Employees in Other States

by Katie Petersen | Oct 4, 2023 | Employee Management | 0 comments

Employees in Other States

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

There is an increasing trend within the tree care industry for tree services to either be working in other states or hiring remote employees that live in a different state than where they are headquartered. Many times this offers a greater revenue potential or the ability to get the talent on their team that they need to be successful. In fact, for ArboRisk it’s both. We now have employees that live and work in three different states as our insurance agency’s home office. That has allowed us to expand our brand and secure top tier employees that would not have been an option if we were only looking within our home state.

But with that opportunity, comes some employee management challenges as every state operates slightly different from each other. There are many different issues you as the business owner must address to do this correctly, from payroll tax and unemployment accounts, sales tax, workers compensation, contractual law and other employment laws, the list of to do’s can get lengthy right off the bat. Your insurance agent, accountant, and attorney should be the first three calls you make to determine what you will need to take care of.

For this article, I am going to focus on the insurance issues with out of state work or employees.

The first thing you must do is assess how much time your employees will be spending in each state. Are you looking to have a full time remote employee or crew? Does the employee live in the other state and commute across state lines to work out of your shop? Or is there a new project that you want to take on? Perhaps it’s storm work where locations will be changing frequently? The specifics of your situation could drastically change the requirements of what you need to do. I’ve broken it down into two scenarios; Regular Work/Permanent Location or Temporary Work/Location to help you determine what to consider.

Regular Work/Permanent Location
If you are planning on having regular work or employees permanently stationed in another state it is a little easier to comply with. Let’s look at each coverage line to see what you should be concerned with.

Workers’ Compensation – Because each state handles Work Comp and has different laws with different benefit schedules, you need to make sure to add the other state to your Work Comp policy and assign an estimated payroll for each applicable Work Comp class code. This also applies if you have an employee living in another state, even if they only work in your state. You want to make sure there is coverage for any state that the employee could file for benefits under. If you happen to open a location up in North Dakota, Ohio, Washington or Wyoming, you’ll have to buy a Work Comp policy from that particular state directly.

General Liability – As long as you are working within the United States, Puerto Rico, US Territories and Canada, your General Liability will cover you. That said, you should report all new locations to your General Liability policy as some insurance companies are not licensed to do business in all states. This means they are not equipped to handle claims that pop up in those states and if they learn of regular operations happening in a state they are not licensed in, they will issue a non-renewal as soon as they can. Like we’ve discussed in many other business tips, it’s much better to build a relationship with your insurance company and be open about the states you are working in than to try to sneak it past them.

Property & Inland Marine – Your Property policy only covers you at listed locations, so if you have a building or a leased location in another state, add that location to your insurance policy. Inland Marine coverage acts like the General Liability and covers your equipment wherever you go as long as you are in the coverage territory.

Business Auto – If your vehicles are registered or garaged in a different state than your company’s headquarters, you’ll need to make sure your insurance company knows that as you may be subject to different motor vehicle laws in the other state and need to have different insurance coverages on your policy.

Temporary Work/Location

Workers’ Compensation – Each state has its own definition of what constitutes temporary work. For some states, like New York, the moment your employees step into the state to work you are subject to the Work Comp laws of their state, while in other states, you are allowed up to 90 consecutive days before their laws become your company’s responsibility. Check with your insurance agent to understand the particular Work Comp laws for the state(s) you will be temporarily working in.

General Liability – The insurance guideline for temporary work when it relates to General Liability coverage is the same as regular work. Check with your insurance company to make sure they are able to provide the best claims service if you were to have a General Liability claim in another state. Have as many details about the temporary work as possible to give the insurance company the full picture of what you will be doing in the other state and why you want or need to take on this project. Again, by building a relationship with your insurance company, you will benefit much more long term than you would from hiding information from them.

