Workplace injuries and the bottom line: indirect incident costs are staggering

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Robert Smith

This week the Intelex Blog introduces its newest contributor, Robert Smith. Head of Injury Management Solutions, Robert has tons of experience in Human Resource and Disability management, including a long stint with WSIB. Robert will blog on a biweekly basis on issues related to compensation, claims management, case management, and much more. This week Robert tackles the real costs of workplace injuries.

I have been directly involved in workers’ compensation issues for well over 20 years and, like many of you, I have heard the stories of the costs of a workplace injury and how important it is to implement health and safety programs and to manage claims. Yet time after time I have conversations with employers who still do not grasp the big picture.

So what is the big picture? Most companies are aware of how their workers’ compensation premiums are calculated and that poor performance results in surcharges. Most are aware there are claim cost limits to seemingly protect them financially. But – and this is a big but – there are aspects that many do not calculate into their strategies. These are the “indirect” costs of the claim and can add from three to ten times to the direct claim costs.

To put this into perspective let’s look at the claim cost for an Ontario NEER employer:

In 2013 the Claim Cost Limit is $416,000.00. If you take just the minimum indirect cost factor of three, the actual cost is $1,248,000.00. Considering the worst case scenario at ten times the actual cost is a staggering $4,160,000.00.

These indirect costs include:

Damage to equipment, machinery, materials, facility, etc.
Production downtime.
Lower employee morale.
Loss of products or services.
Delays in shipment or filling orders.
Additional overtime.
Managers’ lost time resulting from the accident. Also includes inspections, investigations, meetings, and administration.
Employees assisting with the accident. Includes administering first aid, and witness interviews.
Hiring and training replacement workers.
Wages of replacement workers.
Other non-productive time incurred by the injured employee. Includes all medical related appointments.
Potential MOL, OSHA penalties.
Legal fees.

Although this list is quite long it still doesn’t encompass every indirect cost. Understand that for each injury that occurs in your workplace, the increase in your workers’ compensation premiums is dwarfed by all of the indirect costs associated with that injury. Now is the time to take the necessary steps to limit, or better yet, eliminate all injuries to ensure your company’s maximum productivity and profitability.

Questions or comments? Post below or contact Robert.

OSHA enforcement vs. incident rates, airline attendant safety, Doha climate talks and more on EHS This Week

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Paul Leavoy

On this week’s edition of EHS This Week we’ve got the week’s top stories in environment, health and safety news:

The correlation between higher OSHA enforcement areas and injury and illness rates.
A proposal to increase safety for airline attendants.
Doha climate talks and more.

Remember to write us with your suggestions, questions and comments at paul@ehsthisweek.com. Also, if you are an industry expert and ever want to take part in the program, we’d love to have you.

Until next week, enjoy the program!

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US Labor Department’s OSHA exposes safety and health hazards at construction sites through no-notice incident prevention campaign

Posted on November 27, 2012 by OSHA

This release has been reposted from www.dol.gov.

PHILADELPHIA – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has concluded its 2012 “Construction Incident Prevention Initiative,” during which it issued 243 citations and assessed a total of $658,862 in proposed fines to companies on construction sites throughout the agency’s Philadelphia Region.

The four-month campaign included 545 no-notice inspections focused on falls, trenches and silica exposure. Fifty-nine percent of the inspections revealed violations, some of the most common of which are failing to use fall protection when working on roofs, ensure that scaffolds are constructed safely and protect trenches from collapse.

“This alarmingly high number of violations underscores the need for employers in the construction industry to make a stronger commitment to workplace safety and health,” said MaryAnn Garrahan, OSHA’s regional administrator in Philadelphia. “Employers are responsible for ensuring safe and healthful workplaces, and will be held legally accountable when they fail to do so.”

OSHA’s Philadelphia Region, which encompasses Delaware, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, had a total of 43 construction-related fatalities in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, with 18 attributed to falls.

