Workers Compensation Coverage: The Mulch On Your Business’s Playground

You may be thinking “Why do I need to provide workers compensation coverage? This isn’t a physically dangerous job! My employees are not working construction or doing anything too physically demanding, that’s an unnecessary expense!”

In reality, no one ever sees it coming. I recently watched a young child care worker prepping the afternoon meal stop a child from getting too near the stove and got a bad burn in the process. The burn was on her hand and in a location that made using her hand very difficult.

When she was at the doctors office getting it checked, she mentioned how she got burned. Because the injury was sustained in the work place he had to treat her on the workers compensation path not the heath insurance path. This is state law. 

How? How is this a LAW? How can she not use her work provided health insurance? As it turns out any injury that happens at work must be handled through workers compensation coverage. There are many insurance reasons for this laws, but the only thing that matters to your business is if you don’t have workers comp coverage you will be personally responsible for all the injured employees medical coverage and lost income.

Burns can take a long time to heal properly, and require a lot of specific medical coverage. Without workers compensation coverage you could be looking at a very large pile of bills you are personally responsible for. To add insult in injury, you could be fined by your state for not having the coverage. 

Don’t let this be you or your school!

Workers Comp and Child Care Businesses

Workers compensation coverage can be difficult to find for many fields of business, luckily child care isn’t one of those.

You might be sitting there dreading the cost of yet another thing to add to budget, but workers comp coverage is pretty affordable compared to the alternative.

Budgeting is everything. If you budget for this coverage, you wont have to scramble to pull money out of thin air when an accident or injury happens, because an injury is a when NOT if. As mundane as it is, as you are budgeting and deciding on benefits to offer to your employees it is important to keep in mind the laws regulating insurance coverage and benefit requirements.

Often if you have a workers comp claim, but no workers comp coverage you will find it impossible to purchase coverage. What? How does that make sense? Well, logically it doesn’t.

The reason for this bizarre approach is that in the past insurance companies have had a rush of claims shortly after a policy was implemented. This is because someone was injured on the job, the company didn’t have coverage and told the employee not to make a claim until they get coverage.

If if you were suppose to have coverage, and didn’t, you end up in your state covered fund. Some state funds make it tough to buy coverage, and can charge upwards of 400%, and this can cause even more problems for you as a business owner.