Property & Inland Marine – If your temporary work involves a written or verbal lease agreement to rent a building, storage shed, parking lot, etc., you want to list that location on the property policy immediately. If your equipment is stored temporarily out of state, again, this is a time for a conversation with your insurance company to make sure there won’t be any trouble with a future renewal policy by being open with them. In your conversation with the insurance company, explain as much about the temporary work as possible.

Business Auto – When thinking about the temporary out of state exposure for your business vehicles, think about where you are ultimately physically working and garaging the vehicles during the length of the project. All insurance companies understand and accept the fact that you may be driving through various states on your way to a job, so there will not be a limitation of coverage, however, it is important to remember that each state may have different laws for motor vehicle accidents so you could be unintentionally exposing your company to a larger lawsuit if there is an accident.

As you can see, working in a different state other than your home state can cause some potentially large insurance issues for your tree care company. The best way to ensure your company is properly protected is to talk with your insurance agent and gain the approval of your insurance company before you accept work in another state. Creating an open dialogue between you and your insurance company on your operations is the first step in avoiding a costly and stressful non-renewal situation.

If you have any questions about out of state work, please contact an ArboRisk team member today.

Better Benefits = Better Employees

by Katie Petersen | Sep 29, 2023 | Employee Management | 0 comments

Better Benefits = Better Employees

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

We often get asked about employee benefits and if there are any creative ways for tree care companies to offer benefits without breaking the bank. So for today’s business tip, I went straight to one of our referral partners, Jack Brees of RC Risk Advisors and had a great conversation that every tree care company should hear about!

Q: How do Voluntary Benefits help retain and recruit great employees?

A: As a business owner in today’s retention and recruiting environment, having something that distinguishes you from the other employers can make it easier to recruit and retain employees. If salary and job type are equal, voluntary benefits are an area that separates your company from the rest and could make the choice that much easier for the job seeker.

Q: What are the common Voluntary Benefit plans/programs that tree services purchase?

A: Voluntary benefits such as: Short Term Disability, Life Insurance, Accident plans, Hosptial Plans and Critical Illness plans help the employee navigate out of pocket expenses and are what is typically offered and accepted by tree service employees.

Q: Do employees need to pay for Voluntary Benefits out of their own pocket?

A: Not any more! While being in the Voluntary business for the past 15 years, employees have typically paid for these benefits, however, RC Risk Advisors has built a partnership with a Wellness Company that implements a Wellness program that ultimately unlocks tax savings to the employee that are then earmarked for the purchase of voluntary benefits. As an added bonus, the business owner also will realize a sizable tax savings per employee annually.

Q: Can you give an example of the estimated tax savings for a tree service with 9 employees?

A: Take a business that has 9 employees, once this tax savings program is implemented the business will receive on average $150 a month in savings per employee to spend on voluntary benefits, ($1,800 a year). The business will also experience, on average, $500 of tax savings per employee annually. Add those numbers together and the total tax savings would be approximately $20,700 annually! In both cases, the employee and employer can choose to pay more taxes or use those monies to purchase voluntary benefits that could help their families with out-of-pocket expenses.

If you have been thinking about bolstering your benefits or want to figure out a way to get creative with what you offer, please reach out to Jack and ask him about how voluntary benefits could fit in with your company!

Documenting Safety Efforts

by Katie Petersen | Sep 22, 2023 | Safety | 0 comments

Documenting Safety Efforts

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

One of the common hangups that tree care companies have regarding safety is how to document their efforts. All too often, the owner feels paralyzed by what they think they need to document thereby preventing them from documenting anything. I want to simplify it so you can start documenting the safety and training efforts that you are probably already doing and set you on a path to be able to build a better safety and training program within your company.

But first, why do you need to document safety and training efforts within your company? The answer is quite simple. You, as the owner of the tree care company, have a responsibility to create a safe work environment for your employees.

