For organizations that operate vehicle fleets, it’s important to have a formal, effective safety program. It establishes the policies and procedures that are needed to ensure a safe work environment for your employees. It can also help protect against liability for vehicle accidents – a significant exposure for most fleets – and helps control accident costs. To be effective, a formal fleet safety program should address a range of activities related to employee selection, management and training; vehicle operation; maintenance; and accident management. Although not every fleet is the same, here are some key components and best practices your program should… Read More »Fleet Safety Program
It’s time for a spring tune-up of your park. With the return of spring and warmer weather in many parts of the country, parks will soon be the site of baseball games, children’s day camp activities and family outings. Park directors are already planning to have staff prepare parks, playgrounds, ball fields and other outdoor venues for the warm-weather season after months of minimal maintenance.
As park staff begin work on the damage created by winter weather, it’s useful to review injury sources and liability concerns common with parks. The most frequent source of injury is swimming pools and the highest average claim cost is associated with ball field, soccer field or grassy play area injuries.
Park directors are often challenged to prioritize the pre-season maintenance work that must be completed to prepare park areas for public use. Each park director, based on knowledge of the local parks, establishes a work schedule for staff to ensure that the parks will be ready for use.
Spring Maintenance Programs
There are many maintenance items that should be addressed early in the spring. The following lists are excerpted from Travelers Public Sector Services’ Spring Tune-up Program for two areas: ball fields and trails.Read More »Spring Tune-up for Parks
Beyond attracting and hiring qualified job candidates and onboarding and training staff into an organization, there are many steps that employers can take to promote both safety and the continued wellness and productivity of their workforce. A process to support and engage your workforce that focuses on safety and wellness can help employees adopt a healthier lifestyle, both at home and at the workplace.
Employers have long recognized the importance of programs to retain talented and experienced employees. Increasingly, employers are also adding workplace wellness programs as a tool to help promote their employees’ overall wellness.1
According to the 2015 Travelers Business Risk Index, 60% of U.S. businesses worry about medical cost inflation. Given that the average worker can spend up to half of their waking hours on the job, employers are recognizing the role they can play in promoting the health and wellness of their employees, including helping them prevent or manage some chronic health conditions.Read More »Creating a Safety and Wellness Culture in Your Company
Once you attract and hire qualified job candidates to your open positions, having an onboarding and training process can help employees work safely and effectively. A continuous onboarding program will help orient employees not only to the functional details of employment, such as appropriate safety procedures, but also to the safety culture of the organization.
Employee retention strategies, such as onboarding and training programs, can also help protect the considerable time and expense invested in recruiting and hiring new employees. According to the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) at the University of California at Berkeley, the costs of replacing an employee are approximately 9% of an employee’s annual wage. In addition to any lost productivity and institutional knowledge, those costs include recruitment, selection, the costs of learning on the job and any separation costs.Read More »How to Onboard and Train Employees into a Safety Culture
With their police personnel protecting the public, local cities and counties need to effectively manage risks associated with law enforcement activity. As part of an extensive program, our Public Sector Services has both law enforcement liability insurance coverage and the right risk control capabilities to assist.
Coverage
Our law enforcement liability product provides coverage for bodily injury, personal injury or property damage that is caused by a wrongful act committed while conducting law enforcement activities or operations. Key features include:Read More »Law Enforcement Liability Solutions for Cities and Counties
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With the growth in wearable technology across all types of industries, companies that never before considered themselves in the technology business face new risks they need to be prepared for. Being aware of these threats and following strategies to help protect against them can help businesses focus on the growth opportunities that connected technologies make possible.
How Does Wearable Technology Work?
Wearable technology combines form and function, integrating the functionality of once-bulky devices into wearable gear in the form of watches, eyeglasses and more. These types of devices follow a common basic template for how they work. First, sensors capture impulses and translate them into actionable data. Then, microprocessors extract, transform and load data to a transmittable format. Finally, transmitters wirelessly send data to cloud storage for further processing and reporting.
With applications ranging from health and fitness monitoring to employee monitoring and safety, people can expect tremendous expansion driven by the health care industry, the corporate sector and consumer demand. According to PwC, over 80% of consumers said an important benefit of wearable tech is its potential to make healthcare more convenient, and 68% said they would wear employer-provided wearables streaming anonymous data to an information pool in exchange for lower health insurance costs.¹
Wedding insurance, similar to a special event insurance, becomes very popular in the U.S. Common causes of payouts include the venue or caterers going bust after having taken a big deposit. Extreme weather, a spouse being deployed by the armed forces and an absent priest can all trigger payouts. Most policies will pay to re-stage the photos if the snapper fails to turn up or disappears with the pictures. Read this short article by Economist about wedding insurance in the U.S.
Roof is the largest single surface and the first line of defense in protecting your home. Insurance carriers tend to see a lot of damage to roofs in those instances where they also have structural claims. Obviously certain portions of the country get very different climate and different winter weather. The northern states will have heavier snow and ice, where the south may get more rain.
Here are top 5 recommendations to homeowners to prepare for winter:
Do a visual inspection of your roof to look for maintenance issues or things that could make it more susceptible to hail or wind or other damage — like missing or damaged shingles or tiles on sloped roofs. Or if it’s a flat roof, look for surface bubbles in the membrane material or missing gravel.
Look at flashing along the roof to make sure it’s in place and in good condition. The flashing is where you transition between vertical places and the horizontal roof — things like around skylights, vents or chimneys. Anywhere where you have a change in roof elevation, you’ve got flashing there and that’s a typical source or place for water to penetrate into the roof covering.
Did you know that an estimated 1,000 eye injuries occur in American workplaces every day? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that almost 70 percent of the eye injuries studied occur from falling or flying objects, or sparks striking the eye. The BLS also reports that approximately three out of every five workers injured were either not wearing eye protection at the time of the accident or wearing the wrong kind of eye protection for the job. Become our customer with Travelers Insurance Companies and gain access to exclusive Risk Control portal which has a variety of resources, including technical… Read More »July is Eye Injury Prevention Month
We offer coverage for residential and non-residential day care facilities for infants to kindergarten age children, and after-school child care through Grade 8. We can help provide immediate solutions to your unique day care insurance needs.