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Press Room

Press Room

Articles on workers' comp, experience mods, safety culture and fraud prevention, with practical ways to lower premiums and the overall cost of risk.

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Published articles

Articles by David R. Leng, CPCU, CIC, CBWA, CRM, MWCA, written over his career for business, trade and association publications. Each links to a PDF of the article as published.

These are archival. Figures, laws and rates reflect the date each article was published. For current articles, visit davidleng.com/articles.

Experience mods, audits and premium

  • Employers, You're Paying the Bill: Control Your Experience Mod or It Will Control You (June 2006). How the experience mod works and what an employer can do to manage it to the minimum. Read the PDF
  • The Biggest Mistakes Companies Make With Their Workers' Compensation Insurance (January/February 2006). Why putting workers' comp out to bid 90 to 120 days before renewal and taking the lowest price drives costs up. Read the PDF
  • Prequalifying Your Business Can Be Money in the Bank (March 2011). The experience mod as a business benchmark that prospective partners look at closely. Read the PDF
  • Five Things That Drive Up Workers' Comp Premiums (May 2017). The manageable factors behind premium sticker shock, starting with hiring and training. Read the PDF
  • The Formula for Reducing Workers' Compensation Costs: Eliminate the Errors and Overcharges (August 2018, written for Pennsylvania boroughs). How the experience mod is built and why errors in it cost boroughs money, whether they are in a trust or with an insurance company. Read the PDF
  • Improve Your Risk Profile and Improve Your Bottom Line (January 2016). Your premium rests on the underwriter's perception of your risk. Do you know what your risk profile looks like? Read the PDF

Safety culture and hiring

  • Culture Issues: Having a Good Culture Is More Than Being OSHA and HR Compliant. A credit mod does not automatically mean a strong safety culture. Read the PDF
  • Don't Let a Good Employee Go Bad (November 2015). Many good hires go bad because the company never brought them into its safety culture from day one. Read the PDF
  • Workplace Wellness Programs: The Key to Cutting Insurance Costs (January 2020). Healthier employees lead to lower premiums, without cutting benefits or shifting more cost to employees. Read the PDF

Injuries, medical care and return to work

  • The Costly Dangers of Not Getting Injured Employees Back to Work Quickly (October 2006). Most job injuries are first-time occurrences. What a delayed return to work really costs. Read the PDF
  • Five Costly Mistakes Employers Make with Workers' Compensation Managed Care Organizations (June 2008). Managed care is meant to control costs, but the results can be unintended, undesirable and costly. Read the PDF
  • Solving the Workers' Compensation Paradox (June 2008). Workplaces are safer and injuries are down, yet the cost of each injury keeps climbing. Read the PDF
  • The Right Prescription for Lowering Workers' Comp Costs (June 2016). Why working with a doctor who understands return to work and modified duty matters so much. Read the PDF
  • The Impact of Opioids on Workers' Comp (October 2017). When the narcotics prescribed for a workplace injury become the bigger problem. Read the PDF

Fraud, health care and the law

  • Is the ACA Impacting Workers' Compensation Claims? (December 2016). How strain on the health care system could push more claims, and more fraud, into workers' comp. Read the PDF
  • Has the Affordable Care Act Led to Employers Treating WorkComp Claims Like Crime Scenes?. Workers' comp fraud, its motives, and how health care changes may be adding to it. Read the PDF
  • Workers' Compensation: Current Legal Cases and News (May 2019, written for Pennsylvania boroughs). Court cases and legislation, including the Protz decision, and how they affected Pennsylvania workers' comp rates. Read the PDF

Market conditions, risk financing and construction

  • The Workers' Comp Perfect Storm (May 2012). Why employers need to show underwriters a better risk profile today than yesterday when the market turns. Read the Akron, OH business edition (PDF) Read the Managing Workers' Comp edition (PDF)
  • Pressure Is Building in the Workers' Comp Well. New hiring in the oil and gas industry in western Pennsylvania, and the workers' comp claims that come with it. Read the PDF
  • Trends in Alternative Risk Financing (November 2016). Why more businesses take on some of their own risk for potential reward, with captives the most popular route. Read the PDF
  • Transferring Risk on a Construction Project (May 2018). Just because it is signed does not mean it is insurable. How risk should flow downhill from the general contractor. Read the PDF

Also published

These articles appeared in print but are not online here yet:

  • Culture Issues: Accountability When It Comes to Job Performance
  • The Right Prescription for Resolving Workers' Comp Claims Quickly (January 23, 2018)
  • The Importance of Safe Behavior (Cannot Be Stressed Enough) (June 15, 2017)
  • Turning Your Safety Culture Into a Profit Center (September 2015)
  • Predictive Modeling: A Pro-Active Approach to Managing Workers' Compensation Costs (June 2006)

Where the Employer Success Program comes in

It starts with a Diagnostic and Plan. We read your loss runs, your mod worksheet and your key contracts, and we talk with the people who run the work. You get the pattern behind your claims and a short list of what's worth fixing first.

From there our claims, HR, safety and fleet people work alongside yours, and you get a Score Card at the start and every year after, measured against your own starting point.

How the program works

Start with a conversation

Tell me what's going on. I read these myself and reply within two business days. If there's nothing worth fixing, I'll tell you that too.