Scary Work Comp Stories for Halloween

Trick or treat, WorkCompEdge blog readers. In the spirit of Halloween, this week we offer some scary stories contributed by our staff. Some are true and some are imagined, but all illustrate concepts of which employers should beware. Can you tell which is which?

Of course, we think the scariest thing of all is an employer who doesn't use WorkCompEdge!

Category 1: Do we really want this employee returning to work?

The employee who tried to siphon liquid chemicals with his mouth.

The skull and crossbones must not have been enough. Now there has to be a label that says "use an approved siphoning device."

The employee who instigated an assault that led to work comp claims for himself and another employee.

Talk about needing an improvement in corporate culture.

Category 2: They said that?

Employer: "What's wrong with putting our gear machine operators in code 8810?"

8810 is the common code for office and clerical workers. A manufacturer classifying all employees in this category would probably be charged with, let's see, falsifying business records and committing a fraudulent practice.

Employer, in incredulous tone: "That's the sixth work comp claim this employee has made?"

Needless to say, they hadn't been doing much with claims management.

Employer, on buying work comp insurance: "I went with the low bid."

Cliches are usually true. You get what you pay for.

Employer, on buying work comp insurance the next year: "I don't know why my premiums went up so much this year."

It's called experience rating. Your agent should be helping you understand it.

Agent to employer: "The mod? I really can't explain it, but I know it's better if it's low."

Time for a new agent!

Of course, we think the scariest thing of all is an employer who doesn't use WorkCompEdge! But in all seriousness, whether you're a member or not, take our Getting Started with WorkCompEdge quiz. It's nineteen questions that will help you assess the areas in which your company may be getting tricked - and what WorkCompEdge modules you should treat yourself to first.

http://www.WorkCompEdge.com
http://www.SpecificSoftware.com

Benchmarking Your Safety Culture

Safety is about more than programs, and measuring your safety culture is the first step in improving it. If you have trouble viewing the video above, try this link.

I recently attended a safety conference sponsored by Occupational Health & Safety Magazine in the Washington, D.C., area. One of the more powerful presentations was conducted by Bob Krzywicki, North America Operations Leader with DuPont Safety Resources.

Most of the safety-oriented presentations I’ve attended over the years have focused on a traditional safety engineering approach, such as “find a hazard and remove the hazard.” Mr. Krzywicki, however, had a different approach. He challenged the audience to think about safety performance as a corporate culture issue. He said, “Safety excellence is a cultural transformation that requires felt leadership.” Felt leadership, as implemented at DuPont, establishes safety as a core business value, starts at the top of the organization, and is felt at every level of the organization through employee involvement and accountability. Read more about DuPont’s felt leadership in this article.

In addition, Mr. Kryzwicki said a safety leadership culture can be measured and improved.

He outlined three components of safety culture used at DuPont: leadership, structure, and processes and actions.

Each component includes four elements which he calls the “12 Gifts.”

Leadership elements include:

• Management Commitment


• Policies & Principles


• Goals, Objectives, & Plans


• Procedures & Performance Standards

Structure elements include:

• Line Management Accountability& Responsibility
  
• Safety Personnel
  
• Integrated Organization
  
• Structure Motivation & Awareness

Process and Actions elements include:

• Effective Communication


• Training & Development


• Incident Investigation


• Audits & Observations

Kryzwicki asked the audience to take a leap of faith and measure their safety culture and leadership performance with perception surveys of managers, supervisors, professionals, and hourly workers. DuPont studies show the better the safety culture score, the lower the number and severity of injuries.

Those of you who are very familiar at all with the content of WorkCompEdge will know that I delighted to hear of DuPont’s experience and certainly think it’s worth emulating. Although WorkCompEdge doesn’t express safety culture in quite the same components and elements structure that DuPont uses, we definitely subscribe to the same message: safety is about more than programs, and measuring your safety culture is the first step in improving it. WorkCompEdge members can start that process today using the survey included in the module Build True Safety Culture - It's More Than the Incentive of the Month.

