Worker Injuries Top Employer Concerns A surveyof employers found that worker injury tops their list ofconcerns.

Three out of four businesses with 500 employees or less areeither worried or very worried about workplace accidents, accordingto a survey recently released by The Hartford Financial ServicesGroup.

A close second concern on the list of situations covered byinsurance, selected by 71 percent of the 225 businesses surveyedwith up to 500 employees, was employee theft.

Fear of flooding was near the bottom of the list at 23percent.

The survey results were released at the annual Risk andInsurance Management Society Inc. annual conference last month.

The level of concern for worker injuries “did not really differby type of business or area of the country that was surveyed,” saidPamela Rippens, senior vice president and director of fieldoperations for Specialty Risk Services, the Hartfords third-partyclaims administrator. “However, employers with more employeestended to be more likely to be concerned.”

She added that the level of concern isnt surprising, based onthe fact that 54 percent said they had worker injuries in the lastthree years.

Seventy-three percent of businessesabout the same number thatare worried about workplace injurieshave return-to-work policies,offering alternative assignments to employees injured on the jobwho cannot perform their normal duties, she said.

Ms. Rippens said that about a third of these companies saidtheir policies were formal in nature and two-thirds said thepolicies were informal. Formal policies were much more likely inemployer groups with 50 or more employees, she said.

A factor essential to the return-to-work process, she said, is“early, consistent and ongoing” communications. “Every party–theemployer, the claim payer, nurse case managers, physicians, injuredworkers–must be part of the communications circle in order toinsure a successful return to work and ultimately lower claimcosts,” she noted.

Employees play an important role in the process as well, shesaid.

First, she said, employees need to report injuries in a timelymanner.

About 64 percent of businesses surveyed said they felt theiremployees didnt report injuries because they assumed they werentserious enough. One in 10 didnt report because of fear of eitherneeding to seek legal counsel to help with the process or of beingfired, Ms. Rippens said.

Employees also need to tell their employer what theirreturn-to-work status is. “They have to make it known to theiremployer whether they can work in some capacity or not,” shesaid.

If they can work in some capacity, they have to articulate theirwork restrictions, she said.

The employers role, she explained, is to communicate theemployees value and that a job he or she can perform will beavailable.

She added that the transitional duty should be somethingmeaningful and useful, and that it is important for the employee tobe around other people.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, May 12, 2003.Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.