16 Key Points You Must Include in Your Workers’ Compensation Insurance Account Servicing Instructions (asi)
Prior to implementing any workers’ compensation policy or program, make sure your corporate legal counsel does a review because terms may need to be varied or policies and programs brought into alignment to comply with different state and federal laws covering workers’ compensation.
Here is another useful and cost-savings tool. Use this 16-point Account Servicing Instruction (ASI) Checklist when implementing a workers’ compensation cost control program to gain more control of the claims and litigation process.
ASI, also called account handling instructions or special account instructions, are the instructions your insurance adjusters live by. They tell the adjusters what must be done when handling your claims. So, make sure you have input into the preparation of these instructions. Every insurance company or third-party administrator has them although the names vary.
Eleven Reasons an Employer Must Have a Medical Policy
Prior to implementing any workers’ compensation policy or program, make sure your corporate legal counsel does a review because terms may need to be varied or policies and programs brought into alignment to comply with different state and federal laws covering workers’ compensation.
A clearly defined and properly implemented medical policy is part of a comprehensive program to monitor and control workers’ compensation claims and costs. Like all policies, the terms may need to be varied to comply with different state and federal laws. Make sure to have your corporate legal counsel review any policy before implementing it.
1. Pre-Employment Medical Exam: As a condition of employment, applicants may be required to pass a mental and physical examination. This exam may include drug and/or alcohol screening. It is administered by a physician designated by the company.
10 Ways to Drive Workers’ Comp Costs Up
Prior to implementing any workers’ compensation policy or program, make sure your corporate legal counsel does a review because terms may need to be varied or policies and programs brought into alignment to comply with different state and federal laws covering workers’ compensation.
You have implemented a corporate return-to-work program but your projected workers’ compensation savings haven’t yet materialized. Supervisors are telling you they can’t get employees back to work. It may be time to examine the impact of collateral resources, often resulting in employees out on workers’ compensation receiving more income and benefits than they would have if they were working.
Many companies fail to look closely enough at their internal wage and benefits structure before embarking on programs to reduce workers’ compensation costs. There are numerous collateral income benefits and sources providing built-in disincentives to remaining injury-free or returning to work as soon as possible.
It’s the Employee! Four Attitude Types Useful in Returning Employees to Work
Prior to implementing any workers’ compensation policy or program, make sure your corporate legal counsel does a review because terms may need to be varied or policies and programs brought into alignment to comply with different state and federal laws covering workers’ compensation.
As the old saying goes, “There is more than one way to skin the cat.” Likewise, there is more than one way to return an injured employee to work. The difficult matter is matching the right return-to-work strategy to the particular worker. Considering the personality and attitude of the worker in question is as important as considering the specific injury when implementing a return-to- work solution.
Just as there are many return-to-work programs successful under given circumstances, there also is a full range of employee attitudes accompanying each case.
Employers must individualize their return-to-work approach to meet the demands of the specific employee’s personality, because the most important factor in return-to-work is the attitude of the employee.
Conflict Management in the Work Place
Conflict management in the workplace is a hot topic in the business environment today. This paper explores various techniques that can be utilized to manage conflict in the workplace.
Conflict Management in the Workplace
Introduction
Conflict management in the workplace is an issue that every leader, manager, or employee has to deal with at one time or another.
The basics of conflict management include improving communication, teamwork, and a systematic approach to solving the disagreement. This paper explores various techniques that can be utilized to manage conflict in the workplace.
Workplace Conflict Management
Conflict is defined by Hellriegel, Slocum and Woodman as “the process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party” (p. 362). Sometimes conflict that be a positive force within an organization, while at other times it is a negative force.
An example of conflict as a positive force is that the creation and resolution of conflict may lead the company to constructive problem solving. It may also lead people to search for ways of changing how they do things. The conflict resolution process can ultimately be a stimulus for positive change within an organization (Hellriegel, Slocum and Woodman, p. 364).
How to Tell a Lot About Your Mobile Home Park From the Grass
Of all the barometers of park performance, from a profit and loss statement to the annual license renewal, one of the crudest and simplest is the fine art of analyzing grass. Because you can tell a lot about a mobile home park just from looking at the grass.
