees back to their full-time positions. If the doctor knows you will offer transitional duty to these workers, he or she will be far more likely to let them go back to work, rather than send them home to sit on the couch and watch infomercials for attorneys at 1-800-SUE-THEM.

Once these employees return to transitional jobs, they’ll be far more likely to work hard so they can get back to their full-time position – which means they’ll be more productive. The bottom line: a “rapid return” program can turn transform injured workers from liabilities into assets. What’s not to like?

Our agency’s Workers Compensation specialists stand ready to offer their advice on developing such a program tailored to your needs. Just give us a call.

More than 500 tornados have ravaged much of the nation this spring, from the Plains States and the Upper South to the Midwest and the East Coast, wreaking billions in damage and killing 43 people.

These deadly storms often sweep in with little or no warning. Taking some basic precautions can help your employees (and you) stay safe if a tornado strikes.

First, know the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. A tornado watch means that a windstorm is likely to occur in the watch area. Be ready to act quickly, take shelter, check supply kits, and monitor radio and television. A tornado warning means that the storm is in the immediate area. Take shelter at once!

An underground area, such as a basement or storm cellar, provides the best protection. If an underground shelter is unavailable:

• Seek a small interior room or hallway on the lowest floor possible. Rooms constructed with reinforced concrete, brick, or block with no windows, a heavy concrete floor, and a sturdy ceiling or roof makes the best shelters.
• Stay in the center of the room, away from doors, windows, outside walls and room corners (which can attract debris).
• Avoid auditoriums, cafeterias and gymnasiums that have flat, wide-span roofs.

If you’re in a vehicle in an area that’s noticeably lower than the road, get out of your vehicle and lie down, covering your head with your hands and forearms. Otherwise, stay in the vehicle with the seat belt on, and your head below the windows, covering it with your hands or a blanket.