In April, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis announced a national campaign to provide employers and workers with lifesaving information and educational materials about working safely from ladders, scaffolds and roofs in an effort to prevent deadly falls in the construction industry. In 2010, more than 10,000 construction workers across the United States were injured as a result of falling while working from heights, and more than 250 workers were killed. OSHA’s fall prevention campaign was developed in partnership with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and NIOSH’s National Occupational Research Agenda program. More information on fall protection standards is available in English and Spanish at http://www.osha.gov/stopfalls.

To ask questions, obtain compliance assistance, file a complaint, or report workplace hospitalizations, fatalities or situations posing imminent dangers to workers, the public should call OSHA’s toll-free hotline at 800-321-OSHA (6742).

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for providing safe and healthful workplaces for their employees. OSHA’s role is to ensure these conditions for America’s working men and women by setting and enforcing standards, and providing training, education and assistance. For more information, visit http://www.osha.gov.

This release has been reposted from www.dol.gov where other press releases and news materials are available. The information above is available in large print, Braille, audio tape or disc from the COAST office upon request by calling 202-693-7828 or TTY 202-693-7755.

Benefits of mobile on the rise for energy and utilities companies

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Graham Campbell

More and more, here in the Intelex Energy and Utilities team, we’re seeing a strong need for mobile access in all areas of the Energy-Utilities community. Energy is generated and delivered in a variety of ways throughout the world and reaches out far from centralized stations and hubs. Therefore, the need to have mobile access on a residential, commercial and/or corporate level is becoming much more of a ‘must-have’.

Whether it’s through downloaded apps or web-based access, residential and commercial customers can quickly report an outage and check on restoration status or have at-a-glance visibility into outages within their communities. They can easily access their account summary and history, make payments or submit a meter reading. Utility companies themselves are able to relay information throughout the organization very quickly, 24 hours a day.

Outside of the direct impact on customers, these companies can leverage the right web-based mobile solutions to report incidents and near misses, enter in audit information and work through pre-built checklists, follow up on corrective actions based on nonconformances discovered, as well as view reports and dashboards to display any KPIs that are important to their business.

By leveraging the convenience and efficiency of smart phone/tablet technology, we’re creating a direct link throughout all areas of the Energy-Utility sector. This is helping to reduce the time it takes to communicate critical information and as a direct result, allows Energy companies to respond and take action very quickly when any type of incident occurs, from outages to major injuries.

(Pictured: L6 D Electricity transmission tower, near Aust, England, UK. Image courtesy of Yummifruitbat through Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

NAOSH Week now underway in cities across the continent

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Paul Leavoy

It’s NAOSH week! In terms of North American Health and Safety, NAOSH week is kind of a big deal. Hot on the heels of the International Day of Mourning for fallen and injured workers (April 28) as well as International Workers Day (May 1), North American Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) week is a great opportunity to raise awareness about occupational health and safety across the continent.

As we’ve discussed recently on the EHS This Week podcast, injuries and accidents continue persist in workplaces across Canada and the U.S., and as OSHA head Dr. David Michaels recently reminded us, every day 12 American workers go to work and never come home as a result of workplace fatalities. Most workplace injuries and accidents are entirely preventable, and this week is all about seizing opportunities to make North American work environments safer.

Jointly sponsored by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) and the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE), NAOSH week means there is an array of events, activities and ceremonies happening in cities across North America. Find out what’s going on in your community and join in to help prevent workplace accidents and fatalities by checking out NAOSH’s events page and tuning into the Intelex blog for the rest of the week as we devote special coverage to NAOSH, including a mid-week EHS This Week Podcast.

Veresen’s SMART Idea

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Lauren Craig

Last week Training Specialist Steph DiRaddo conducted our largest in-house user training session with client Veresen Inc, which owns and operates energy infrastructure assets across North America. The training stretched over two days and brought Veresen plant managers from their eastern facilities together with the Alberta-based project team here at Intelex headquarters in Toronto.

Veresen is getting ready to launch their appropriately named SMART (Sustainability Management and Reporting Tool) using Intelex’s EHS Incident Management application to 200 users across North America. The project team has been working diligently to ensure a smooth introduction of the new system to various internal departments, and in doing so has provided a great example of how they can creatively engage employees that will be working with the system.

