Following our post from last week regarding best practices for charter schools and remaining accident-free, here is the second part of the discussion on implementing solid safety procedures and a solid return-to-work program.

Employee Communication

As part of the study done by the Ohio Workers Compensation Board, it was noted that every school that could avoid or reduce their worker’s compensation claims stressed the importance of safety education and training.

Here are a few items your school can implement to make your training more effective:

• Implement an effective new employee orientation process
• Conduct employee in-service training
• Provide job-specific training to all employees

Interestingly, many schools noted that training provided by an outside source is more credible and, therefore, has a more significant impact.

Injury reporting and treatment

First, formalize the injury reporting and treatment process. Document it in writing. Then ensure it is well communicated and understood by all employees within your school. And
Ensure injured employees report all injuries to their supervisor, no matter how minor.

Best Practices for Schools

• Consider specifying your policy’s time frame for reporting injuries (within 24 hours).
• Provide the necessary contact names and phone numbers to allow for this communication.
• Ensure the injured employee receives proper medical treatment. We recommend you take the following steps:
  • Establish a list (network) of preferred medical providers in your area
  • Visit those providers and discuss treatment protocol and communication procedures
  • Invite providers to tour your facilities to familiarize them with your operations;
  • Develop written job descriptions that include physical demands analysis and provide copies to the medical providers to assist them with return-to-work orders.

While your employee recovers from their injury, maintain close contact with the injured compensation process. Provide the injured worker with information and answer their questions. Remind the injured worker of your interest to get them back to work as soon as possible. Hold the wounded employee accountable to provide appropriate medical forms and information.

Following an accident, immediately conduct an accident analysis (investigation). Identify the person responsible for completing accident analyses. s immediate supervisor, the safety coordinator, member(s) of the safety committee, or a combination of these people conduct accident analyses. Ensure the accident report form includes accident causation analysis and corrective action.   It is critical to learn how and why the accident occurred and make the necessary changes to prevent the recurrence of a similar accident. Also, consider having an accident-review team (can be a safety committee) review all calamities for the following elements:

• Accident reports are filled out completely and in a timely fashion
• Corrective action specified, assigned, and completed
• compensation process.
• Provide at least one well-equipped accident-analysis kit for each facility.

Return to work/transitional work.

A solid return-to-work program is essential to reducing claims and workers’ compensation premiums.

Benefits of transitional work include:

• The employee earns total wages, retains all uses, and earns service credits
• The school gets a productive worker, can take advantage of the injured employee’s experience, can use injured employees as trainers for substitutes or replacement workers,
  and saves workers’ compensation costs.
• Returning an injured worker to the job as soon as safely possible before the worker is 100 compensation costs.
• A transitional work program uses actual job duties for a specified period to gradually return the injured worker to the worker’s original job.