ACCIDENT$ WAITING TO HAPPEN

A debut guidebook for corporate decision-makers seeking to increase the efficiency of their workers’ compensation programs.

Using a comprehensive approach, the author, an insurance professional, looks at how executives can cut their insurance costs by addressing a wide range of factors, including risk factor calculations and employee relationships. The book offers a blend of overviews, examples and case studies to reinforce the author’s money-saving advice. He repeatedly encourages executives to account for indirect costs—such as lower productivity, administrative expenses and employee training—that often dwarf a company’s total insurance and settlement payments. To reduce costs at all levels, the author recommends that companies focus on four key moments: before hiring a new employee, after making an offer of employment, before problems arise and after the employee files a workers’ compensation claim. The book encourages companies to hire ethical employees and provide them with the training they need to do their jobs safely and to reduce expensive processing errors by maintaining active relationships with insurance providers and ensuring that all information is accurate and current. The author also includes other industry professionals’ perspectives from article reprints and original interviews. Although the book provides apparently solid information, it sometimes feels like a sales pitch, as it contains frequent references to metrics and services provided by the author’s company and an offer, displayed prominently on the cover, of a free consultation with purchase. Readers also have to accept certain style quirks—particularly the use of unnecessary quotation marks (“if you have gone through a ‘risk survey’ ”; “to the best of ‘his’ knowledge”; “using a ‘best guess’ ”). Overall, however, the book conveys a large amount of information in a compact text, and professionals will likely find it useful. A solid overview of techniques that can help companies save money on workers’ compensation and related expenses.