Injury and Illness Investigations
Issue #55
May, 12, 2008
Now that the first quarter of 2008 is over, how does the rest of the year look for your business? When you put your plans together in 2007, did you plan on reducing your workers’ compensation premium? Yes, you can lower your workers’ compensation costs and these are costs that can and should be considered ‘controllable costs.’ Here are some thoughts on how you can take control of your workers’ compensation costs in this policy year.
The first step is to reduce the number of injuries and illnesses in your company. This comes not from wishing them away or by setting goals to reduce lost time accidents by one from 2007. This comes from good old-fashioned incident investigation work for every incident that causes injury or harm to people in your company.
Investigating injuries and illnesses will uncover the obvious direct cause of an incident, such as tripping over an extension cord stretched across the aisle way. But more importantly, a good incident investigation will help uncover indirect causes such as unsafe acts and finally will lead you to the root cause such as unsafe practices like using extension cords as a substitute for permanent wiring. Most times companies take the band-aid approach to safety and simply cover up the problem without really addressing the cause. That’s like taking aspirin all the time for a headache without every finding out why you have headaches. To really control injuries and illnesses, you have to dig deeper than just the direct or surface cause.
Quite often poor employee education, poor maintenance, or the “we’ve-always-done-it-like-that-before” attitude rests at the heart of most injuries and illnesses. If you can uncover the root cause of an injury or illness, you are going to make substantial strides in creating a safer work environment and lowering, yes lowering, your workers’ compensation costs. How? By reducing accidents.
Here’s the bottom line: make sure all injuries and illnesses are reported and fully investigated so you can find both the direct cause and the root cause. When you find the root cause, find the solutions and make real changes: don’t be superficial when it comes to safety.
Kempkey Insurance Services goes beyond insurance by designing and implementing risk management programs for growth oriented businesses. We help our clients maximize the value of their insurance dollars and minimize their potential for unwanted surprises. Ed Kempkey can be contacted at (888) 536-7539 extension 2188, or at ed@kempkey.com.