1. Make safety a common goal, not an area of friction. James Walsh, author of "Workers' Comp for Employers: How to Cut Claims, Reduce Premiums, and Stay Out of Trouble," says there is actually a psychological component to employee attitudes about making workers' comp claims. "If you have a workplace where employees and managers are angry at each other, you are going to have more workers' comp complaints, and bigger claims," he says.Having an active safety program can reduce friction and produce several benefits. "Things like rotating schedules or rotating tasks and having workers perform a variety of activities can reduce repetitive-stress injury problems while also keeping people sharper and more interested in what they are doing," Walsh says. "Real and meaningful work breaks help serve the same function.""A training program also tells the employees that having claims is costly, and that you are not trying to run a sweatshop," Walsh adds. "The message gets through that everyone has a vested interest in minimizing these costs. When employees realize that workers' comp is a benefits cost that ties in directly to what a company can pay in compensation, they also recognize the advantage of helping reduce those costs."

2. If you've already had claims, institute a better safety program. Walsh says that some insurance underwriters will recognize employer-training programs and health and safety programs as a mitigating factor against bad loss histories."You have a good analogy if you think of health and safety programs and training factors as being like going to traffic school if you get a speeding ticket," he says. "They won't erase your history, but they may reduce the impact of what's previously happened."

3. Don't misrepresent what your employees are doing. Insurance rates are based partly on an employee's occupation. For example, a roofer for a construction company is going to have a higher worker's comp rate than that company's secretary."Sometimes employers take liberties and classify their workers into lower-risk classes (of jobs) than they should," notes Joe Paduda, owner of Health Strategy Associates, a consulting firm in Madison, Conn. "This is a bad idea, because employers can get audited by their insurance company. If the insurance company finds that you've systematically mis-categorized employees, your insurance could even be canceled, and at that point it could become very hard to get new insurance."

4. Reach out to OSHA. When business clients contact Dallas attorney Stephen Fox, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) usually has already reached out to them — with thousands of dollars in fines for safety violations.Fox, with the firm of Fish & Richardson, isn't really an advocate of blindly inviting OSHA into your workplace. But, he says, it is possible to get some useful guidance from the federal agency by contacting the regional director's office in your area and asking for workplace safety recommendations. OSHA's suggestions could help you create a healthier workplace that is less susceptible to workers' compensation claims."The time to invite OSHA in is when you are just beginning to create the workplace or the facility," Fox says. "The people at OSHA aren't just creators of government red tape. They often have good ideas.... I can see how you could go to them and ask in a particular work environment like home building, for example, where do they see the most injuries occurring, how do they occur, and what does OSHA propose to reduce the level of those types of injuries?"

5. Put some money where your safety mouth is. "Businesses say they have safety 'policies,' but those are just words on a paper that say the business cares," says Russell Kendzior, executive director for the National Floor Safety Institute. "Safety investment means what you spend on training, equipment, instruction, and systems. Overall, less than 1% of the average business's net profit is invested in safety programs and measures for employees."The National Floor Safety Institute has a bit of tunnel vision when it comes to slip-and-fall problems. (Its home page recently featured the headlines, "Diet doctor Robert Atkins dies as the result of a slip and fall," and "NSC reports the odds of dying from a slip-and-fall.") But its point about the relatively low cost of simple safety measures is worth considering.Kendzior says that slip-and-fall accidents top the list of employee accident expenses for restaurants, and are the second-most costly source of employee accidents for retailers. "But Wal-Mart, which spends $100 million annually on expenses related to slip-and-falls, does not even require that its employees wear the slip-resistant shoes that the store sells."