Now creating a safe work environment for an arborist can be quite the challenge with new or multiple worksites each day, a tree care company has a lot less control over the work environment than a plastics manufacturer where all of their work is being done inside four walls. In fact, you will never be able to create a work environment that is completely void of all hazards, however, that is precisely why training your employees on a regular basis is really the only way that an employer can attempt to achieve that goal. Documenting the training that has been done is your way to prove that it happened.

So, in my opinion, there are three types of crucial safety documents that every tree care company must have. I should mention that obviously, the more training and documentation you have, the better, however, if you are just starting out with documentation, focus on these three types:

1. Written Safety Program Signature Page – If you don’t have a written safety program (or Injury and Illness Prevention Program as it is called in some states), get one right away, either from your insurance agent, TCIA or any of the other online resources out there. This obviously establishes the safety protocols for your company. All written safety programs should have an acknowledgement or acceptance page that each employee signs to confirm that they were given the document and were trained on it. This is the number one document you must keep in each employee file from a safety and training perspective.

2. Initial Training/Onboarding Documentation – Your written safety program should also include a list of training topics for a new hire. Often referred to as orientation or onboarding, this initial list of training topics guides the tree care company on what to train the new hires on. After each employee has gone through a training topic, have them and their supervisor sign a document to be kept in their employee file stating the following:

When the training was done
Name of the individual being trained
Who the trainer was
Topic of the training
Where/how the training was performed (in-person, on the job, online, etc.)
Any additional follow up training required?
Signatures by employee and supervisor/trainer

3. Ongoing Training Sign-in Sheets – The third type of documentation that you should have within your tree care company would be proof of on-going training. This training can happen in a number of ways, but is done after the initial onboarding training. Examples of ongoing training would be, Tailgate Safety Meetings, All Company Safety Training Days, Specific training like Aerial Rescue or First Aid/CPR, etc. For each of these training events, make sure to have sign-in sheets that list the same information above for the Initial Training. These sign-in sheets are typically kept in a Company Training File as they will be focused on a group of people and not one specific individual.

Again, the more documentation that you have from a safety and training perspective the better, however, if you have been unsure on what to document, start with these three types of documents. If you would like help developing a stronger safety culture within your company, reach out to a member of the ArboRisk team today to begin our Thrive Safety Package. We will work with you one-on-one to improve your safety culture no matter where it is today.

The Key to Accident Prevention

by Katie Petersen | Sep 6, 2023 | Safety | 0 comments

The Key to Accident Prevention

Written by Amanda Carpenter and Anthony Tresselt

Originally published in the July 2022 edition of the ISA Ontario Arborist

The hierarchy of controls is a system of controlling risks in the workplace, a prevention through design strategy for prevention and/or reduction of occupational injuries, illness, and fatalities. Despite the best designed and applied control solutions, there is an independently acting human being that is involved in every workplace injury. Human behavior is the one thing that cannot be eliminated, substituted, engineered or controlled to create safety on the worksite. The person is most often forgotten in risk control hierarchies.

In the arboriculture industry, a lot of focus is put on regulation and technical training.

These administrative and engineering type controls can and do help, but alone they are not the total solution. For instance, the ANSI Z 133 has been in existence since 1968. As a consensus standard, it is updated at regular intervals by those in the industry. Yet the incident rate for occupational injuries still remains high compared to other industries. The same can be said for technical or skills training. Advances in tools and techniques have been progressive, the number of individuals in the industry providing quality training has increased, yet the incident numbers as a whole remain high.

What regulation and training cannot take into account is the human. Even new, top of the line tools and techniques can be used poorly or misaligned. Highly articulated and crafted regulation with the best intent still must be followed by those doing the work to have any effect.

When, as an industry, we look at the incidents in arboriculture, we see again and again how misuse of well-designed tools, misapplication of well-established techniques, and/ or disregard for industry best practice leads to death and injury. This, coupled with tens of thousands of hours of one-on-one patient interaction with an orthopaedic physical therapist for occupational related injuries, leads us to the observation that many injuries could NOT have been prevented with more safety training and engineering.

