BWC hoping to “Prevent Injuries, Preserve Lives” for Northwest Ohio Print E-mail
Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Seminar will spotlight workplace safety strategies and ways to transform safety culture

COLUMBUS- Every two minutes, an Ohio worker is injured in a job-related accident; more than 600 are injured each day. Instead of returning home to family and friends at the end of the workday, these people must cope with the physical pain and uncertainty that accompanies a workplace injury.

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) wants to reverse this trend and make Ohio workplaces safer.

In an effort to reduce the frequency of workplace accidents for businesses in northwest Ohio, BWC will host a seminar entitled “Preventing Injuries, Preserving Lives” for employers in Fulton, Lucas, and Wood County. The event will be held Monday, April 25 at the Olscamp Conference Center on the campus of Bowling Green State University.

“BWC has worked aggressively with business and labor to make Ohio a safer place to work,” said James Conrad, BWC Administrator/CEO. “In order to protect our employees from harm and our communities from heartache, we must ramp up those efforts and continue to work towards a safer Ohio.”

BWC staff from headquarters as well as the Toledo customer service office will be on hand to promote workplace safety tactics and cost saving strategies for employers. Personnel will also be available afterward to answer questions about Ohio’s workers’ compensation system.

Statewide, workplace injures have declined 30 percent since 1997. Although the state has become a safer place to work on average, some areas still have room for improvement. Fulton County averaged 2.8 claims per $1 million of payroll while Lucas County was at 2.1 claims per $1 million. Wood County has averaged 1.8 injuries per $1 million dollars of payroll. Statewide, the average was 2.0 per $1 million of payroll.

“While we’ve seen tremendous improvement in northwest Ohio over the past eight years, there were still more than 12,000 workers in these three counties who were injured last year,” Conrad said. “Until every working Ohioan returns home safely at the end of each day, we haven’t achieved our goal.”

Beyond the physical and emotional toll caused by workplace injuries, businesses must bear the financial repercussions as well. In fact, with today’s average claim costs around $30,000, it becomes more difficult to recoup lost revenue. For example, a business with a profit margin of five percent would need sales of $600,000 to cover the direct costs of an injury and sales of $2.4 million dollars to cover the indirect costs of an injury.

To register for the seminar, employers should contact Susan Hanley at 1-800-466-6292. All attendees must RSVP three days before meeting date.

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Media contact: Jeremy Jackson, BWC, (614) 752-7558 or Emily Hicks, (614)728-6197.