For two decades employers have sought to rein in the cost of Worker's Compensation claims. Most of these efforts have focused on "traditional" safety and prevention in areas such as employee training, job rotation, exercise programs and improvements in workplace ergonomics. But why, despite such efforts, do many employers remain unsuccessful in reducing - or even controlling - their costs of insuring workers against on-the-job injury?

The answer is that in many cases, safety and workplace hazards are no longer the true cause of Worker's Compensation claims. Instead, most of today's costs are the result of cultural influences originating outside the workplace. And the strongest of these cultural influences can be categorized as either personal or societal.

Personal Influences
Most employers now acknowledge that employee attitudes and behavior are driven by a complex set of at-work and outside-of-work factors. Cultural changes have transformed the nature of "personal problems," created as employees attempt to manage the work/life balancing act so common in today's single-parent and dual-career households.

Not surprisingly, the added pressures of today's more complex lifestyles have been accompanied by a rise in alcohol and drug abuse, psychological disorders, financial difficulties, and marital/family discord. Based on personal experience with Worker's Compensation case analyses, these behaviors and resulting circumstances are present in four out of every five serious claims.

Societal Influences
Worker's Compensation was originally designed to provide prompt and reasonable income and medical benefits to work-accident victims. A mandatory, state-regulated system, its objectives are to encourage employers to focus on safety and rehabilitation, to promote prevention (rather than finding fault), and to relieve public and private sources of the financial responsibility for work-accident victims and their families.

A comprehensive source of medical, disability, occupational and rehabilitation benefits, Worker's Compensation has come to be viewed by a growing segment of society as an entitlement - a viewpoint often encouraged by the media, legal and medical communities, labor organizations and regulatory agencies. In some cases these groups openly advocate and promote use of the Worker's Compensation system. In other cases, employees and employers are conditioned to believe that workplace exposure is automatically the cause of specific illnesses or injuries. This is uniquely the case in repetitive motion disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, and epicondylitis. When illness or injuries do occur, these groups often impede initiatives to return the employee to work.

Getting Costs Under Control
Together, personal and societal influences combine to complicate Worker's Compensation claims in a way that cannot be addressed through traditional loss prevention strategies. Controlling costs requires unique initiatives in areas such as prevention, injury assessment, disability/medical management, return-to-

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work programs, claims administration and communication.

An in-depth analysis - which is a Worker's Compensation Needs Assessment - reviews an employer's culture and Worker's Compensation claims activity and can be a first step in determining the factors driving increased claims. With the help of this analysis, appropriate strategies and systems can then be developed to better manage the process. Here the objective is to enhance communication and administration between an employer and their insurance carrier or third-party administrator. Once systems are in place, monitoring of Worker's Compensation activity is recommended on an ongoing basis. This helps in identifying and addressing problems early in the process and prevents acceptance of inappropriate claims. •

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