How to Keep Your Employees Safe and Reduce Your Workers Comp Costs

Much has been written about on-the-job safety, but it is usually targeted to technical advice about a particular situation, such as wearing a hard hat on construction sites.  A much better approach is to target the way we think about all situations so that safety becomes second-nature.  To do this, it is helpful to categorize accidents as to root cause.  Meticulous records must be kept of every accident and near miss experienced by your employees.  Your occupational health and safety logs that you turn into the state should be very helpful in cataloging your historical data.  Once you have listed all of the accidents, it is instructional to look at all of the factors that may have contributed to the injury.  Such factors may include:

o   Weather

o   Time of Day

o   Day of the week

o   Personal life issues (recent divorce or childbirth, impending vacation, bankruptcy, child leaving home, etc)

o   Location where the accident took place

o   Experience of worker

o   Age of worker

o   Supervision on-site or off-site

o   Personal protective equipment use

o   Working alone or with a group

o   Adequacy of clothing / shoes for protection

You may be able to identify certain trends right off the bat, such as tending to have more accidents on Fridays when workers may be thinking about the weekend, or on Mondays when workers may be tired from the weekend.  If you have outdoor workers, you may have more accidents in wet weather than dry.  You may have a particular intersection that is dangerous for drivers and that can be avoided by planning alternate routes.   We can’t discriminate against older workers, but if a job requires fast reflexes or extreme physical strength, we may need to identify at what age it becomes prudent to talk about doing some testing to see if they are still up to the task, since everyone ages at his/her own pace.

Most accidents will end up being grouped into four broad categories: