I’ve made videos on what you should do when you have a workers’ compensation claim and how to file a claim. Now let’s talk about why you need a return-to-work program to help you minimize your risk and costs associated with a potential claim. Be sure to watch the video too.
Get them back to work asap.
In Georgia, where a vast majority of our clients are, and probably where most of the people who are watching this video are, you have seven days from the time of the injury to get somebody back to work without it being considered a lost-time injury.
There are a lot of good people in the insurance industry to help you avoid lost-time injuries. That’s what we do at HM-Advisors. We’re out here to help the employees too. We’re out here to help people become healed and most importantly, to get back into the workforce. If you are not talking to your agent about return-to-work, give us call.
Why? Because while your employees are sitting at home collecting lost time, what do you think they are they seeing over and over again? They’re watching attorneys on TV and they’re going to want to hire one to come after you, potentially increasing your time and costs exponentially.
Execute the Plan
A return-to-work program is hugely important to have in place when somebody is hurt so you don’t have to wait and wonder what are you going to do. How are you going to handle this incident and where are you going to send them? Instead, all you have to do is go to your plan and execute it.
Alternate Duty
It’s important to include alternate duties in a return-to-work plan. What if an employee hurts their arm, their back, or their leg? You need to know what are some jobs that the employee could do within your work environment that a physician is going to permit them to do?
We provide a list to our clients, and we’ll provide a list for you if you ask us. We’ll help show you those light-duty things that somebody can do instead of staying at home watching TV. And, if you want to build a return-to-work program from the ground up, if you want all the information, I would love to help you do that, to help you create a program for your company because I promise you, it is going to save you a ton of money in the long run.
How much money can a return-to-work program save?
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics says that “The soft cost of a workers’ compensation claim is somewhere between two and twenty times the actual physical loss to the individual.” If worker’s comp claim, is $10,000, then the actual cost to the business could be as low as $20,000 and as high as a few hundred thousand dollars. It’s based on the particular employee, what their role is, and the injury.
This means that if you have a $10,000 claim, $20,000 may be the minimal impact of that injury to you when you add soft costs. Soft costs include finding somebody else, training that person, loss of productivity, etc. This is an example of two times, which is industry-leading. It’s the best. It’s what the biggest companies do. For a small business, imagine if it was four times or five times the cost. It could be a huge impact to your bottom line. A negative impact to your bottom line.
These are just a few reasons why you want to get an employee back to work as soon as possible. If you want to learn more about workers’ comp or return-to-work and ways that we can help your company implement a plan, give us a call at (478) 922-853, email us at info@hm-advisors.com or fill out a quote request here. We would love to hear from you.