Small businesses are among the most vulnerable organizations to the trend of rising health care costs in America.
Since 2000, health care costs have increased almost 60%. For the same time period, the increase in inflation and in workers salaries� was nowhere near the increase in employers� health care costs. Small businesses (businesses with fewer than 24 employees) saw a larger increase in health care costs than all the others. As a result, the number of small businesses providing health insurance to their employees is on the decline.
What This Means to Ergonomics and Workplace Safety
Companies tend to view investments in preventative programs as another expense. But if you take another look at all the components, you may find that the ROI (return on investment) of hiring an ergonomic training program for your company exceeds the costs. In fact, researchers at Brigham Young found that prevention programs resulted in a $16 saving for every $1 invested.
ROI or Return on Investment is dependent upon 2 things:
- Worker's Compensation costs .
- Worker's Compensation costs are on the rise. This is due to increased:
- medical care costs for those cases where the employee lost more than 7 days of work.
- expenses per claim incurred for delivering benefits to the injured employee.
- growth in indemnity benefits (lost wages paid to injured employees) per claim.
- Unlike larger corporations who self insure, small businesses have the expense of Worker's Compensation premiums. Premiums rise according to the risks estimated by the insurer. Often those risks are determined by the number of injuries from previous years.
- Another trend we are seeing is that it is harder for a workplace injury to �qualify� as a claim. For example, in Missouri, a new law has been passed that changes the wording describing the role of the workplace when determining what an injury is and what it is not. Previously the workplace was a �substantial factor� in causing the injury. Now it is a �prevailing factor�. My guess is that this will limit the number of RSI claims paid by Worker�s Compensation to small businesses.
- Lost Work Days
- The study by Brigham Young University estimated that lost worker days cost employers between $100 and $500 per employee per year. The researchers estimate that lost days represents between 2.5% and 4.5% of the cost for salaries.
- Workplace injuries due to sustained periods of typing had the most lost days of almost any category of injury, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Typing injuries resulted in a mean of 22 days away from work, per injury.
The Ergonomic Training Decision
You do the math. It may be that hiring an ergonomic specialist is, overall, the least expensive way to contain the costs of workplace safety for your business. In a future article, I will explore what a good training program consists of, and will interview an executive from a professional company.
