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Contact Us
Foundation Insurance Group
803 West Broad Street
Suite 500
Falls Church, VA 22046
703-988-3750 (phone)
800-203-2811 (toll free)
www.foundationinsurancegroup.com
info@figva.com
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 Making Your Company Culture a Culture of Safety: Part 2
Last issue, we talked about the Aluminum Company of America, or Alcoa, and how former CEO Paul O'Neill quintupled profits by aggressively tackling safety issues, making safety - and communication about safety throughout all levels of the company - a central part of its culture. The lesson we can all learn from Alcoa is that, when you create changes in the culture of a company to make it safer, you also make it more efficient, cohesive, innovative, and ultimately more profitable.
Your company doesn't have to be as big as Alcoa to apply that lesson. Here are some tips for making safety an integral facet of your company's culture:
- Make it clear that safety is important, and incorporate safety into every discussion.
- Take a scientific approach: analyze what factors are associated with higher rates of injury (for example, Alcoa found that workers on 16 hour shifts were more likely to get hurt) and implement appropriate changes (workers on overtime at Alcoa are now placed in less strenuous and dangerous roles).
- Create a safety protocol that gives clear guidelines to put everyone on the same page, and create a systematic method - like an audit - for gauging how well each part of your company follows that protocol.
- Open channels of communication throughout all levels of your company, so leadership is approachable, and responsive to concerns about safety.
- Encourage employees at all levels to speak up when they see a coworker doing something dangerous - and to praise a coworker for being safe.
- Instead of punishing individuals responsible for an accident, work with them to prevent that kind of accident in the future.
The most important part of creating a culture of safety is making safety part of company culture - rather than a flash-in-the-pan program. By integrating changes like these into the company as a whole, you can pave the way for bigger changes - ones that promote unity, creativity, efficiency, and profitability. When workers feel comfortable speaking up about safety concerns, they'll also start to feel comfortable offering ideas that might not have occurred to management, but that make production more efficient - and when management is more involved in the hands-on activities of workers, they might come up with their own ideas, too.
A truly successful culture of safety is also a culture of communication and innovation - the kind of company culture everyone should strive for.
And of course, when you make your business safer for your employees, the lower premiums on workers' comp insurance won't hurt, either.
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ACA Business Enrollment Promises Helpful Efficiencies
For Small Businesses, the Healthcare Portal Delay Means More Paperwork Now, But Pending Advantages in 2015
Since the priority no  w is to make the healthcare.gov enrollment portal work for individuals & families, the roll out of the businesses portal has been has been officially delayed until 2015.
While employers are currently able to use the website to gather information and browse various plan options, 96% of American businesses--those employing fewer than 50 full-time workers--will have to put up with the hassle of filling out enrollment forms manually until the convenience of online access becomes available in November of 2015.
But perhaps the wait will be worth it. By the time the small business marketplace does go live, the Department of Health and Human Services plans to include a robust array of features including premium aggregation services, which allow employers to submit a single check each month for their portion of healthcare costs, regardless of how many different plans their employees are on. The technology will also allow employees to choose their own plans instead of requiring the employers to handle all the coordination, as they're now obliged to.
The Obama administration recognizes the valuable role brokers will play in helping businesses get the most out of the new healthcare program. Employers and employees, therefore, stand to benefit considerably by working with knowledgeable brokers who have the understanding and insight to guide them through the process and help them choose the best options for their particular situation, rather than attempting to determine their needs and how to implement them.
Furthermore, once all components of the exchange are complete, brokers will still be the experts that businesses turn to for assistance in dealing with health insurance. As Jessica Waltman of the National Association of Health Underwriters recently explained, "When you go to an agent or broker to buy your coverage, then you're going to them for the whole year; it's not just for enrollment purposes...When you...have a claim, if you lose your card, if you have a problem, if something isn't covered that you thought was covered--all those things you can go back to the broker, and then it's their job to solve that problem for you."
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Employee or Independent Contractor? Knowing - and Proving - the Difference
About 10 million Americans, or 7.4% of the workforce, are independent contractors...supposedly. Last December alone, an estimated 30% of all companies claiming to use independent contractors were actually misclassifying employees.
That's a lot of misclassification, with very real consequences. Misclassified workers miss out on benefits, unemployment insurance, lower taxes, and other perks of being an employee. Misclassification also costs the U.S. government $2.72 billion a year, so it's no surprise that employment tax agencies, the IRS, Workers' Compensation, and state governments are all paying more attention to the issue.
The U.S. Department of Labor recently announced that, in the last two years alone, it has collected over $18 million in back wages for some 19 thousand misclassified employees, a 97% increase from previous years. When you add those back wages to the fines and penalties for misclassifying employees, and the costs of a potential civil or even criminal case, the total damage is pretty significant.
Of course, using independent contractors is often a good strategy for a lot of businesses, and there's certainly nothing wrong with legitimately using them. The key is making sure your independent contractor isn't really an employee--and being able to prove it.
The line between an independent contractor and an employee can be fuzzy, but the government uses a few key factors to decide that a worker is an independent contractor, based on the idea that an independent contractor is independent, financially and behaviorally.
A worker is an independent contractor if they:
- Get paid for each job (with a defined scope and concrete milestones to decide when a job is "done"), rather than receive a salary.
- Offer their services to the public, and are free to work for more than one company.
- Cover their own expenses (or have a negotiated, written reimbursement agreement).
- Don't receive training or detailed instructions for how work should be done.
- Don't receive employee benefits like health insurance.
- Can't quit or be fired at will - but can decide not to agree to the next job (or the company can decide not to offer that next job).
The great thing about these factors is that they can, potentially, be very easy to prove--as long as you have the foresight to put that proof together. The government loves documentation, and all of these factors listed above can be documented. If your company uses independent contractors, strengthen the case that they really are independent contractors by using written contracts.
If a worker has a contract, saying that they will do a job to completion (with a set scope of what that job is), be paid for that job, with a travel or reimbursement rate also written out (if you plan on reimbursing), then that worker will look like an independent contractor.
If, on the other hand, there is an agreement that the worker can't do jobs for other companies, can be fired if performance is unsatisfactory, will receive equipment or reimbursement, and/or will receive benefits--that's an employee. If training took place, or overly-detailed instructions were given, that's an employee. And, if the worker only works at one company, without the time or freedom to put any completed jobs on record elsewhere: employee.
The overarching impression left by all of the factors taken together is that the worker is more independent, or more under the control of the company. The more hard evidence you have showing that independence, the better. A huge proportion of businesses, from small moving companies to huge multinational corporations, use independent contractors, because that kind of flexible worker is often the best way to go for particular kinds of jobs - and most of those companies correctly classify, and document, those workers' independent status. But with tax agencies, labor organizations, and state governments coming down harder than ever to sniff out worker misclassification, it's better to be safe than sorry.
   
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All content © 2014 Professional Marketing Associates, Inc. This newsletter is not intended to provide specific legal or insurance advice. Please consult your individual agent for further information on the topics covered.
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