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The direct costs of workplace injuries – workers’ compensation costs – are fairly easy to quantify. After all, you know how much your workers’ comp premiums increase in response to claims and how much you pay out when those claims are filed, including medical expenses and wage replacement. Many business owners are surprised to hear that, as substantial as those workers’ compensation costs are, they amount to just a fraction of the total costs associated with on-the-job injuries.

1. It’s complicated
2. It’s expensive
3. We’ll get sued!
4. It slows down the hiring process

It’s Complicated

Despite what you may have heard, pre employment physical abilities testing isn’t complicated at all. Sure, the science behind developing a safe, accurate and legally defensible screening protocol is deep and wide, consisting of time-and-motion studies, intricate algorithms, and peer-reviewed research. But that’s not the issue; if you want to know what time it is, nobody needs to tell you how to build a watch. From the employer’s perspective, there are really only 3 steps to putting a program into place:

New technologies are developed at a feverish pace in today’s world, and business technology is no exception. Among the areas in which technological solutions are advancing rapidly is workplace safety. Given the ever-growing workers’ comp costs faced by companies today, new, more effective tools for reducing injuries are certainly welcome. Here’s a quick overview of some of the latest technology designed to help you decrease on-the-job injuries and improve workplace safety.

Controlling workers’ compensation costs is always important to the profitability of businesses, and it becomes more important every year as those costs rise. According to OSHA estimates, employers are paying out nearly $1 billion per week in direct workers’ compensation costs today. In 2013 and 2014, the median cost of claims open for more than 7 days was $34,516, according to figures collected from 16 states. Unfortunately, those startling direct costs aren’t the whole story. Indirect costs of those workplace injuries are even higher – anywhere from 1.1 to 4.5 times higher – than direct costs, according to OSHA.

If you are an employer interested in bringing a pre hire physical abilities testing program into your workplace, ensuring that testing is as cost effective as possible is a priority. What do you need to know to make that happen? When it comes to developing a testing program for your company, there are four crucial steps that can help maximize cost-effectiveness.

If you’re in the transportation industry, there is no doubt that safety is a priority for your business. As tightly regulated as the industry is, you’re probably already doing plenty of pre employment testing. However, moving your company into the top 24 percent means going a bit beyond the mandatory testing required by regulators. So just what “top 24 percent” are we talking about, and what exactly do transportation companies have to do to be part of it? It’s all about safety and productivity – which benefits your bottom line – and how physical abilities testing can help you get there.

Interviews, work history, and references don’t always make it easy to tell whether or not a person can handle a physically demanding job. And if a mistake gets made, that new hire will be at risk for injury. Even if injuries don’t happen, candidates who are poorly matched to the job aren’t likely to stick with it, leaving employers looking for yet another replacement in short order. Pre employment Physical Abilities Testing can change all that. So when is the best time in the hiring cycle to have candidates tested to enable better decisions?

As national providers of physical abilities testing, we occasionally get the panicked phone call or email from one of our employer clients asking us what we know about a particular lawsuit or legal case they just read about on the internet. Frankly, I’m glad our clients stay on top of the latest information. In an age of information overload it’s difficult for any single organization to keep up with it all.

When minor worker injuries occur on the job, first aid is typically rendered. However, under OSHA regulations, there is a fine line between what is considered first aid and what OSHA labels medical treatment. Knowing exactly where that line is matters to employers in terms of staying in compliance with OSHA workplace regulations, most specifically the agency’s recordkeeping regulation contained in 29 CFR 1904, “Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses.”