Equiliem drastically lowers claims costs following successful operational changes

Equiliem is a leading workforce solutions firm operating across the nation. They provide support for low- and high-risk roles, catering to small regional businesses as well as large clients with a national presence. Ensuring the safety and well-being of their employees is a top priority, which is why they prioritize strategic planning and oversight. Equiliem has effectively addressed logistical challenges with managing their workforce in remote locations, including assessing the hazards to employees at these worksites and managing workers’ compensation claims. Many light industrial clients, who tend to have a greater risk of workplace accidents, became trusted partners. Over time, Equiliem expanded their higher-risk placements, relying on general industry standard practices to manage risk. Following many years of executing effective workers’ compensation programs, they experienced an increase in both the frequency and severity of workers’ compensation claims from 2016-2019.

To manage this increasing exposure, Equiliem and Marsh McLennan Agency (MMA) worked together to identify what was driving these trends and developed an action plan to better ensure safe work environments for their employees, which included:

• Selecting the best partners and supporting the resources offered by those partners.
• Increasing willingness to negotiate and collaborate with clients on topics ranging from effective contract language and safe operating practices to standard operating procedures, workplace safety, and more.
• Creating a strong internal team to manage workers’ compensation risks and claims.
• Moving forward beyond general staffing industry guidelines to create operational controls specific to the risk tolerance of the team.

Equiliem began working with a new insurance carrier to evaluate the hazards of work sites and specific jobs. They also used MMA’s Risk Management Center for crafting policies and procedures and relied on their safety team for help with OSHA. Risk engineering and industrial design helped further their scrutiny of safety and innovation around implementing best practices.

Additionally, Equiliem engaged in conversations with the MMA team around which operations and hazards to avoid, and which controls to put in place at job sites. Their receptiveness to that feedback and willingness to engage in tough conversations with their clients led them to avoid higher risk jobs and require appropriate safety controls from their clients. They were willing to say “no” to opportunities that didn’t fit their risk tolerance and formalized an internal protocol outlining roles and environments to pursue versus avoid.

Equiliem not only formalized processes for evaluation of risk and safety, but they also focused on their processes for managing claims after they occurred. Their HR Director works directly with a Risk and Claims Management team that is proactive and highly involved. The result Equiliem’s persistence and dedication to their craft, enabled clients to make the necessary changes to their operations and risk tolerance, even when it meant exiting or modifying customer relationships. Since 2019, Equiliem has reduced their developed loss rates by 73% in workers’ compensation insurance costs. All too often revenue and new business is prioritized over safety and profitability, but as Monte Block says, “Revenue is vanity; profit is sanity.” It’s easy to say, but often difficult to live.