What to do when an employee is hurt at work

Under federal rules, you have 8 hours to tell the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) about a work-related death, and 24 hours to report an in-patient hospitalization, an amputation or the loss of an eye. Those are the hard deadlines. Everything else runs on your state’s clock and your insurer’s, and the right move for both is the same: get the employee care, then report the injury to your workers’ compensation insurer that same day, however small it looks.

After that, the job is records, a call to check on your employee and a plan for getting them back. The paperwork has deadlines, and most of them belong to your state.

First, get them care

1. Call 911 for anything serious: a fall from height, a head injury, heavy bleeding, a large burn, chest pain or someone who can’t move.
2. Give first aid within your training for minor injuries, like a small razor cut at a salon or a minor kitchen burn.
3. Make the area safe. Shut off the machine, unplug the fryer, block off the ladder or the spill.
4. Send them to a doctor if it needs more than first aid. Ask your insurer whether your state has rules about where an injured worker should be treated.
5. Tell the employee what happens next: that you’re reporting it, that workers’ comp exists to pay for work injuries and who to call with questions.

Report it today, even the small ones

Call or file with your workers’ comp insurer the same day if you can, and don’t sort injuries into “real” ones and “minor” ones first. Most small injuries stay small, but a sore back from lifting stock can become six weeks off work, a small burn can get infected, and the report you made on day one is what lets the insurer connect the later claim to the original incident without a fight. Call anyway.

Have these ready when you call:

• The employee’s name, job title, contact details and date of hire
• The date, time and place of the injury
• What they were doing and what happened, in plain facts
• The body part injured and the kind of injury
• Where they were treated, if they’ve been seen
• Names of anyone who saw it
• Whether they’ve missed work or will

Workers’ comp typically pays for medical care and part of an employee’s lost wages for a work-related injury or illness, at the benefit levels your state sets. With Corgi, one claims specialist handles the claim from the first call until it’s closed, and how to file a business insurance claim covers the steps that apply to any claim.

Why paying it yourself rarely saves money

The usual reason owners skip the report is the premium. They’ve heard that claims raise the experience modification rateExperience modification rateAn experience modification rate (EMR) is a workers’ comp factor that raises or lowers your premium by comparing your past claims with those of similar businesses.Read the definition, the multiplier that adjusts your workers’ comp premium up or down based on your own losses, so a small burn or a few stitches gets paid in cash to keep it off the record.

That’s partly true, but the math is worse than it looks. The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), which calculates mods in the states that use its experience rating plan, says that in most of those states the mod counts only 30% of a medical-only claim.

In plain English, the kind of small injury owners most often hide, one that needs a doctor but no time off, is the kind the formula already discounts the most, and NCCI says the adjustment lowers the incentive to pay medical-only claims without reporting them. Plenty of very small businesses don’t have a mod at all, either, because the plan only applies once a business’s premium reaches the eligibility point its state sets.

What the formula does weigh heavily is how often injuries happen. NCCI’s plan gives greater weight to accident frequency than to severity, on the reasoning that the cost of any one accident is partly luck, while a steady run of small ones points to something about the workplace. So the real lever on your mod is fewer injuries, and a cash payment leaves the count exactly where it was while taking the insurer out of a claim that may not stay small.

And it often doesn’t stay small. If the burn needs a second visit, or the back strain turns into physical therapy, you’re now explaining a late report, and depending on your state, you may also have missed a filing deadline, and how workers’ comp premiums are calculated has more on how the mod works.

Your state’s rules come first

Workers’ comp is run by the states, and each one sets its own rules: how soon an employee must tell you about an injury, how soon you or your insurer must report it to the state, which forms to use, which injuries count and how benefits are paid. Don’t rely on a rule you heard about from an owner in another state. Look it up.

Find your state’s agency on the federal Department of Labor’s list of state workers’ compensation officials and read its reporting page. Then ask your insurer three things on the first call: who files the first report of injury with the state, you or them; what the state’s deadline is and when it starts; and whether your state lets you or the employee choose the treating doctor. Write the answers in the claim folder, because you’ll want them again the next time someone gets hurt.

Does this one need a call to OSHA?

Probably not, for most injuries. But separately from workers’ comp, federal OSHA rules require every covered employer to report the most serious ones, no matter how small the business.

The details decide most borderline cases:

• A death is reportable if it happens within 30 days of the work incident. A hospitalization, amputation or eye loss is reportable if it happens within 24 hours of the incident.
• The clock starts when the event is reported to you or to any of your agents. A foreman running a crew for you may count as one, so the hours can be ticking before the news reaches your phone.
• Emergency room treatment alone doesn’t count. OSHA’s own answer is that the worker must be formally admitted to the hospital’s in-patient service, and a stay only for observation or tests doesn’t count either.
• Some incidents are excluded, such as a motor vehicle crash on a public road outside a construction work zone, or an incident on a commercial airplane, train, subway or bus.

You can report by calling your nearest OSHA area office, calling OSHA’s 24-hour line at 1-800-321-6742 or using the online form on OSHA’s page for reporting a fatality or severe injury. OSHA doesn’t take these reports by voicemail, fax or email.

Some states run their own OSHA-approved state plans, which must be at least as effective as federal OSHA, so if yours does, check its reporting rules too.

OSHA’s injury log, if you have to keep one

Say an auto shop had eight employees all last year, and a tech is admitted to the hospital after a fall: the shop still calls OSHA within 24 hours. But it generally doesn’t have to keep OSHA’s injury log at all. That’s the split between the two duties. The log has a partial exemption: if your business had 10 or fewer employees at all times during the last calendar year, you generally don’t have to keep OSHA’s injury and illness records unless OSHA or the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells you in writing. Some lower-hazard industries are partly exempt whatever their size.

If you do keep them, each recordable injury or illness goes on the OSHA 300 Log and a 301 Incident Report (or an equivalent form) within seven calendar days of learning about it. OSHA allows an insurance claim form in place of the 301 if it carries the same information, which is what many employers use, and OSHA’s recordkeeping page explains who’s covered and links the forms.

Don’t make reporting hard

You need a reasonable way for employees to report work injuries, and you have to tell them they have the right to report and that you won’t retaliate. OSHA’s rule goes further than most owners expect: a procedure that would deter or discourage a reasonable employee from reporting isn’t reasonable, which puts pressure tactics and quiet hints out of bounds. Take that literally.

So tell every new hire how and to whom to report, thank people when they report small things, and don’t tie bonuses or prizes to “zero injuries” in a way that makes staying quiet the smart move. You’d much prefer to hear about the sore wrist on Monday than about the surgery in March.

Getting them back to work

1. Stay in touch. Call in the first few days, then keep calling. Silence from the boss is easy to read as blame.
2. Get the doctor’s restrictions in writing, like no lifting over a set weight or no standing for long stretches.
3. Look for modified or light duty that fits. A mechanic with a hand injury might handle check-in and estimates. A stock worker with a back strain might work the register. A stylist with a wrist strain might take bookings. Whatever you offer has to fit the doctor’s restrictions, though, even on a short-staffed week.
4. Tell your insurer when they return and about any change to their hours or pay, since light duty can affect wage benefits and the rules vary by state.
5. Fix the cause. A new mat, a better ladder or a two-person lift rule.

Keep it all in one folder. The notes, photos, claim number, state forms, any OSHA report and the doctor’s restrictions belong there, with a log of every call. NCCI’s plan also builds in a reason to care about the return date: it says the plan rewards helping injured employees back to work as soon as reasonably possible, because an employer who stays involved can reduce what a loss costs once it has happened.