While a vital part, safety training is just one part of the system.

Without an understanding of how and why humans act, training loses effectiveness. The worker must choose the safe act, the safe tool, the safe technique. There is a human involved in every accident or near hit. The subcon- scious nervous system is in charge of the human’s thoughts and actions 95% of the day; therein lies the key to a safe worksite and meaningful reduction in incidents.

Safety training involves establishing or changing a behavior. When we train or teach, we are speaking to the analytical part of the brain. However, access to training in the moment of a true emergency is not possible for some on this analytical level. It lies behind the gate-keeper of subconscious patterns that are formed from prior experiences, many of which occurred in the first 7-8 years of life. When choice is involved, the human brain will rely on established patterns and appear to resist change. Breaking these established patterns for new, safer ones, is an involved process that takes awareness, patience, and time.

This process of behavioral change cannot be regulated or engineered.

Forced compliance is short term. Procedure can only serve as a guideline for action. The impetus of action, choice or decision must come from established behavioral patterns. This is easily seen in the all-too-common faulty logic on the tree care job site of, “we have been doing it this way for years and haven’t got hurt yet.” Often said or implied, this attitude shows the basic human reliance on pattern and the reluctance to change.

Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many production arborists make a conscious decision to ignore hazards and use technique known to have high risk of injury. Or conversely, they choose not to take actions known to protect them when engaged in hazardous activity.

Luck or hope is not a safety strategy.

The number of times an “unsafe” act has not resulted in dire consequences does not reduce the hazard. Yet many use this as a justification for not using personal protective equipment, established procedure or new techniques. The best tools and regulations can and often are short circuited by human behavior.

Some humans are more tolerant to change than others. The predictability of change tolerance is often found in the story behind one’s eyes. What has been one’s prior life experience with change? Has life thrown several unexpected and unfortunate changes at them? Did life throw a single pain- ful experience at an early stage of life, which set a pattern in their nerv- ous system resulting in their need for consistency?

People make changes for one of two reasons, out of desperation or out of inspiration.

Desperation becomes a catalyst for change. Acute pain gets one’s attention; it screams and demands that something be done NOW. While chronic pain is an underlying, low-grade discomfort that allows one to put it off, the voice of chronic pain says; “I can’t keep doing this” or “I can’t keep living like this.” Yet, most often a change is not made until the body takes one out with an acute injury or illness. Why is this? The answer lies in the understanding of the autonomic nervous system.

Humans have a pattern of life, learning and adaptation, a rhythm that becomes familiar and predictable. This pattern, whether healthy or not, becomes recognized by the autonomic nervous system as normal and is perceived as safe. Anything that veers from this pattern can become a trigger; a stimulus that results in an underlying stress response in the body similar to fear. This pattern is exactly why change is so difficult. There is no reasoning this experience, it occurs instantaneously in the body at the subconscious level. You cannot rationalize an irrational response.

In injury prevention, safety training alone often does not create a long-term change in behavior, but the injury itself can be a catalyst to change.

It is not the fear of injury that keeps people safe, rather their ability to tolerate behavior change. For example, a tree care worker has developed a habit of one handing a chainsaw, (a behavior that incident numbers tell us causes many injuries on the tree care job site). The behavior is restricted by legislation as well as manufacturer instructions. Despite legislation and instruction, that pattern is very difficult to change. However, an injury creates an acute pain, often resulting in an immediate change in behavior.

An expert is born from the internal emotional response that can only occur during a real experience.

Many safety trainers share their personal story to inspire others to behavior change related to hazardous actions. The story of pain, expressed through the authentic vulnerability of another human can also become a catalyst of change for others. The emotional connection and response that occurs through authentic storytelling can support the behavior change we are hoping for in safety training. Proper technique, rules, and regulations cannot spawn the same type of long-term change housed in the subconscious.

