Using Surveillance in Workers’ Comp Claims

Surveillance can help employers manage workers’ compensation claims in three ways: by providing evidence for claim investigations, by influencing employee behavior, and by pointing out safety problems. Here’s what employers need to know.

Using Video in Workers’Compensation

Today’s video surveillance systems cost less and provide better images than ever before. In addition to enhancing security and preventing theft, they can also help employers manage workers’ compensation claims. However, employers should be sensitive to employees’ privacy.
Cameras Where?

No federal law prohibits video monitoring of the workplace, even if employees do not know or consent to monitoring. Only two states, Connecticut and Delaware, require employers to disclose video monitoring to employees. Elsewhere, employees generally have no privacy rights in “public spaces.” However, in areas where they have a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” such as an enclosed office, rest room or locker room, courts have generally ruled in favor of employees’ privacy rights.

In general, therefore, if the general public (or any employee) has access to an area, an employer can probably record video there. Audio recordings might be a different thing, though.
If your video equipment records sound as well as images, wiretapping and eavesdropping laws might apply. Federal law and the majority of states permit recording of phone calls and other electronic communications with the consent of at least one party. Twelve states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington) require all parties to a conversation to consent to being recorded. In every state, employers should disclose that employees might be subject to audio and video recording while on company property. For further advice, please contact an employment attorney.

If your resources are limited (and whose aren’t?), you will probably want to focus placing video cameras in high-risk areas. Depending on your circumstances, this could be:

• On the dashboards of company cars or trucks. Some dash cameras have sensors that allow them to activate when the vehicle does certain things, such as reaching a certain speed, crashing, etc. Dash cameras can record the location and speed of the vehicle and can provide valuable evidence for investigating an accident.
• In parking lots and stairwells. Injuries that occur on your premises—including parking lots—might fall under your workers’ compensation policy. If employees claim workers’ compensation benefits for a slip-and-fall injury sustained in the parking lot, video footage can either support or rebut their claims.
• In hazardous work zones. Video cameras can ensure employees wear protective gear and follow safety procedures.

Improving Behavior

Organizations that use video surveillance systems have found them useful in disputing fraudulent or exaggerated claims. On the other hand, when a legitimate accident occurs and there are no witnesses, a video recording can help ensure an employee gets the benefits he/she needs and deserves.

Installing video cameras might do more for you than just help you investigate potentially fraudulent claims. In a 2013 study, researchers from Brigham Young University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that theft monitoring information technology products not only helped restaurants detect fraud, they also prevented fraud by changing employee behavior. The take-home? Knowing they’re being watched removes the temptation to cheat. This has implications for workers’ compensation claims as well as theft prevention, of course. Employees who know they might be watched are less likely to disregard safety precautions and cut corners on the job.

Safety Improvement

Video cameras can also bring awareness to safety hazards. By showing the events that lead up to an accident, a video recording can reveal if other factors contributed to the accident. Whenever an accident occurs, safety managers should review any available surveillance recordings for that area to look for causation. For example, if a slip-and-fall claim occurred, were the floors wet? Have other people had near-misses due to wet or slippery floors in that area?

Video recordings can also help safety managers discover shortfalls in safety systems and procedures. Perhaps an accident hasn’t occurred yet, but an employee has complained that her protective gear interferes with her work, or another employee feels unsafe performing a certain task. Video cameras can record the same task being performed multiple times and possibly by multiple people. This can help a safety manager develop better solutions by determining whether the problem is employee-specific, equipment-specific or task-specific.

For more on using surveillance to investigate potentially fraudulent claims, please see How To Handle a Workers’ Comp Fraud Investigation.