Society Insurance Offers Six Tips for Workers' Compensation

Workers' compensation coverage has it's own unique set of qualities and characteristics that set it apart from other lines of insurance coverage.  Many carriers have been formed to specifically address only that line of coverage.  Society Insurance is one of those carriers, though they have now expanded into many other lines of insurance.

Their VP of Workers' Compensation Claims wrote a nice article on how to improve your experience with this line of coverage.  Even though insurance is purchased, employers should be taking steps to reduce accident frequency and severity.  This article gives some good advice for employers to consider.

Three of these tips are preventative measures designed to minimize accidents or reduce the severity.  Two of the tips involve post accident steps.  The last tip, light duty, is both.  It requires some pre planning but is then instituted on a case by case basis after the accident.

When I think about these steps, and why a company would want to help reduce accidents that the insurance company is going to pay for, it takes me back to my basic risk management strategies.  After we identify risks, we then decide how we treat each risk.

Our options include

1. Risk Aceptance
2. Risk Control
3. Risk Transfer
4. Risk Avoidance

With workers' compensation there is no avoidance.  If we have employees we have the risk.  Accepting risk means being okay with the potential loss happening and paying the cost of it.  We can only accept the risk if we qualify for self funding, or maybe use a deductible on a traditional policy.  Risk Transfer is obtained through the purchase of insurance, but the cost of that will be dependent on your risk control efforts.

Most employers know full well their loss experience directly impacts their experience modification and therefore their premium.  It is important to stress that there are efforts that can be made, and they take planning, in order to help control those losses.

Above we addressed workers' compensation as a whole.  The next step in the risk management strategy would be to identify specific causes of injury to employees, and apply the same four treatment options.  There are certainly risk behaviors that can be avoided by employees and those should be identified and prohibited.  From there, you continue to make decisions for your business about how to address each situation that could lead to injury.