Demonstrating their full commitment to SMART, and to further encourage user adoption and integration, the Veresen Project Team went as far as creating a new logo and some terrific branded materials. Ergonomic mouse pads and travel first aid kits with the SMART logo will be a nice complement to the roll-out of the system and a great addition to users’ offices. “Their brand marketing for the project is something I’ve never seen,” Steph commented. “They are using the system to cultivate a culture shift in the way they look at EHS.”

User adoption is such an important piece in maximizing the use and benefit of the system, and Veresen has gone the extra mile to ensure SMART is welcomed and embraced into the company’s safety reporting activities. This is definitely a smart initiative and we’re thrilled to be a part of it!

More Tips to Help Boost User Adoption

Here are some other ways that you can encourage user adoption of the Intelex system throughout your organization:

Ask senior management to communicate the implementation of Intelex through a companywide announcement. This may come in the form of an email, internal newsletter or intranet posting.

Distribute brochures detailing the applications or systems being used.

Make instructional manuals readily available to users and provide information specific to their access level.

Create a micro-site on your website where employees can access system FAQs, workflow diagrams, helpful links, etc.

Give your active users access to Intelex-Exchange, an online portal full of learning materials and system resources.

Dedicate a person or team (depending on implementation size) to be the “Intelex Guru”, the go-to person for questions, training or anything Intelex-related.

Intelex’s marketing team is able to assist any client with the above mentioned items and can help tailor any existing resources to meet specific needs.

Streamlining EHS incident management in the chemical industry

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

While comprehensive EHS management is critical in almost any industry, businesses in the chemical sector face a unique array of challenges. Since dangerous chemicals have direct impacts on human health, carry the potential of compromising safety, and also — improperly handled and contained — can result in significant negative environmental impacts, proactive EHS management is just a part of douing business for chemical companies.

That’s why we’ve put together a unique product demonstration of Intelex’s ENS Incident Management solutions. Hosted by our resident chemical expert Cristian Quinteros, our new webinar, EHS Incident Management in the Chemical Industry, covers all the bases, from capturing near misses to streamlining reporting and analysis and maintaining regulatory compliance.

You can view this on-demand webinar as well a library of other webinar presentations by visiting our webinar page.

Will you be required to keep OSHA 300 logs?

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

Many businesses across the U.S. are well-acquainted with OSHA Form 300 logs, reports generated on a monthly (300) and annual (300A) basis that list all work-related injuries and illnesses.

While hundreds of thousands of businesses are currently bound to report, there is a long list of industries that have been exempt from reporting.

But all that is poised to change.

If a proposed rulemaking becomes law, many previously exempt industries will be required to report workplace injuries and illnesses in accordance with Form 300 and 300A requirements. Dozens of industries (including bakeries, automotive dealers, performing arts companies, and many more) would be affected by the expanded regulation. That said, some organizations that have previously been required to report may not have to. Check out the highly useful OSHA Law Blog for a complete list.

While completing these logs can be a tedious, time-consuming process with a lot of paperwork, well-prepared companies that have implemented a streamlined, electronic safety management system will find that complete, accurate Form 300 reports are just a click away.

Imagine: one-click OSHA Form 300 and 300A reports

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

Most organizations waste days upon days preparing requisite safety incident logs, pushing and pulling data from paper-based forms, spreadsheets, and other siloed software products.

A robust electronic safety incident reporting process, however, will include configurable reporting tools that enable organizations to generate reports based on customized templates that address all safety reporting requirements. By ensuring the timely, accurate and comprehensive creation of required reports, and organization can eliminate the risk of facing substantial fines imposed by regulatory bodies as a result of poor reporting.

For example U.S. companies must generate and post OSHA incident reports on a monthly and annual basis. These reports must contain information such as how many people were injured, how many days away resulted from incidents, how many incidents were recordable, where the incidents occurred, as well as other details.

A streamlined incident reporting solution allows safety personnel to generate automatically populated OSHA Form 300 and 300A reports with the click of a button. Compared to the time and effort associated with the manual generation of these reports, safety personnel are poised to spend literally minutes instead of days on monthly reports, and hours instead of weeks on annual reports.