The Rhode Island Automobile Dealers Association formed a self-insured safety group in the early 1990s in response to the rising cost of workers’ compensation insurance.
“We had a real crisis in the state for workers’ comp,” said Jack Perkins, executive vice president of the association. “Carriers were leaving, which left everyone going into the high-risk pool. … Costs were very high, and no matter how hard our members worked to reduce injuries, they still saw their costs going up – even if they had no injuries.”
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Because the self-insured group was retaining the risk, safety became an even higher priority.
“We did a lot of training,” Perkins said. “We trained dealerships on maintaining safe work sites, and we identified where the most frequent accidents would occur, what type of accidents they were and how to prevent them. We also trained them on how to help their employees recover and return to work, if they had a claim.”
The independent groups soon realized that, by forming groups within certain industries, it was easier to track and prevent common injuries.
“With a group, you can see trends and get proactive to minimize the exposure there,” Perkins said. “A large insurer may not be able to determine trends, when you’ve got thousands of companies, but it’s a lot more efficient to look at them as one group.”
The Beacon Mutual Insurance Co. agreed, and in the mid-1990s, started using safety groups to its own benefit. The company examined patterns and increased safety awareness by tying required safety classes to group membership.
“With safety groups, we can look at the pattern of claims from the group and see patterns of injuries quickly. Then, we can design control programs for that group,” said Jeff Johnson, a spokesman for Beacon Mutual.
“With the auto dealers, we saw a pattern of lifting claims early in the morning. They’d be lifting their 100-pound toolbox, but no one would warm up. They would just have their coffee and start the day. So we started a stretching program. You find out from the claims which muscles are being strained, and you stretch those muscles.”
In the case of the auto dealers’ association, which now gets its insurance through Beacon Mutual, another pattern was eye injuries.
“We see all sorts of injuries, but there are certain things like the eyes that we see in the [dealers’] service departments,” Perkins said. “We see that things fall off the underside of cars, so there’s a series of things you can do to prevent that. We have workshops where [employees] come and get training. It’s a constant reminder to folks that you need to continue to pay attention.”
Though some groups do get discounts simply from being in a group, many times the larger savings come from working together to reduce accidents. If claims are reduced, the group members can lower their premiums and, in some loss-sensitive programs, even get a dividend after the fact.
“With some of our loss-sensitive programs, if their loss-prevention has paid off, then they get a dividend or shared earnings,” Johnson said.
In addition to examining the pattern of claims and highlighting the problem areas, groups are able to work together to find solutions.
“Groups allow the sharing of ideas, so you can develop the best practice,” said Christopher Benson, senior loss-prevention consultant at Beacon Mutual. “Whether it’s involving safety or ergonomics, you can bring that best practice to the table.”
Sometimes the groups also, not so subtly, encourage their members to comply with safety requirements.
“We’re trying to keep employees from getting injured, so they keep coming to work and being productive,” Perkins said. “The companies that are in our program need to demonstrate a commitment to safe workplaces. They need to attend workshops, they need to file claims in an efficient manner, and they need to provide their employees who do get hurt with the ability to come back, even if it is in a limited capacity. We monitor those activities.”