I am confident in DuPont’s findings and encourage employers to perform similar assessments of their own safety culture and performance now, before you attempt to polish any rough edges in the culture you may suspect exists. Although it may take some intestinal fortitude to digest the perceptions you uncover, particularly among certain segments of your employees, you need to establish a baseline of your current safety culture at all levels of your organization. Benchmarking is a critical first step to determining where you are so you can decide where you need to go.

http://www.WorkCompEdge.com
http://www.SpecificSoftware.com

How Will the GFM Affect Workers Comp - and You?

If you don’t recognize the acronym “GFM,” never fear: I couldn’t resist throwing a new one out into cyberspace. AcronymFinder.com says GFM can stand for, among other things, “gaming FM (radio)”, “general field marshal,” and “global financial market,” but around the office we’re using it as a convenient way to refer to the current “global financial meltdown.” As a pilot and former rocket scientist, I find acronyms tend to lighten the subject at hand… terms such as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), BMDS (ballistic missile defense system), or one of my personal favorites CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) don’t seem quite as threatening if you only use the initials. So, GFM is a “lighter” way to refer to a situation that’s very serious indeed.

During this GFM, it's important to remember that historically, employees who are stressed about job security or have personal financial difficulties tend to file more workers compensation claims.

The past few weeks have been incredibly dramatic and sobering: I feel like my brain has been rewired and I'll never see the world in the same way again. Many of our staff here are thankfully young enough that we have some time for our retirement funds to recover, but most of us also have concerns at a level we’ve never had before regarding the cost of children’s college educations, major purchases and investments of any type, etc. We’re hearing from our personal and business contacts that we’re not alone. So, I thought I would survey the WorkCompEdge team and share with you how we view the impact of the GFM on workers comp - for both employers and insurance agencies. Here are some thoughts from our team:

Employers

Employers should be alert for a possible increase in workers compensation claims. Historically, employees who are stressed about job security or have personal financial difficulties tend to file more workers compensation claims. To avert such a possible increase, we have these recommendations for employers:

• Be especially vigilant at this time about nurturing supervisors’ relationships with their employees, even when there may be negative news to report. Effective, proactive communication with employees is never more critical than now, when fear and rumors can undermine a company’s culture.
  
• Pay close attention to any claims that are filed: show care and concern for the injured employee. An injured employee is often under a lot of stress, but those stresses may have extra weight in this economy and therefore lead the employee into a downward, self-defeating spiral.
  
• Even if your business is off, don’t relax your return-to-work policy. For both the financial benefit to your company and the injured employee’s recovery, it’s paramount that you get employees back on the job in some capacity. A claim that is partially due to emotional stress or depression will be greatly exacerbated by sitting at home.
  
• Finally, this is a great time to reinvigorate or launch an employee wellness program. Get your workers walking at break time; hire a massage therapist for a special on-site chair massage day; make healthy snacks and decaf beverages available in your breakroom to ward off junk food binges some research suggests may be related to stress.

WorkCompEdge modules that are particularly applicable to the above points include:

• Before and After an Injury - The Crucial Role of the Supervisor's Actions and Attitudes


• Expedite Return-to-Work - It's Critical to Health, Morale, and Your Bottom Line


• Build True Safety Culture - It's More Than the Incentive of the Month


• A New Paradigm - Promoting the Health of Your Workers
  

Agencies

Your employer clients may be hurting financially, but this may mean they’ll be open to new ideas that will make a difference. The coming months will likely be an excellent time to move away from "low bid" philosophies and demonstrate how WorkCompEdge can be an effective tool to lower costs. Use the “Learn the lessons” module to show the employer the potential savings that come with lower losses and a lower experience mod. Then, sit down with the employer and use the WorkCompEdge ModMaster report or the online survey to help map out a strategy for implementing WorkCompEdge.

