Risk & Business Magazine Bowen Miclette & Britt Spring 2016 | Page 6

B
M Workers Compensation
B Controlling Your Premium

BY: JEFF CRENSHAW, CRIS, CLCS, DIRECTOR OF SPECIAL PROJECTS AND CLIENT ADVOCATE, AT BOWEN, MICLETTE & BRITT

W

orkers compensation is a fact of
doing business. The purpose of
workers compensation is, of course, to
provide a basic type of insurance for
workers who are injured during their
scope of employment. This is meant
to cover lost wages and medical costs.
From the business side of things, it is
important to understand how your
workers compensation policy works,
what it covers, and how the premium is
affected. Another aspect of this is how
workers compensation claims could
affect your actual day to day business
operations moving forward. This is
too much information for one article
to handle so I will be putting this in a
series of articles handling each of these
topics in separate articles.

How Worker’s Compensation Insurance
works:
“Worker’s Comp is meant to be the
sole, exclusive remedy for work related
injuries.” This was taught to me
when I attended Hartford’s School of

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Insurance. It means exactly what it says.
When one of your worker’s is injured,
Worker’s Comp is the insurance that
will cover your employees. Each state
has separate rules that govern how
much money their Worker’s Comp
benefits will pay so it is important to
remember that if you do business in
other states, and your employees travel
to these states, your employee has the
option to choose either the benefits
of the state where they are injured or
the benefits of the state where you are
insured from. Again, different states pay
different amounts (generally speaking)
so if you do work in other states, make
sure you Worker’s Comp policy provides
coverage in those states.
Monopolistic States should also be
contemplated. Ohio, North Dakota,
Washington and Wyoming are the only
remaining monopolistic states. This
means that the rates in those state’s
coverage is provided by a “monopolistic
state” fund. In other words, the state
itself has a fund that you would

need to participate in for Worker’s
Compensation benefits. It is NOT
optional whether or not to participate
in this fund if you are doing business in
that state.
Worker’s Compensation Insurance as
described above is not truly that difficult
to understand and this was a “50,000
foot view” of Worker’s Comp. Again,
if your employee is injured, Worker’s
Comp responds to the injury. If you
don’t have Worker’s Comp insurance
in some form (including Occupational/
Accidental which we won’t be discussing
for the purpose of these articles) then
you are probably in trouble as you are
“on the hook” for the injury as well as
(depending on the state) hefty fines that
can date back to the first day you opened
your doors.
Jeff Crenshaw, CLCS, CRIS is Director of
Special Projects and Client Advocacy, and
has over 15 years experience in Insurance
and Risk Management.

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