The simplest first question is: “is there any grass?” If not, you may be in a desert, or under water. But if there is grass present, then here are some of the things to look for:
* Is the grass green in some areas when it’s brown everywhere else (in summer)? This may be a tell-tale sign of water and/or sewer leaks. Anything that puts moisture in the earth is going to result in healthier, greener grass. When you spot these lush oasis in an otherwise burned out park grassland, you will probably find it spongy and saturated. If the green grass is in the general line of the main (at the back of the trailer) then it may be a break in a main line. If it is near the house, it may be a break in the line that feeds just that one house. The same is true about the sewer line. A clay tile sewer system with a collapse or separation in the line will continually leak moisture and give grass a boost. When figuring out park leaks, green grass is the first place you head.
How to Get All the Leaks Out of Your Mobile Home Park Water System
Mobile home park tenants use, on average, about $30 per month of water & sewer. In some parks, however, that amount can run around $100 per occupied lot. Whenever you become suspicious that your water is running too high, here are the steps to find out where the water is going and proactively solve the problem.
Install water meters and read them.
Even if you have no interest in billing back tenants for their actual use, there is no way to track where the water is going without measuring how much tenants use. This will help you identify if your usage problems are tied to just a few tenants who abuse the system. I once had a tenant who was spending $600 per month in water. How? He sneaked into the park a large commercial construction water truck, and filled it up with his hose every night. That one tenant was the entire source of my water problem, and I found him through sub-metering.
Compare the master meter reading to the individual lot aggregate.
Once you have the individual readings, you can now add them up and see if they are the same as your master reading, from the main meter that you get your bill from. The difference between these two readings is the amount of water leaking in your system. Most parks have a small amount of leakage, so don’t demand perfection. If, however, the difference is significant (say many thousands of gallons), you have a real problem.
Employee Feedback: Your Key to Satisfied Employees
Suppose you had your choice of three meal plans for one week … which would you choose?
Plan #1: No food from Sunday morning through Saturday afternoon. But for Saturday dinner, you must eat a lavish 5-course meal.
Plan #2: Each day you can have donuts for breakfast, your choice from the company’s snack vending machine for lunch, and greasy fast food on the way home.
Plan #3: Each day, you can have a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
With Plan #1, you’ll starve. Plan #2 will leave you unhealthy and fatigued. Only with Plan #3 will you have energy and strength to work and live - and enjoy both.
Just as your body needs regular, nutritious feeding to be healthy, your employees need regular, effective feedback to reach their highest potential. Yet in the corporate environment, leaders often feed their employees on the equivalent of Plan #1 or Plan #2 …… and then wonder why they fail to perform.
8 Reasons Why Employee Feedback Backfires
Many times, leaders, managers, and executives give up on providing employee feedback because it has backfired on them. Why is that the case? Why does feedback so often backfire? Here are eight of the top causes:
1. Feedback that is indirect.
People often go the long way around the mulberry bush when it comes to giving feedback. They talk about everything except the real issue. For example, suppose that Bob’s emails to a vendor are unclear. As a result, the vendor has made mistakes in fulfillment. The manager comes to Bob:
Manager: Bob, I’m really concerned because the client is getting on us about these mistakes from our vendor. My VP has gotten calls directly about this and has insisted that we achieve a minimum accuracy rating of 95%. You need to improve your liaison skills to make sure that fulfillment runs smoothly.
4 Bad Reasons not to Give Employee Feedback
Feedback is perhaps the single most powerful tool a leader has at his or her disposal to bring about significant improvement in levels of employee engagement and performance. Ken Blanchard wisely noted that “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”
The positive outcomes of giving effective feedback are astonishing and oftentimes bring about company-wide improvements. Effective feedback can increase productivity and sales, decrease conflict, streamline business processes, uncover training needs, and improve problem-solving abilities. And that is just the beginning.
If feedback can do all that for us, why don’t more leaders use it? Here are the top four reasons I have discovered in my work with companies of all sizes. Do any apply to you?
Reason #1: “Why should I?”
The first reason, “Why should I?” is most often given when we are talking about reinforcing feedback: that is, feedback that recognizes a job well done, and seeks to encourage repeat behavior.