It looks like we’re going to be dealing with a recession for a while. Ask yourself, “What do my employers clients need most in recessionary times?” We think that one answer is lower fixed costs and a healthy productive workforce – exactly what WorkCompEdge can deliver - but we’re very interested in hearing what you think. Through our products WorkCompEdge and ModMaster, how can we help you help them?

For All Our Readers

Whether you’re an employer, agency, or other insurance professional, it may be time to understand that the best investment you can make is in your own company and in yourself. We want to know how we can help you do that. What challenges do you think the GFM will bring to workers comp in the coming months?

Please, let us hear from you – on the blog comments or by email to me, Tim or our blog editor, Kory.

http://www.WorkCompEdge.com
http://www.SpecificSoftware.com

Jack Burke Interviews Tim Coomer About WorkCompEdge

Blog editor Kory Wells and Specific Software CEO Tim Coomer are both on vacation this week. They told me I was in charge, so I thought we'd try something a little different while they're gone. How about some audio for a change of pace?

Today, Jack Burke of Insurance Talk Radio...tomorrow Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams...maybe even Letterman? Hey, WorkCompEdge is big...and in his interview of Specific Software CEO Tim Coomer, Jack calls it "a dynamite product." Play the audio interview now

Jack Burke, president of
Sound Marketing and host of the popular insurance programs "Audio Insurance Outlook" and "Insurance Talk Radio," recently interviewed Tim about WorkCompEdge. Listen and hear them discuss:

• a brief history of Specific Software Solutions and SIGMA Actuarial Consulting Group


• why we built WorkCompEdge


• the community aspects of WorkCompEdge


• how we're educating agencies about WorkCompEdge


• how the content of WorkCompEdge is geared toward employers but brings opportunities to agencies


• open enrollment and exclusivity options


• the cost of WorkCompEdge


• the value of WorkCompEdge


• the three main goals of WorkCompEdge


• the next step in learning more

WorkCompEdge has both a wide scope and a lot of depth. Jack calls it "...a dynamite product," and says there's "definitely a need for it in the marketplace." Whether you're new to WorkCompEdge or still evaluating it, I think this interview will help you learn about it in a new way.

Play the audio interview now

http://www.workcompedge.com/
http://www.specificsoftware.com/

Strategic Defense: The Effectiveness of Your Company’s Medical Screenings

I recently had the opportunity to review the WorkCompEdge site with the risk manager of a large corporation. It was a fascinating conversation because he had extensive experience, possessed an analytical mind (I’m partial to those), and could tell a story related to every topic within WorkCompEdge. But, for this blog, I wanted to share with you one particular insight I gained from this meeting.

If your "defense system" lets 100% of your potential new hires through, you need to be concerned.

In the Avoid Hiring Your Next Workers Comp Injury module, we discuss the importance of the post-offer, pre-employment medical screening. Bob (not his real name) shared his experiences with this method for preventing a new hire from quickly becoming your newest work comp claim. Bob verified what we thought when we developed this module: he had definitely seen situations in which an effective medical exam program made a dramatic impact on the frequency of work comp claims and resulted in verifiable long term significant savings. But, just as importantly, he had also seen cases in which the effort to screen out candidates with preexisting conditions or physical ailments or limitations was NOT effective.

This got my attention, of course. I asked Bob, “How can you tell in the early stages of a medical screening effort whether or not it's effective?” His answer, in retrospect, makes so much analytical sense that I'm almost embarrassed to admit I hadn't thought of it! “Look at the reject rates, "Bob said. "If you're passing 100% of the candidates, you have a problem.”

This reminded me of a challenge from my days of working in the defense industry. A ballistic missile delivers a number of decoys and a number of actual weapons to a target. A defense system must determine which of the missile's reentry vehicles (RVs) are real threats and which ones are not. It can’t identify everything as a threat but it also can’t decide nothing is a threat. If your defense system lets everything in, you know you have a problem! The same principle applies to the medical screening of potential new employees. If your "defense system" lets 100% of your potential new hires through, you need to be concerned. Especially in a challenging labor intensive industry, you can expect to hear a very loud boom in the near future.

