Focusing your safety program solely upon reducing reported accidents and injuries or compliance with OSHA regulations means your safety and loss control program will never be completely successful. You’ll be applying all your controls to the tip of the iceberg, while major hazards may lurk unchecked. Why Create a Safety Culture? Most workplace accidents stem...
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Minimize Risks to Young Workers
Millions of teenagers will soon be leaving school and taking jobs either for the summer or as the start of their permanent integration into the workforce. Here’s what you need to know to protect them. Last summer, more than half of Americans from ages 16 to 24 years old held jobs, up 2.1 million from...
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The Prohibited Acts Doctrine
Under the workers’ compensation bargain, the employer agrees to compensate an employee for any work-related injury or illness…unless the employee was engaged in a “prohibited act” at the time of injury. A prohibited act is an act that the employer expressly prohibits—such as consuming alcohol or using other intoxicants while on the job or on...
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What You Think You Know About Alcohol Abuse Injuries vs the Truth
When researching the effects of alcohol on workplace injuries, you’ll likely stumble across a statistic attributing 38 to 50 percent of all workplace injuries to alcohol or drug abuse. If that sounds a little too high to you, you’re probably right. It probably is. The statistic supposedly comes from a report by the NCCI, the...
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10 Ways to Reduce Workplace Bullying
A bully in your workplace can affect morale, increasing stress levels for fellow employees—and possibly increasing your workers’ compensation costs. The Workplace Bullying Institute defines workplace bullying as “repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators. It is abusive conduct that is: Threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, or Work...
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How To Conduct a Safety Investigation
Serious sleuthing after a workplace injury can not only help you discover the cause of a specific injury, it can also uncover hidden workplace hazards. After an accident occurs, your first priority should be to get appropriate treatment for the injured worker. After that, you will want to take steps to prevent additional accidents from...
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Four Ways Workers Compensation Insurance Differs from Other Insurance
Workers’ compensation insurance differs from other types of insurance in several important ways. No annual or per-claim limits. Most insurance policies have annual and (sometimes) per-claim limits. After the policy pays out its maximum amounts, the insured must pay the difference out of pocket. With workers’ compensation, you might pay a per-claim deductible, but after...
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Indoor Air Quality and Worker Health
When you think of air pollutants, you probably think of smog, auto exhaust and industrial emissions. But often indoor air can have more pollutants than outdoor air. Since the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, outdoor air quality has improved along many measures. Indoor air quality (IAQ) is another story altogether. Since the...
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Crowd Management Safety
In 2008, a retail worker died from being trampled during a holiday sale event. OSHA has sent letters to major retailers to remind employers about the potential hazards of large crowds at retail stores during the holiday season. It is encouraging retailers to use the safety guidelines, Crowd Management Safety Guidelines for Retailers, available on...
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Retrospective Rating Plans
Retro rating plans have been around for years. How do they work, and do they make sense for your company’s workers’ comp program? With retrospective rating plans (retros), the final workers’ comp premium paid for the policy year is calculated retroactively, based on the actual losses incurred during the year. The retro is actually an...
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