Recently, Dave Kaufman from Techlife, sent me an article he found in Gizmodo about a safety inventor who finally got justice.

Years ago, Floridian inventor Michael Powell pitched Home Depot a device that would keep its employees’ fingers safe when cutting wood for customers. It worked so well that they stole his idea. Now Powell’s getting sweet, $25 million justice.

Before Michael Powell came along, Home Depot employees were slicing off fingers left and right, resulting in nearly $1 million a year in worker’s compensation claims. But Powell devised a simple guard for protecting workers’ digits and let the company test it out in eight stores in the area. The trial was a huge success—and cut worker’s compensation claims down to $7000 the following year—but instead of ponying up Powell’s proposed $2000 per device, Home Depot just went ahead and fabricated copies of the saw guards without Powell’s consent.

According to court documents, when Powell’s claim to the invention was brought up in a meeting, one Home Depot executive responded, “Fuck Michael Powell. Let him sue us.” Well, hey, Powell did just that, and after a series of courtroom victories, he’s now looking to collect some $25 million from the company.

Handing down the latest ruling, a district judge said:  ”Home Depot knew exactly what it was doing. They simply pushed Mr. Powell away and they did it totally and completely for their own economic benefit.”

To read the full article check out the Palm Beach Post News.

The excerpt below is from the OSHA Best Practice guide on First Aid.  This publication is free to anyone wanting to improve on the first aid standard from OSHA. 

First aid is emergency care provided for injury or sudden illness
before emergency medical treatment is available. The first-aid
provider in the workplace is someone who is trained in the delivery
of initial medical emergency procedures, using a limited amount of
equipment to perform a primary assessment and intervention
while awaiting arrival of emergency medical service (EMS)
personnel.
A workplace first-aid program is part of a comprehensive safety
and health management system that includes the following four
essential elements1:

• Management Leadership and Employee Involvement
• Worksite Analysis
• Hazard Prevention and Control
• Safety and Health Training
  

The purpose of this guide is to present a summary of the basic
elements for a first-aid program at the workplace. Those elements
include:

• Identifying and assessing the workplace risks that have potential
  to cause worker injury or illness.
• Designing and implementing a workplace first-aid program that:
  • Aims to minimize the outcome of accidents or exposures
  • Complies with OSHA requirements relating to first aid
  • Includes sufficient quantities of appropriate and readily
  accessible first-aid supplies and first-aid equipment, such as
  bandages and automated external defibrillators.

Assigns and trains first-aid providers who:

• receive first-aid training suitable to the specific workplace
• receive periodic refresher courses on first-aid skills and
  knowledge.
• Instructing all workers about the first-aid program, including
  what workers should do if a coworker is injured or ill. Putting
  the policies and program in writing is recommended to
  implement this and other program elements.
• Providing for scheduled evaluation and changing of the first-aid
  program to keep the program current and applicable to emerging
  risks in the workplace, including regular assessment of the
  adequacy of the first-aid training course.
  

This guide also includes an outline of the essential elements of
safe and effective first-aid training for the workplace as guidance to
institutions teaching first-aid courses and to the consumers of
these courses.

So why is Best Practices important?  Chubb estimates workers compensation now accounts for 50 percent of medical care costs. Chubbs The Rewards of Managing Risk; A Guide for Entrepreneurs and Managers helps managers and safety professionals develop a best practice model to build a safety culture based on the “Best Practice” model.  OSHA standards are generally at a minimum standard because they cover a broad base of workplaces from very small companies/organizations to very large businesses.  Everyone has to be able to meet the standards. 

Building a safety culture based on ”Best Practices” means going above and beyond the standards.  Developing practices that create an injury free workplace and having everyone involved from the top down. 

What Best Practices does your company uses?  Let us know and we will pass them along for everyone to see.

One of the best arguments as to the importance of safety to a business/organization is the cost or worker’s comp.  I recently came across this article be Bill Reynolds who has a website where you can estimate the true cost of your company’s worker comp cost.  I hope you find this article as interesting as I did and it helps you with your fight to keep safety a top priority.

A worker injury not only creates a workers compensation insurance claim. It immediately creates financial waste throughout your organization. As an example, according to OSHA, for every $1 of medical only claims your organization sustains $4.5 in indirect, uninsured costs. At first blush you would think that this is a small number. In fact, it is like bleeding a slow death.

Let’s assume that your organization averages 20 medical only claims a year and that every medical only claim pays workers compensation benefits of $550. This means that your workers compensation adjuster is paying $11,000 a year. However, using the OSHA estimate of indirect costs, your organization also incurs $49,500. This reflects the financial waste and inefficiency throughout your organization. As a result, these 20 medical only claims actually cost your organization $60,500. Assuming a 5% pre-tax profit, this also means that your organization must sell $1,210,000 each year to pay the total cost of these 20 medical only claims. How many employees must you hire to produce goods and services to generate these sales?

Workers compensation disability claims produce more amazing results. According to OSHA, for every $1 of workers compensation disability payments the organization insures between $2 and $10 of uninsured, indirect costs. To be conservative let’s assume that the ration is 2:1. Also, let’s assume that your organization has 10 workers compensation disability claims and each averages $12,500. Your workers compensation adjuster would pay $125,000 for these workers compensation claims. Also, using the conservative OSHA ration of 2:1 your organization would also sustain $250,000 in indirect, uninsured costs. This additional cost reflects the waste and inefficiency throughout your organization. Again assuming a 5% pre-tax profit, the total cost of these disability injuries ($375,000) requires your organization to generate $9,375,000 in sales to pay for these 10 workers compensation disability injuries. Again, how many employees must you hire to produce goods and services to generate these sales?

I invite you to take five minutes to estimate your TOTAL COST of worker injuries using OSHA estimates in the privacy of your office. It is on-line and available 24-7. To find out more go to www.comperaser.com. These resources also include injury prevention, OSHA compliance, safety training, prompt injury response, workers compensation disability management, plus more. These resources are available 24/7 and used irrespective of which workers compensation carrier you select. Its patent-pending technology also provides unique financial reports for monitoring the effectiveness of your safety and health program on an on-going basis.