Can Your Workers’ Compensation Carrier Manage Your OSHA Compliance Requirements?

By Angelo Ganguzza, Vice President & General Manager – Brokerage Operations

We routinely hear companies, and their insurance brokers tell us that their current insurance company, or workers’ compensation carrier is managing all their OSHA compliance requirements. This is a very common and dangerous misconception which puts companies and their employees in harm’s way.

The fact is that it is impossible for any workers’ compensation carrier to manage OSHA compliance for any given policyholder.

Here’s why:

• No Mandate for Compliance: Your insurance company and workers’ compensation carrier have no legal or other mandate for managing policyholder’s OSHA compliance, period.
• One Inspection per Year: They’re only obligated to inspect your company one time per year.
• Inspection Recommendations are often “Loss Control” Related, NOT OSHA Compliance Related: OSHA requirements are set by federal statute, standards, and regulations. The inspection and loss reports from insurance carriers focus more on controlling their own potential losses, not on your company’s OSHA compliance. The report will likely include some health and safety-related findings, but it’s not advisable to assume that the inspection has identified all, or even most, of these hazards.
• Lacks Time & Resources to Manage Your OSHA Compliance: Your workers’ compensation “loss control” agent typically has a book of thousands of other clients, and a geographic territory of hundreds or even thousands of square miles, so they do not have the time nor resources to focus on your company. These bandwidth challenges make it impossible to manage any policyholder’s OSHA compliance.
• Only Offer Generic On-Line Resources: Most carriers only offer generic health and safety resources that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the specific risks and hazards at your company. It is the up to the policyholder to figure out which resources apply to their operations, and then customize them to meet their own operational risks.
• Company Representative Must Utilize & Manage Resources: Someone at your company must sift through these generic resources to find those that apply to their operations. It then must be updated and customized to address the company’s specific health and safety hazards to be implemented by the organization. The fact is that very few companies are able to successfully do this.

An insurance company and workers’ compensation carrier cannot manage your OSHA health and safety compliance requirements. Companies who assume this potentially put themselves at serious risk for employee injuries and accidents, and huge regulatory fines and penalties.