In the beginning of May, The Travelers Companies, Inc. released an official Injury Impact Report that has made big news in New York and around the country. What the organization found was that, as far as workers’ compensation claims, it doesn’t matter how old an employee is or how much previous experience they have in their respective industry. If it is the individual’s first year working at that particular job, they are considerably more likely to be injured.
More than a third of the workers’ compensation claims that the study examined were during the first year of the individual being employed. This was one of the major findings in the report, which examined workplace injuries from 2015 to 2019. Over 1.5 million claims were analyzed in total.
Better training for new workers is needed
What the data clearly shows according to some experts is a need for improved onboarding practices when training workers, making sure they know what they’re doing before being thrown into the job. This is particularly true for the most hazardous occupations, where there is no such thing as a minor accident.
The issue has only been exacerbated by the rise in people going back to work for the first time or entering a new line of work. Management suddenly had to deal with waves of new workers, making it harder to keep track of the individual mistakes people were making or steps that were missed in the training process.
Workers’ comp claims that came from workers in their first year were commonly caused by:
- Overexertion
- Slips
- Trips
- Falls
First-year injuries were also commonly caused when a worker was stuck inside of an object, hit by an object, or caught between two objects. Cuts and punctures were also found to be fairly common, along with motor vehicle accidents. While it is certainly true that these new employees are the most at risk for getting injured while at work, when followed properly, the right safety measures are oftentimes enough to protect even the most experienced of workers.