The survey results were released at the annual Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc. annual conference last month.

The level of concern for worker injuries “did not really differ by type of business or area of the country that was surveyed,” said Pamela Rippens, senior vice president and director of field operations for Specialty Risk Services, the Hartfords third-party claims administrator. “However, employers with more employees tended to be more likely to be concerned.”

She added that the level of concern isnt surprising, based on the fact that 54 percent said they had worker injuries in the last three years.

Seventy-three percent of businessesabout the same number that are worried about workplace injurieshave return-to-work policies, offering alternative assignments to employees injured on the job who cannot perform their normal duties, she said.

Ms. Rippens said that about a third of these companies said their policies were formal in nature and two-thirds said the policies were informal. Formal policies were much more likely in employer groups with 50 or more employees, she said.

A factor essential to the return-to-work process, she said, is “early, consistent and ongoing” communications. “Every party–the employer, the claim payer, nurse case managers, physicians, injured workers–must be part of the communications circle in order to insure a successful return to work and ultimately lower claim costs,” she noted.

Employees play an important role in the process as well, she said.

First, she said, employees need to report injuries in a timely manner.

About 64 percent of businesses surveyed said they felt their employees didnt report injuries because they assumed they werent serious enough. One in 10 didnt report because of fear of either needing to seek legal counsel to help with the process or of being fired, Ms. Rippens said.

Employees also need to tell their employer what their return-to-work status is. “They have to make it known to their employer whether they can work in some capacity or not,” she said.

If they can work in some capacity, they have to articulate their work restrictions, she said.

The employers role, she explained, is to communicate the employees value and that a job he or she can perform will be available.

She added that the transitional duty should be something meaningful and useful, and that it is important for the employee to be around other people.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, May 12, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.