Do You Know the Four Phases of a Workers’ Comp Program?

Before starting a workers’ compensation program, you need to first assess what you already have in place. This first phase of a four-phase process helps your company begin to make recommendations designed to put your company on the road to successful resolutions.

Any large project becomes manageable when divided into smaller bites, thus developing a workers’ compensation program is easy when divided into four phases.

Four phases
1. Assessment and Recommendation
2. Design and Development
3. Training and Implementation
4. Monitoring and Management

The first step in phase one is to assemble a project team. This team, lead by your injury coordinator, manages the company’s workers’ compensation program and are responsible for training staff. Once assembled, you choose a team leader.

The team leader is responsible for compiling gathered data, producing reports, scheduling meetings, documenting the process and ensuring the team adheres to timelines. Not an easy job — so, select carefully.

Select a strong leader with sufficient time to dedicate to the project. The leader may need to devote 90% of his or her time to the project, depending on the volume of claims your company has, and is your go-to person for phase one in implementing a new workers’ compensation program for your company.

As the project progresses, numerous “sub” leaders such as injury coordinator or return-to-work coordinator will be added. They are at the helm of workers’ compensation initiatives. However, the team leader is the pivotal person to orchestrate the various activities that together bring your workers’ compensation costs back under control. (workersxzcompxzkit) The structure of your program will vary from company to company, thus your staffing model may be different.

The breakdown of your planning team will include equal duties and work levels for human resources, labor relations, general management and outside consultants. However, you will find the injury coordinator must take approximately 60% of the workload.

Author Robert Elliott, executive vice president, Amaxx Risks Solutions, Inc. has worked successfully for 20 years with many industries to reduce Workers’ Compensation costs, including airlines, health care, manufacturing, printing/publishing, pharmaceuticals, retail, hospitality and manufacturing. He can be contacted at: [email protected] or 860-553-6604.

Experienced RM professional writer? Contact us at: [email protected].

Do not use this information without independent verification. All state laws vary. You should consult with your insurance broker about workers’ comp issues.