Does your job take place entirely within one, specific, office space? Or, are you among the many people who work on the go, from home, and after hours? The new trend towards more mobile workers brings up some unanswered questions about what happens if those workers get injured while working. Will workers compensation still help you?
Not that long ago, work only took place in a person’s office, or at their place of employment. Once the person went home for the night, or for the weekend, it was clear that the person was “off the clock”. If an accident happened that caused a person to become injured, it was very clear whether or not this was something that workers compensation insurance was supposed to cover. Was the person in the building that he works at when the injury took place? If not, then it wasn’t a case for workers comp.
Now, however, things have changed. There are still a lot of people who head to the office every Monday through Friday, and several are still working the traditional 9-5 schedule. The difference is that many of these workers are not actually “off the clock” when they leave the building for the day.
Instead, people are taking conference calls through their cell phones as they drive home from work. They are checking their work email on the weekends. They are talking to clients through an email chat system, or through skype, after they have arrived at home for the night. The lines between “at work” and “not at work” have become blurred.
The Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) met this year to discuss the complicated issue of workers compensation. Most workplaces do not have clearly established rules that define whether or not a workers compensation claim can be filed in a situation that doesn’t fit the traditional 9-5, office only, model that workers compensation insurance was originally designed for.
Let’s say that a worker leaves the office while talking on her cell phone to a client. She is so focused on that call that she fails to pay attention to where she is walking. This causes her to bump into a mailbox, fall down, and sprain her ankle. Can she file a workers compensation claim, or not? What about if she becomes so engrossed in the call that she walks into traffic, is hit by a car, and requires emergency care? Is that covered under workers compensation?
Let’s say that instead of walking, the woman was driving while talking on her cell phone to a client. Distracted by the phone call, she ends up getting into a fender bender, and becomes injured. Is this something that workers compensation should cover?
These types of situations really do happen. Unfortunately, most companies do not have rules set up that make it easy to decide if these scenarios would represent a case for workers compensation, or if they do not. If this happens to you, it would be a good idea to speak with your HR representative about workers compensation.
Image by Shane Adams on Flickr