Workplace injuries are something that no business wants to deal with and certainly not experience in their lifetime. As an insurance agent, you know all the benefits of a stop gap liability policy. However, it’s in your clients’ best interests to prevent situations that lead to filing a claim in the first place. Safety doesn’t just lower insurance costs — it helps businesses retain employees and maintain their reputations.
Ways to Prevent Workplace Injuries
Keeping the workplace accident-free is an ongoing responsibility, but your clients can start with these five tips.
Get a Stop Gap Liability Policy
Getting hurt at work can cause employees financial stress, physical pain, and emotional distress. If the injury was avoidable, that compounds the suffering and makes employers vulnerable to lawsuits.
While the best solution is prevention, businesses must prepare for worst-case scenarios. Comprehensive stop gap liability insurance ensures a single lawsuit can’t bring down a company and leave others without jobs.
Have Enough Staff for Business Needs
Cutting overhead costs is a common approach to increasing profit margins. For many businesses, that means fewer employees on one shift. However, having adequate staff is critical to preventing workplace injuries.
As an agent, you can talk to clients about the stress low staffing levels put on employees. They may cut corners in attempts to meet unrealistic quotas or skip mandated tests and cleaning because there’s not enough time to do everything. If someone gets hurt, and an investigation finds that corporate created an environment that valued money over safety, the company could face severe penalties.
Keep Things Neat
Talk to your clients about the risks of cluttered and unsanitary workspaces and how they set the scene for accidents. Untidy spaces can be hazardous if hazardous materials or heavy machinery are involved. If you have tips on how to motivate staff to stay organized, share them.
Create a Safety Guide and Training
Helping clients prevent workplace injuries isn’t always easy. Moreover, there are plenty of resources for companies looking to prioritize safety, including government entities and nonprofits. Many provide health and safety tips for specific industries; these can serve as outlines for customized internal documents. Enterprises can even hire specialized third parties to audit procedures, evaluate the workspace and recommend changes.
Employees also need training under the official health and safety policies. Then, managers must enforce the guidelines, or the staff won’t take them seriously.
Avoid Negligence and Filing a Stop Gap Liability Claim
While corporations understand they have a duty of care for their workers, fulfilling that responsibility can get lost in the day-to-day details. Supervisors and middle-management employees may get caught up in meeting metrics and making a profit, especially if that language gets handed down from higher-ups.
As an insurance agent, you can point out that business owners set priorities for those on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder. While stop gap liability policies can save companies from paying settlements out-of-pocket, they can’t replace lost lives or make up for suffering. Business leaders must make safety a part of company culture, or attempts to curb workplace injuries will fall by the wayside.
About World Wide Specialty Programs
For the last 50 years, World Wide Specialty Programs has dedicated itself to providing the optimal products and solutions for the staffing industry. As the only insurance firm to be an ASA commercial liability partner, we are committed to that partnership and committed to using our knowledge of the industry to provide staffing firms with the best possible coverage. For more information about Staffing Professional Liability Insurance or any other coverage, we have available to protect your staffing business, give us a call at (877) 256-0468 to speak with one of our representatives.