So, do you know the percentage of rejects that occur with your medical screening effort? If you have multiple locations across your state or across the country, how do the reject rates compare? Does this correlate to the level of work comp claims by location? If work comp claims are particularly low in a specific location and medical rejects are high, perhaps you need to model that screening or defensive system at your other locations. What do you think? Let us know with your comments.

http://www.workcompedge.com/
http://www.specificsoftware.com/

Could We Save Money by Reporting MORE Injuries?

Much has been written about the decline of the frequency of workplace injuries over the past 15 plus years. Improved workplace safety, modular construction, cordless tools, and reductions in heavy manufacturing are some of the most popular reasons attributed to the decline.

On the surface, this sounds like a positive thing. But upon further examination, this much-celebrated decline in the number of workplace injuries may not be completely legitimate.

Does it make sense that delays in getting prompt medical care are often increasing the treatment requirements – and therefore the cost - of injuries? Increased rates of surgery and physical therapy are contributing to increased
loss severity.

The June 2008 report to Congress by the U. S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, “Hidden Tragedy: Underreporting of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” states that work-related injuries and illnesses in the United States are chronically and even grossly underreported.

According to the report, “as much as 69 percent of injuries and illnesses may never make it into the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII), the nation’s annual workplace safety and health “report card” generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). If these estimates are accurate, the nation’s workers may be suffering three times as many injuries and illnesses as official reports indicate.”

What are the causes of underreporting? According to experts:

• OSHA’s reliance on self reporting by employers. Employers have strong incentives to underreport injuries and illnesses that occur on the job.


• Twenty percent of workers— including public employees in high-risk jobs such as law enforcement, fire protection, and public works; workers on small farms employing less than 11 employees; and those who are self-employed—are not even counted by BLS.


• Work-related illnesses are difficult to identify, especially when there are long periods between exposure and illness, or when work-related illnesses are similar to other non-work-related illnesses.


• Recent changes in OSHA’s recordkeeping procedures have affected the accuracy of the count of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).


• Some employers are confused about reporting criteria and OSHA staff are often not well-trained to provide accurate advice.


• Workers report widespread intimidation and harassment when reporting injuries and illnesses. Immigrants are also less likely to report, as explored in last week’s blog entry by Bill Wilson.


• While they may be well-intentioned, widespread and popular safety incentive programs which provide awards for a period of time without a recordable injury, can have the effect of putting pressure on workers not to report their injuries.

Here’s what I’d like your ideas about: Do you think it’s possible that underreporting of injuries may be one of the causes of the increased severity of the injuries that are reported? In other words, are employees resistant to report an injury, and only do so when they can’t stand the pain any longer? If so, does it make sense that delays in getting prompt medical care are often increasing the treatment requirements – and therefore the cost - of injuries?

A report published just a few days ago by NCCI presents an interesting analysis of claim severity as related to the “growth in treatments per claim” over recent years. This report shows that significant contributors to increased claim costs are increased rates of surgery and physical therapy. Catastrophic injuries aside, of course, doesn’t it make sense that the longer you defer medical attention for a problem, the more likely you may need surgery and/or extensive physical therapy?

Here are just a few of the WorkCompEdge modules that relate to this topic.

• The Clock is Ticking – Things You Must Do in the First 24 Hours After an Injury


• Before and After an Injury – The Crucial Role of the Supervisor’s Actions and Attitudes


• Build True Safety Culture – It’s More Than the Incentive of the Month

Ultimately, it’s in the best interest of the employer and the injured employee to report all injuries promptly and get immediate medical treatment. It’s essential for the employer to create a culture that fosters the reporting of injuries. Education and communication is the key. Get the message out loud and clear: if you get hurt, report it. The company, the injured employee, and the employee’s family will all benefit from reporting all injuries. It's the right thing to do - and it may cost us all less in the long run.

http://www.workcompedge.com/
http://www.specificsoftware.com/

Workers Compensation and Illegal Immigrants

One of the few email discussion lists I participate in is a Yahoo! Groups list called "RiskList." Recently, the topic of discussion was illegal aliens and workers compensation. Some issues discussed include whether or not these workers are covered under workers compensation laws and what kind of impact they may be having on loss experience.

