Just as fictional TV newsman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show had humble beginnings (“It all started at a 5,000 watt radio station in Fresno, California”), so did social media.

Finding good workers is half the battle — you also need to keep them healthy and productive. Today, around 20% of days of missed work are due to sprains and strains that happen as a result of poor workplace design. Companies and public sector organizations that consider their employees' work environment and how it can affect health and efficiency — known as ergonomics — can potentially reduce workplace injuries.

It’s request-for-proposal time again for workers’ compensation and property & casualty claims administration. What should you do? Should you regurgitate the past proposal questions? Should you just re-sign with your TPA? It’s time to decide what is best and what may be counterproductive for your RFP development.

Employees have dramatically changed in comparison to the workforce of 25 years ago. Starting in 2012, 10,000 Americans a day turn 65. Many of these Americans will continue to actively participate in the workforce.

With the changing demographics, further attention is required to ensure our employees remain safe and potential injuries are prevented. Within the next decade, 40 percent of the labor force will be eligible for retirement and as many as 75 percent of older adults expect to work after age 70.

Any safety professional that has to deal with the seemingly constant exposure to risk from EMS and fire-rescue first responders has no doubt struggled with finding solutions. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) released recommendations detailing the 5 root causes of exposure in the field. These include:

According to a recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roadway incidents accounted for 1264 work-related fatalities in 2015. That is about one out of every four fatal work injuries in the United States, which easily makes it the top cause of work-related fatalities followed by falls (800), contact with objects and equipment (722) and violence and other injuries by persons or animals (703).   

Two recent cases highlight the importance of understanding the nuances of insurance coverages pertaining to cybercrime and liability.

Emergency rooms treat roughly a quarter of a million playground-associated injuries every year, yet the majority of these injuries are avoidable. As the amount of injuries increases, it is important for public entities to design, build and maintain playgrounds to better promote safety. Playgrounds should balance injury prevention with the desire to promote children’s ability to test their limits, build muscle, gain confidence and learn personal interaction.

Some public entities may not have any or enough loss control (LC) experts to help them eliminate or reduce the losses that arise from unsafe acts and conditions. The public entity leaders may believe that they cannot afford an LC expert, even though the costs of incidents that lead to claims against the public entity are usually many times the cost of an in-house or contract LC expert. 

You are now assigned safety and risk management duties for your organization. Now what? Where do you start? Fundamentally, the past is one of the best indicators of the future. Therefore, it is best to get a snapshot of what the lack of safety and ineffective risk management has produced in the form of losses or claims. For risk control plan building purposes, it is recommended to review and analyze claims data from a minimum of 48 months from the most current data. In this context, analyze means to determine which categories of claims are the most frequent and/or severe.