Well, it appears that we are just about through with “the winter that wasn’t really a winter at all”. If you are a skier, cross country or downhill, a snowshoe enthusiast or someone who enjoys ice fishing or has a trailer load of snow machines—my apologies. If you are the owner of a ski area, words are not enough!!! Maybe the upside will be less spring “runoff”, a drier spring, and fewer black flies and mosquitoes—probably not!!!
We have been working very diligently to make sure that the Loss Control Services we provide to our Member companies in all three groups are “world-class”. About 5 years ago, we took a hard look at how we “do” Loss Control and decided there had to be a better way. Our major focus in managing workers’ compensation costs is to try to not have claims in the first place.
About 25 years ago, I believe that I humorously said “You know, if you just don’t hurt people in the first place, it doesn’t cost a lot of money” and it stuck. Therefore, we started to do a better job of practicing what we preached.
The fact was, that the majority of workers’ compensation claims/accidents that happen on the job are the result of “unsafe acts” and “unsafe work practices” and not “unsafe conditions”. In most cases, conducting a walkthrough safety visit can only identify the unsafe conditions that may result in accidents but are far less likely to observe unsafe acts that are the real cause behind most accidents.
Furthermore, the three most common types of accidents that we find in our groups (and they are the same ones that every insurance company in the land finds) are Slips, Trips and Falls, Sprains and Strains, and Caught-by/Struck-by accidents. These three types of accidents represent, on average, between 70% to 80% of all the claims we see in a year and represent as much as 90% of the cost of all the claims we see!!!!
To that point, we started the Loss Control Coordinator Academy here in Concord, which attempts to focus all of our Members on the types of behaviors that can result in those types of claims and it is what we focus on during our site visits.
In addition to that, we are now about to roll out a series of “posters” with some in-house designed characters to further get out the message about the three types of accidents described here.
Please meet Cautious Clay and his sister, Mindful Mindy who we have dubbed the “Safety Siblings” and we will be using them to further get out the message about these types of claims.
We hope you will find them as engaging as we do as they will help us deliver the message in a soft and friendly manner instead of the typical posters with workers dressed head to toe in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that most workers can’t relate to. We hope to begin to roll them out about mid-year as there are many considerations to take into account to make this medium-friendly and usable by all of our Members.
We look forward to you meeting them in person and can’t wait for you to see them!!!
