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| Safety & Workers' Compensation |
| Who Should Pay When You're Hurt At Play: A sigh of relief over OSHA's rescinded ergonomics rules |
One of the major criticisms about the OSHA ergonomics rules (recently rescinded by an act of Congress) was that there was no clear distinction between injuries sustained on the job, and injuries sustained at home, but aggravated on the job. How much responsibility should employers bear for providing accommodations to employees whose recreational pursuits impair their ability to be productive?
More than anything else, the answer to that question may depend on the size of your company. Larger companies tend to downplay the distinction between injuries sustained on the job and those sustained elsewhere. It is one method of protecting the company’s bottom line. “If Sally or Bob hurt their back playing softball, you want them coming in and telling you, because if work aggravates that condition, we end up inheriting it. We want to know even if we take an OSHA recordable, because if we catch it early, treat it and prevent it from recurring, it may not even go to workers’ comp,” says Stephen Gutmann, senior ergonomics specialist at 3M headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Smaller employers just aren’t able to absorb the expense of an injury as easily as a larger corporation. In addition, there is a greater risk for exceeding the average number of injuries for AN industry and reaping substantially higher workers’ compensation insurance bills, according to Daniel Mont, director of the Workers’ Compensation Project for the National Academy of Social Insurance.
While small employers breathe a collective sigh of relief, experts are quick to point out that the ergonomics issues will not go away. OSHA will go back to the drawing board, and we have not seen the end of ergonomics rules. In the meantime, smaller businesses can protect themselves (and their employees) by considering options like enrolling with a Professional Employer Organization. Along with assisting business owners in their ergonomic improvement efforts, enrollment with a PEO can help minimize a small business owner’s liabilities if an injury does occur.
(Source material: Robert J. Grossman “Back with a Vengeance.” HRMagazine. August 2001.)
A small employer’s lack of willingness to assume financial responsibility for an injury is not so much a matter of lack of concern for employees as it is simply a matter of staying afloat financially. By Stephen Gutmann’s estimate, a company that assumes financial responsibility for a $5,000 injury, (we’ll presume the company has about a ten percent profit margin), will need to generate $50,000 in additional sales in order to cover the cost of the injury.
A Word to the Wise:
“With the ongoing concerns about computer viruses, don't take chances. Tell applicants who e-mail their applications to include their resumes in the body of their letter, not as an attachment. Or, ask them to refer you to a web site where you can view their resume”
-Society for Human Resource Managers (SHRM)
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