We believe the key to worksite accident prevention is in transformation of the human nervous system, which involves both the person in the mirror and a supportive, vulnerable team willing to hold each other accountable and learn through shared experiences. When skillfully done, human behavior can be changed through transformation, creating a safer worksite and world.

If as an industry we wish to make long term, lasting change, we must address not only training, and industry regulation, but the third hidden factor of the worker and how he or she makes choices. We must come to understand the vital role subconscious patterns (healthy and unhealthy), the autonomic nervous system, and the story behind the eyes of the people doing the work, all play. Failing to do this is akin to claiming a flat tire is fine as it is only flat on the bottom!

Developing individuals and leaders to see and recognize the cognitive dissonance created when familiar ideas and/or beliefs are challenged or proved ineffective can and will transform this industry. But like the very problems we wish to address, it begins and ends with the individual human. We as trainers and facilitators need to take part in and develop a better understanding of the human factor in all we do as arborists, climbers, sawyers, crew leaders and business owners.

To learn more about Amanda and Tony’s transformational coaching program Leadership Performance Mastery: Uncovering the Leadership of Vital Energy, visit their website at https://www.leadershipofvitalenergy.com/

Safety Pays

by Katie Petersen | Aug 30, 2023 | Safety | 0 comments

Safety Pays

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

One of our goals at ArboRisk is to help tree care companies embrace the idea that safety should be looked at as a profit center versus as an expense. The idea is quite simple in that the safety efforts that you embark upon ultimately lead to higher productivity and profitability for your entire team because you are not dealing with injuries and all of the costs associated with them. Because not everyone buys into a statement like that immediately, I want to highlight a fantastic resource that you can use to illustrate this point…OSHA’s “Safety Pays” website.

OSHA’s Safety Pays website serves as an interactive tool that enables businesses to calculate the potential financial benefits of investing in workplace safety measures. It aims to showcase that by prioritizing safety, companies can not only protect their workers but also realize substantial economic advantages. The site is a testament to the fact that a safe workplace is a profitable one.

The Safety Pays website offers several key features that make it a valuable resource for tree services of all sizes:

Individual Injury Estimator – My favorite part of the website is a user-friendly interface (Individual Injury Estimator) that allows you to choose an injury type and enter your profit margin to determine how much that injury would cost your company both in direct and indirect costs.

For example, if an employee at a tree service suffers a shoulder strain, the estimated cost of that injury will total over $67,000!

In this example, I used a profit margin of 15%. If your profit margin is higher than that the financial impact to your company would be a little lower, however, if you’re running under that profit margin, the impact of this injury will be felt even more. The website calculated that the direct cost of the injury will equate to $32,023 and the indirect costs would amount $35,225 to total $67,248! In case those numbers don’t mean much to you, think about this. With a 15% profit margin, this injury would require the business to produce an additional $448,320 in sales to cover these costs.

Can you afford to do $448,000 of work for free?

Safety Pays Tool – The Safety Pays Tool is your chance to get a more customized experience and allow you to compare your company to the industry average. This tool is especially helpful when looking at budgeting for new equipment or perhaps investigating the cost/benefit of a full time safety director.

Educational Resources – The website isn’t just about numbers; it also provides educational resources and case studies that illustrate real-world examples of companies that have benefited from safety investments.

How can you utilize the Safety Pays website within your tree service?

During your next Safety Meeting, pull up the website and go to the Individual Injury Estimator. Ask your team to throw out an injury type. Then enter in your company’s target profit margin and reveal the results of the calculator to the team and watch their reaction. Even more powerful tie the estimated additional sales to the number of jobs that equates to by dividing the sales number by your average job cost. If these numbers don’t open people’s eyes within your organization, nothing will.

If you are looking to boost the safety culture within your company or perhaps just want confirmation that you are doing what you can, reach out to a member of the ArboRisk team or sign up directly for our Thrive Safety Package. We work one-on-one with tree care companies every day, helping them get every one of their employees home safe each night.