February 18, 2010

Strategic options for controlling your workers' comp costs

Strong leadership is vital when managing workers' compensation costs. There are some important things business managers, principals and other leaders can do:

• Make the injury reporting process clear. Tell employees: what a work injury is; how, when and to whom to report; and where to seek medical care.
• Assign a claim coordinator. Be specific about his or her responsibilities.
• Communicate the importance of injury prevention and return-to-work.
• Support the efforts of your safety committee and safety director. Provide resources.
• Demand continuous improvement. Strive toward zero accidents. Encourage same-day reporting of injuries.
• Hold people accountable.

Doing these will help ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals: 1) keeping employees injury free, 2) when an injury does occur, managing the claim successfully to control costs and 3) bringing the employee back to work as quickly as possible.

Explore resources on SFM's new website

SFM's new website, launched in January, offers important cost-control resources for schools.

It features enhanced search capabilities, streamlined menus, an updated design, and newly organized categories to help users find information with minimal effort.

Consider SFM's website as a primary resource for your risk management program. It can help you reduce costs, manage your human resources, and enhance your organization's productivity. Check it out: www.sfmic.com

Advice from SFM's

Growing carefully
Make good business decisions and avoid unexpected workers' comp costs

Some organizations anticipate adding to staff or expanding production in the coming months.

They may also be inviting additional workers' compensation claims later unless they take steps now to improve their hiring or planning processes.

That's SFM's experience from prior periods of economic upturn. Typically, out of the thousands of workers' compensation claims SFM manages each year, it see claims and costs that employers likely would have avoided had they followed more careful hiring practices or been more safety-conscious in expanding production.