Dana, When someone is hurt at work, most of what will decide the cost of that claim is settled in the first day, before anyone has seen a medical bill. That is uncomfortable, and it is also the good news, because the first day is the part you control. The truth is that the same handful of decisions protect the business and tell an injured employee whether they matter here. Those are not competing goals. The employers who get this right have stopped treating them as a trade. This month I am sending three pieces that follow a claim through that window: what has to happen in the first hour, what your employee has already decided about you within twenty four hours, and why return to work is a system rather than a favor. We are also running our supervisor training this month, which goes deeper on the first of those, because the supervisor is almost always the person having that first conversation. |
