Protect Your Business from Bogus Sick Claims

Bogus sick claims infect the business world and must cost business owners many millions of dollars just throughout North America and Europe if one person I know of who books sick every time he needs extra time to look after personal family chores crops up is any example and he definitely seems to be from the information published in the July 17, 2010 issue of the Vancouver Sun. Fortunately there are ways that business people can fight this according to the reporter, Howard Levitt.

What he suggests in his feature is that employers resort to tactics used by automobile insurers and government agencies such as Work Safe BC which compensate people with workplace related injuries or illnesses . That of course is video surveillance.

Of course you want to make sure such activity is legal in your part of the world in most areas of North America it is perfectly legal to take pictures or videos of people with their permission – so long as those pictures are not going to appear in some magazine for your personal financial gain. Companies and government agencies such as a workers compensation board do this all the time to expose fraudulent claims. And such video evidence, as the discretion of the Court, can even be used in legal proceedings.

In order to protect yourself, however, as the employer there are a few things you want to do to protect yourself when doing this. First, as Levitt points out it is a good idea to have an employment policy in place to makes it very clear that any sick claims must be backed up by solid medical evidence that will be examined by the company's own doctor and that any suspicion of fraudulent claims will be investigated.

Second, if you do resort to using video surveillance (It might be a good idea to hire a private investigator for this.) make sure that you have a qualified and certified health care practitioners examine any video evidence to make sure that it does expose activity that the employee should not be capable of with sick claims he or she has made. The last thing you want to do is use any video evidence gather to deprive honest employees of sick day compensation they need and deserve.





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Just Because It Never Happens Doesn't Mean It Never Will

 

The other day my wife intercepted two very pretty young girls on their way to a rather isolated park near our house to play. When my wife sent them back to their mother with the warning that it was too dangerous they retorted, " Our mother lets us go there by ourselves – all the time – and nothing ever happens to us!"

That was echoed by their mother herself who came down at first very indignant at what she perceived as unwarranted meddling in her affairs. It was only when my wife refused to apologize and warned the women that just because nothing ever happens to her young children it doesn't matter it never will that she took her children back home.

This woman's overconfidence is not an isolated case and it all too frequently ends up with tragic results in many of our activities such as when:

• People get killed in vehicle accidents after they have run a yellow or red light because they have done it many times before and nothing ever happened.
  
• A policeman gets killed from a bullet shot through a door because nothing has ever happened before when he got careless and stood right in the centre of the doorway.
  
• A young women disappears while jogging through an isolated park trail by herself – which she has done many times before.
  
• A man walking along the sidewalk is gunned down by two men in a black car – that he has seen passing – many times before.
  
• A young woman is attacked and raped by a man she met in a night club she has met many times before and always seemed so sweet and warm.
  
• A trainer at one of the Seal World centres in the United States in dragged under the water and drowned by a killer whale -- she has worked with many times before.
  

You could go one with many other examples of this type of thing because we do it all the time – that is believe that because we have done something many times before that has the potential to be very dangerous but nothing ever happens – nothing ever will.

We do it because we get careless or take our safety for granted and it can have tragic consequences. When we do things we know we should not do but take the chance anyway.

A very good example of this type of thinking and the consequences is the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Somebody shut down an alarm system – because it wake the crew unnecessarily if it should go off.

Some are trying to say they don't know for sure if that action cost any lives but at the same time there is a good possibility it did. And what was the rationale behind that? Was it because they had done that many times before – and nothing ever happened?

Who knows! People who do these types of things are playing Russian roulette with their own or other peoples' lives. It is a dangerous and often tragic way to live.