Have you noticed a decrease in profits due to injuries on your work sites? Or, if you haven’t had any injuries yet, would you like to have a plan in place for when you inevitably do in the future? As a pole barn or steel building contractor, a risk of injury is part of the job for your employees.
Workers’ compensation insurance will protect you and your employees by covering medical bills and a portion of their lost wages due to injury on the job. Even though those aspects will be covered, there are many other costs to your business when there is an injury including replacement of a worker, decreased productivity, and future litigations, to name a few.
In addition to comparing different insurance options, here are five factors you might not have thought about that will help you reign in the cost of workers’ comp for your business.
Make Sure You’re Not Paying Too Much for Insurance Premiums
Workers’ compensation insurance premiums may be higher for a pole barn or steel building business than they would be for a tech company. But check with your state to see if there are any workers’ comp insurance discounts available for your industry. For example, you might qualify for a discount in certain states if you promote a drug-free workplace.
Also, make sure your individual employees are classified appropriately with the insurance company. It’s understandable that you would need to pay more for insurance on your construction site workers, but you shouldn’t be paying the same amount for your office workers who never see a job site. Make sure your employees are classified correctly in your policy.
Start a Safety Program
Thes best way to cut the cost of injuries on the job is to avoid them in the first place. Make sure your pole barn or steel building company has an official, written safety program that is a part of your onboarding training. To keep the training fresh in your employee’s memories, it would be smart to establish someone as your “safety officer,” who is in charge of ensuring the safety protocols are being followed. Update your safety protocol and have another training after any incident on one of your jobs.
Avoid Litigations
If an employee feels like your company didn’t take care of them after an accident, they are more likely to get a lawyer involved. Avoid being sued after filing a workers’ comp claim by doing the following.
- Take the claim seriously.
- Make sure the employee gets quality, sufficient medical care.
- Ensure the employee knows that they will not lose their job.
- Stand up for your employee and advocate for them if their claim is denied by insurance.
Help Your Employees Get Back to Work Faster
Keep in regular contact with your injured employee and inquire about how well their medical care is going. Don’t pressure them to come back to work before they are ready. This could cause re-injury and future litigation. If the employee is not able to do physical work on a pole barn or steel building, they might be able to come do another job at the office. This will benefit them by providing full income during their injury, as opposed to only a portion of their income.
Focus on Safety and Leave the Contractor Financing to Us
At HFS Financial, we want you to keep employee safety as your number one priority. That’s why we partner with pole barn and steel building contractors like you and take care of quick and easy project financing. All you have to do is direct your customers to our 60-second application, and we will do the rest of the work to get 100% of the project funding up front. Remember, at HFS Financing, “You Dream It, We Finance It!”