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OSHA compliance
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Cathy Mueller David Cookson The focus of any workers’ compensation insurer’s Loss Prevention staff must be injury prevention and not OSHA compliance. Have you ever thought about that statement? Aren’t OSHA compliance and injury prevention synonymous? Not necessarily. OSHA is in the business of creating and enforcing standards and regulations designed to protect workers. The stated or unstated intent of an insurer’s loss prevention efforts is to assist policyholders by helping them eliminate or reduce exposures by acting as a resource in the development of their safety programs. Both OSHA and the insurer want to get to the same place: an injury- and incident-free workplace. What should not be overlooked in the insurer’s efforts is, first and foremost, to advance its policyholders’ loss prevention programs thereby protecting the premium or, on a higher level, protecting the insurer’s assets. Acting as a resource in guiding a policyholder to develop a safety program appropriate to the organization and the insured’s exposure is the best way to accomplish zero injuries and incidents. Compliance with OSHA standards will follow when a safety program is developed and implemented. Keeping abreast of OSHA regulations is a natural concern for loss control professionals and for all employers. Unfortunately, too many policyholders fail to recognize that OSHA standards should be considered minimum requirements. Many OSHA standards address process and equipment requirements, and we should expect policyholders, at the very least, to comply with them. However, standards compliance should not be our focus. What OSHA standards fail to address is the people side of safety. Compliance doesn’t ensure safety Complying with OSHA doesn’t assure that a policyholder has established a sound safety culture. Behavior-based safety is a good example. As we have all heard, most work-related injuries are the result of unsafe acts. Employee behavior is another example of how providing an OSHA compliant workplace is no guarantee that accidents won’t occur. OSHA doesn’t regulate employee behavior. It is still the responsibility of the employer to address employee behavior as part of its overall loss prevention program. Evaluating a prospective or existing policyholder’s safety program should include determining whether the insured has a broad-spectrum loss prevention program. At a minimum, the loss prevention program should include top management commitment, a safety coordinator and written policies and procedures. A policyholder merely looking to be compliant with OSHA’s regulations may be missing obvious causes of injuries and incidents. For example, OSHA does not yet have an ergonomic standard to address the millions of musculoskeletal injuries occurring each year. To be fair, OSHA indirectly addresses all situations and conditions, including ergonomics, via the General Duty Clause. Can we really say that a policyholder has a good safety program if it is totally OSHA compliant yet doesn’t address ergonomic injuries? The policyholder can be 100 percent OSHA compliant yet have an unacceptable loss ratio and a high experience modification factor due solely to ergonomic injuries. Resistance to do more Frequently we encounter resistance from policyholders when making recommendations that are in excess of OSHA requirements. To some degree, most loss control consultants use some version of the General Duty Clause. In at least one state, Rhode Island, the workers’ compensation statute contains language that gives additional leverage to the state fund when making loss prevention recommendations, including those which are extra-regulatory. The statute states, “The failure or refusal of insured or applicant to comply with the fund’s safety requirements or to permit premises inspections to the sole satisfaction of the fund shall be sufficient grounds for having its workers’ compensation insurance coverage surcharged, not renewed, or cancelled, or an application for the coverage denied.” Finally, it’s not just about OSHA compliance and moving beyond the minimum requirements of the Code of Federal Regulations. Loss prevention consultants must be alert to the danger of addressing high experience modification factors and high loss ratios by focusing on policyholder compliance with OSHA regulations. A detailed program evaluation and loss analyses will reveal where the insurer and policyholder need to focus attention to insure premium protection. Assisting policyholders in OSHA compliance should be a consideration only when it enhances loss prevention efforts or relationships with policyholders. OSHA compliance should be an outcome of our loss prevention efforts and a service that we provide to our policyholders, not the basis for our loss prevention efforts. Contact authors Cathy Mueller
at cmueller@mem-ins.com or (573)
499-5040, and Download complete newsletter in PDF format |
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