workplace safety is626096424 largeAre your rising work injury compensation rates cutting into your revenue growth? Here are seven strategies for getting your work injury claims under control.

How safe are your employees?

Hopefully, the answer is "very." But, if they're not, you might already be familiar with the chunk of change that work injury compensation can take from your wallet.

Of course, it's terrible news when one of your workers get injured. [quotes]To make things worse, when a worker is injured on the job, many of their expenses can ultimately fall to you. [/quotes]

Depending on the state you live in, you could be liable for big costs. When accidents happen, [quotesright]you could end up taking on huge losses.[/quotesright]

Reducing those costs is great for your wallet, not to mention the better safety of your employees. Here's how. 

1. Tighten Up Safety Standards

The most fool-proof method of reducing costs is simple: Keep safety standards up.

There are many potential causes of an accident that could lead to work injury compensation, from unstable structures to incompetence, to plain bad luck. And, all of these possibilities are made less likely by improved safety measures. Are your safety standards up to par?

You should check by using the standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA puts out a specific set of guidelines for any company that manages the safety of its employees.

You might have other standards that you think are better, for whatever reason. [quotes]But, OSHA standards are the ones that really matter.[/quotes] If you're not in line with their requirements, and somebody gets injured, the costs you incur will only be worse.

After you do a thorough inspection, you might realize that you're missing a few key parts of safety protocol. It's important that you take appropriate steps to meet those requirements.

You might already be following them, but still being hit with work injury compensation. If that's the case, you need to tighten things up. And the way to do that is through better training.

2. Train Better

Worker safety is a team effort. You might be totally up to date on safety requirements, down to the last detail.

But is your whole company? A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, they say. And that applies here. [quotesright]If 99 out of 100 designated employees know how to operate a certain machine, that's not good enough. [/quotesright]

One employee getting injured is still a disaster. A disaster you could end up paying big change for. That's why it's essential that every employee who is at risk for injury goes through the proper training. It's a great way to avoid expensive work injury compensation.

Thorough training regimens could make a huge difference for you and your employees. Is your current one up to standard? If you're not sure or not comfortable with your training protocols, you have options.

[quotes]Many insurance companies and government programs offer training programs for workers.[/quotes] They don't want your employees to need work injury compensation, just like you don't.

One of the most solid ways of checking your safety protocols is through OSHA. OSHA offers an on-site inspection of the areas where injuries could happen. By filling out your information on their website, you can qualify for an efficient inspection.

Depending on the size or value of your business, the inspection could come with a small fee or be free. Plus, if you have been approved by OSHA, that will take a big weight off your back, and it will give you an idea of what safe worker behavior is.

3. Reward Following Safety Protocols

[quotesright]Every once in a while, horror stories surface about insurance fraud. [/quotesright] The narrative is simple: an employee has faked an injury or intentionally got injured. Now their boss is doling out thousands of dollars.

Those cases won't necessarily happen to you. But rewarding safe behavior among employees can be one way of preventing them.

[quotes]If someone has an inkling of an idea of committing fraud, they still could be deterred.[/quotes] You can do this by giving them an incentive to not commit fraud.

Consider coming up with a way to monitor your employees, or for your managers to monitor them. If you have multiple locations, try a competition to see who can be the safest. The winners could get monetary prizes. This strategy will justifiably reward employees for safe behavior while also stopping anyone from doing something wrong. This will help you deal with accidents that shouldn't have happened.

4. Help Employees Get Back to Work

Despite your best efforts, you still could end up with an accident happening to capable, dependable employees.

Your employee was doing a good job, and the system you set up was running smoothly. Somehow, a freak incident occurs that nobody is to blame for. Your employee incurs a serious injury, and you're stuck paying work injury compensation.

You might think that you've simply lost this one. You could assume that you're stuck with doling out thousands of dollars. Well, you are for now. But you could still save a whole lot of money.

[quotes]You can stop the payments early if you take the right steps.[/quotes] The right steps to bring your employee back to full health and work, not to cut off necessary payments.

If you can help your employee rehabilitate faster, they'll be grateful for it. Plus, they'll get back to work faster. It might mean more money now, but this strategy lets you lean less on insurance companies in the long run.

It's just one of the several ways you can take steps to ease the costs of work injury compensation.

5. Classify Workers Correctly

Different positions within your warehouses or factories are classified differently in many ways, including insurance.

[quotes]That means that different insurance policies and premiums apply to your various employees.[/quotes] Of course, your employees should have insurance that corresponds to the work they do. In other words, if an employee deals with dangerous material, they should have a quality insurance plan.

If they are in low-risk positions, they need a different plan. Misclassifying your employees can lead you to doll out money in big numbers for injured employees who are supposed to be classified in another way.

6. Buy Insurance Through a PEO

[quotesright]A professional employer organization (PEO) can take a load off your back and out of your pockets. [/quotesright]

If you are willing to spend the small extra change, you can hire a company to take care of many of your needs. Insurance is one of them. [quotes]By outsourcing your insurance to another firm, they've taken on the responsibility of compensation plans.[/quotes] And they're experts in that field.

You want your things to be safe at home when you're on vacation without having to think about it. You also need to know in the back of your head that your insurance policy is effective, affordable and right for you and your company.

Buying through a PEO can give you that calm. You should feel relaxed about your insurance policies. And that relaxation will allow you to focus. You may also be surprised that use of a PEO can also insulate your from liability issues in many areas and even let you cut your home office support staff. Check them out, for small businesses, they can be a substantial competitive edge.

7. Be Aware of Close Calls

There's a fine line between accident and non-accident. In a situation that presents some risk to employees, the smallest decision can cause or prevent a serious accident.

That's why those little decisions can ultimately affect work injury compensation – and it's why you should pay attention to all of them. [quotesright]If your employee misses an accident by a whisker, you might feel relieved, and you should. But it should also worry you. [/quotesright]

In fact, many YouTube videos of almost-deadly accidents go viral today. The videos are pretty incredible to watch but should emphasize to you how common these accidents can be.

If it happens to one of your employees, you shouldn't waste any time gaping at it. Instead, you should treat every close call as an insight into the flaws of your safety network. Somehow, whether through their own poor decisions or an error in your infrastructure, somebody almost got seriously hurt.

[quotes]And you almost got hit for hundreds of thousands of dollars.[/quotes] You might have missed doling out work injury compensation this time, but the responsible thing to do is to figure out what went wrong in this instance and how to fix it so it doesn't happen again.

You'll be on the right track to making your work spaces totally safe.

Login