Employee health and wellness includes a number of factors, from morale to stress and hazardous conditions within the workplace. With that in mind, it is surprising how few companies encourage collaboration between managers to better control these elements and reduce workers compensation insurance costs.
These claims can increase rapidly if the proper precautions aren't in place, and mitigating the losses can be challenging if one person or department has to go it alone. Complicating matters even more, employees who already have existing medical conditions can incur additional costs after suffering an on-the-job illness or injury – further emphasizing the need for preventative measures. Thankfully, there are many solutions to this problem. Health and wellness initiatives can be implemented, and leaders across a company can work together to come to an effective solution.
Benefits, risks go hand in hand
The issue of coping with rising workers comp insurance costs falls on the shoulders of administrators, but dealing with these problems has to be spread out across a company. Business Insurance explained that benefits administrators and risk managers , in order to combat the frequency and severity of employee injuries.
Recently, industry experts spoke at the 2014 Integrated Benefits Institute Annual Forum in San Francisco, and discussed this key topic, among other issues. Of note was the idea that employee health and workers comp insurance were closely linked. Injuries and illness don't only arise due to hazardous conditions within the workplace, and instead it is imperative that the organization take measures to keep staff members healthy and happy year-round, something more geared toward benefits administration.
"If you're in benefits, improving employee health and productivity is intuitive, but it's not intuitive to the risk management side of your business," Karen Curran, director of health risk management at Denver-based Pinnacol Assurance, said during the presentation, according to Business Insurance. "Employers need to break down the silos and treat taking care of their employees as a team objective."
Overall, a working relationship needs to occur between these two departments, to simultaneously reduce risks while boosting employee health.
Education, measurement can simplify process
The development of a quality risk management plan requires access to the best possible information, and that means educating managers and employees about the related hazards within the business.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management publication titled "Promoting Employee Well-Being," a misunderstanding about the value of a healthy lifestyle among the workforce. Therefore, managers and employees have to be educated about the benefits of incentive programs and other measures taken by the company. All programs should be employee-centric as well, as that can lead to additional positive results at all levels of the organization.
To facilitate this goal, the company has to institute effective measurement tools to gauge employee health, participation and costs. A lack of understanding regarding these key areas can result in poor decisions and wasted money.
In order to help make that process easier, the SHRM noted a few elements that may require some additional research:
- Age of the workforce
- Number of employees with multiple risk factors
- Race and gender of employees
- Number of people working more than one job
These factors all contribute to health concerns and rising workers comp insurance costs. While changing the demographics to better suit lower risk is unrealistic, on a similar note employers can create programs that address these problems and help the current workforce stay healthy for longer. As long as a collaborative environment is cultivated between benefits administrators and risk managers, it shouldn't be too challenging to reduce expenses and keep a company on the right track.
