Hello, my name is Pete. I live in Sydney with my wife and our pet dog. I had never been much of a fan of having to pay for insurance. It seemed like a waste of money. However, my view on insurance completely changed after a severe tropical storm caused the ground floor of our home to flood. Thankfully, the month before this happened, my friend who works in the insurance industry had convinced me that I should take out a policy. He helped me find the best one for my home and as a result, I was able to claim for the flood damage to my home. I decided to start a blog to encourage others to consider taking out insurance.
As an employer, you may occasionally be required to help one of your employees lodge a worker's compensation claim. Essentially, when employees gets hurt on the job, they can use the worker's compensation plan to replace some of their wages until they have healed from the injury.
If you are looking for ways to reduce worker's compensation claims to your business, here are some ideas to help you.
1. Hire Freelancers
In Australia, you are legally required to have worker's compensation coverage for your employees, but you are not required to carry coverage for freelancers. Independent contractors must have their own coverage or carry their own risk or injury.
If you take this route, you can reduce claims simply because you have fewer insured workers. However, it's critical to ensure that the posts meets the legal criteria for freelance work. If you hire someone on a freelance basis and they get hurt on the job, they may claim that you were more like an employer than a client. If their claim is successful, you will be required to pay backdated worker's compensation premiums on their behalf.
2. Focus on Safety Training and Equipment
To reduce injuries, make safety a cornerstone of your business model. Make sure that all of your employees have the appropriate safety gear for the job, and don't allow people onto the prediction floor, construction site, or any other area of your business without the right safety gear.
In addition, make sure that your employees are well trained in safety methods. Don't just focus on the job at hand. Remember to focus on other elements as well such as fire risks, slip and falls, and any other injuries that could occur in your place of business.
3. Review All Claims Closely
In spite of your best efforts, accidents can happen, and employees may make worker's compensation claims. Whenever there is a claim, review the case as closely as possible. In particular, look at how and why the individual was injured.
Then, learn from that issue. See if you can create new processes or protocols that would have helped you to avoid that injury. Those changes can be an essential part of avoiding future worker's compensation claims.
4. Minimise Length of Claims
Finally, you may want to take steps to minimise the length of time injured workers claim worker's compensation. That needs to start before an injury occurs. You want to focus on prevention techniques, but you also want elements in place to help you notice when an injury has started but before it has progressed to a serious level.
If you get intervention and medical help for your employees early, that can help reduce the amount of time they are out of work. Note that this tip works best for injuries related to repetitive motions, rather than one-off accidents or injuries.
Share10 May 2017
