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// // Many employers and their workers are underreporting workplace injuries and illnesses, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. Flawed safety-incentive programs and the desire to keep workers’ compensation rates low may be factors. HR leaders should stay away from programs that base safety rewards on the number of days without a reported injury.

By Andrew R. McIlvaine

An examination by the Government Accountability Office has found that many employers do not report workplace injuries and illnesses for fear of increasing their workers’ compensation costs.

The report also said many workers do not report job-related injuries because they feared being fired or disciplined, or worried that they or their coworkers might lose safety-incentive rewards such as cash or merchandise.

Additionally, the report found that half (53 percent) of health practitioners reported experiencing pressure from company officials to downplay injuries or illnesses and nearly as many (47 percent) said they were pressured to do so by workers.

Several workplace-safety experts say the GAO report corroborates what they’ve observed in the nation’s workplaces, particularly with respect to safety-incentive programs.

“It absolutely jibes with what I’ve seen,” says Joseph Paduda, a principal at Health Strategy Associates in Madison, Conn. “Many employers have set up these safety-incentive programs that essentially reward people for under-reporting injuries.”

Deb Potter of Potter & Associates, a Tulsa, Okla.-based safety consulting firm, says HR leaders should steer their organizations away from “prescriptive incentive programs” that dole out rewards based on factors such as number of days without a reported injury.”

“Most safety-incentive programs don’t work the way employers want them to,” she says. “They tend to drive reporting underground by creating negative peer pressure within the workplace around reporting injuries. People focus on getting the reward rather than the benefit of going home every day without being injured.”

Safety bonuses awarded to managers and senior leaders may also have the effect of discouraging workers from reporting injuries, says Potter.

“When leaders’ bonuses are tied to reduced injury rates, it creates a dangerous situation because employees suspect they’ll be penalized if they report an injury that results in their boss losing his or her bonus,” she says. “It creates fear within the organization, and that’s the last thing you want when you’re trying to create a safe workplace.”

Potter says a more effective strategy is to use safety incentives to reward safe behaviors rather than reward reduced injury rates.

“Tie the program to positive behaviors, such as reporting a safety hazard, correcting a co-worker who isn’t following a safety procedure, attending safety meetings and so on,” she says. “Reward behaviors that prevent injuries from occurring in the first place.”

Workplace safety can also be undermined by the “wimp” factor, says Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington.

“You’re going to have injured workers who just want to tough it out, who don’t want their boss or co-workers to think they’re a wimp, so they won’t report their injury,” he says.

There’s also a fear factor, he adds. “You also have folks who are afraid they won’t be selected for certain assignments or their careers will be negatively affected in some way if they report an injury.”

Indeed, reporting an injury can lead to immediate repercussions for many workers.

A recent survey of 4,387 low-wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York by the National Employment Law Project revealed that half (50 percent) of the workers who’d suffered workplace injuries were subjected to illegal treatment by their employers when they reported the injuries. The treatment included immediate termination, threats to call immigration authorities or instructions to not file for workers’ compensation, according to the report, titled “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers.”

“The workers most abused in such cases tend to be recent immigrants, non-native-English speakers and undocumented workers,” says Paduda. “It’s a subject that needs to be addressed not just by employers but by we as a society.”

Employers that deliberately under-report injuries in order to protect their workers’ comp insurance rates are committing fraud — fraud that will impact the entire business community, says Paduda.

“Because of this fraud, workers’ comp insurers have been assuming much greater risk than they’ve been pricing for,” he says. “This will eventually lead to a lot more audits by insurance companies of their clients and much higher rates for everyone, especially when the current ’soft market’ for workers’ comp insurance ends, which it soon will.”

It may also lead to higher rates and more audits from group health insurers due to injured or ill workers seeking treatment from their primary-care providers instead of their company’s workers’ comp provider, says Paduda.

“Group health insurers are growing more suspicious that many of the claims they’re seeing are the result of workplace injuries and will try to subrogate those claims to the parties they believe should be paying for them.”

Employers that have lower-than-average injury rates should seek an honest determination of why their rates are so low — via anonymous surveys of workers and audits by outside firms — rather than simply crediting safety-incentive programs that may be causing artificially low rates, he says.

“If your injury rates are at or below the average for your industry and yet you don’t have a best-in-class loss-prevention program in place, then something’s wrong,” says Paduda. “People have gone too far in rewarding low injury rates without establishing whether those results are actually true.”

The GAO issued several recommendations for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as a result of the report, such as requiring OSHA inspectors to interview employees when auditing company-provided injury and illness data.

It also recommended that OSHA minimize the amount of time between the date that injuries are reported and the date they’re audited by the agency, and that it provide increased training to employers to ensure they’re properly recording injuries and illnesses.

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis, who oversees OSHA, said the report’s findings underscore the need for accurate recordkeeping. “Accurate injury and illness records are vital to protect workers’ health and safety,” she said after the report was issued.

December 8, 2009

Copyright 2009© LRP Publications

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