Immigrant workers may be more inclined to take risks not commensurate with their skill levels. In cost-cutting measures that played a role in their hiring to begin with, they also may not receive proper safety equipment.

This blog is an abbreviated version of a longer article available to WorkCompEdge members here on our wiki. This article addresses the issue of whether or not illegal aliens are entitled to benefits under state workers compensation laws. The purpose is not to opine about the situation from a political or social standpoint, nor to comment on construction workmanship issues that have been addressed in the press.

Of 9.3 million illegal adults in this country, 7.2 million (77%) are employed and comprise about 5% of the entire U.S. workforce. However, they comprise a far more disproportionate percentage in some industries, such as 24% of farm workers, 17% of cleaning workers, 14% of construction workers, and 12% of food preparers. Within an industry, illegal workers may comprise high percentages of specific (often more hazardous) occupations...e.g., 36% of all insulation workers and 29% of all roofing employees are estimated to be illegal aliens. In general, illegal workers tend to be younger than other workers.

Because of language barriers and lack of training and experience, some experts believe that the exposure to injury may be significantly greater for illegal aliens than other workers. According to an Associated Press story, Mexican workers are about 80% more likely to die from a work injury than native-born workers. In several Southern and Western states, these workers are four times more likely to die than U.S. citizens performing similar jobs.

Given language barriers that might interfere with effective supervision and training, along with the frequent lack of experience, there is a fear that illegal aliens may be at greater risk due to several additional compounding risk factors. For example, because of the reasons many are here, they might be more inclined to take risks not commensurate with their skill levels. In cost-cutting measures that played a role in their hiring to begin with, they may not receive proper safety equipment. And, because they are inclined to avoid attention being directed at their illegal status, they may be hired or assigned to more hazardous jobs by employers who feel they are far less likely to file workers compensation claims....

....which brings us to the topic of this article, which is to answer the question, "Are illegal aliens entitled to state workers compensation benefits?" The short answer to this (as often the case with insurance coverage questions) is, "It depends." In a significant majority of states, illegals ARE entitled to workers compensation benefits. However, this is not true in every state. In addition, the types of benefits or extent of coverage may be restricted in some states depending on a number of factors.

The arguments for and against benefits are further discussed in the full article (available to WorkCompEdge members). Whether or not an illegal alien is entitled to workers compensation benefits will be established in the state statutes or by regulatory or court decision. Are illegal aliens "employees" as defined by most state statutes? If so, are they entitled to all or some of the statutorily-prescribed benefits? In trying to answer these questions, I've constructed a state-by-state chart that references each state's statute, lists any known case law or regulatory ruling, and provides commentary on whether or not it is likely that illegals are entitled to benefits:

Workers Compensation and Illegal Aliens Chart (Word document format)

As you'll see on the chart, most states do allow illegal aliens to claim workers compensation benefits. The only state that expressly excludes benefits by statute is Wyoming. The only state that has excluded benefits across the board by court decision was Virginia, but the decision was subsequently overridden by legislation. The vast majority of other states permit at least the claiming of medical benefits by illegals. Some states (e.g., Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) attach restrictions to disability benefits. Other states (e.g., California, Nebraska, and Nevada) limit or preclude vocational rehabilitation benefits.

This chart is a work in progress, so information is not currently available for all states, but it is for most. Also, keep in mind that where case law is absent (to the best of our knowledge), any opinion about how statutory law might respond is conjecture on our part, based on how courts in other states have ruled on similar statutory wording. As statutes are reviewed and case law uncovered, this chart will be revised on an ongoing basis. If you are aware of any inaccuracies or missing information, please email corrections to me at Bill.Wilson@iiaba.net.

http://www.WorkCompEdge.com
http://www.SpecificSoftware.com