Small changes in your workers’ compensation program lead up to large cost savings. Your company’s central job is to find where to make those little changes. Find problems while you can still fix them.
Assess your current state:
- Claims are reactive so management needs to stop waiting for things to happen.
- Assess your corporate best practices.
- Assess consistency across all locations or business units.
So how do we find these TONS of little things we can do better?
A retroactive review of claims is a good place to find trends, but it’s more waiting! Consider doing an Early Satisfaction (or Dissatisfaction) Survey by calling employees 10-14 days after the injury to get feedback on their experience. You will use carefully scripted questions, and have professional interviewers. By doing an EARLY ASSESSMENT you find out problems while you can still correct the situation.
Meaning, you will be waiting until a problem costs you money in order to find it in a loss run.
So, assess practices as an organization across the whole organization. Then dig down into business units or specific workers’ comp. coordinators to find out if you are consistently following best practices.
Follow these steps:
- Audit.
- Assess.
- Educate.
Look at the following analytics:
- Data Benchmarks (can be retroactive which means more waiting).
- TPA practices.
- Operational best practices.
TPA practices are critical and they tend to lead to the topic of your role as the employer in the process. One way to find out the impact your TPA has on the overall process is to ask the employees. (workersxzcompxzkit)
To effectively assess your operation’s internal practices related to injured workers, focus support efforts in the right places:
- Give incentive for honesty.
- Get your arms around the truth.
- Get the most bang out of your efforts.
Claim/policy budget allocations and bonus structures are for incentive and punitive process. Your best practice survey must not be perceived as either. In order to get to the root of your challenges, it will be important to make this process neutral. The objective is to give your staff in the field the opportunity to identify where they need help.
Author Rebecca Shafer, J.D. Consultant/President, Amaxx Risks Solutions, Inc. has worked successfully for 20 years with many industries to reduce Workers’ Compensation costs, including airlines, healthcare, manufacturing, printing/publishing, pharmaceuticals, retail, hospitality and manufacturing. Contact her: RShafer@ReduceYourWorkersComp.com or 860-553-6604.
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Do not use this information without independent verification. All state laws vary. You should consult with your insurance broker or agent about workers’ comp issues.
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