If a disaster covered under your Homeowners insurance wrecks your home, you don't have to couch-surf until repairs are finished.

The standard Homeowners policy will pay for loss of use or Additional Living Expenses (ALE) - such as rental and hotel costs - while your dwelling remains uninhabitable

Check out these guidelines for using this valuable coverage:

1. Know the amount of your ALE. The Homeowners policy caps additional expenses as a portion of the Dwelling coverage (usually 20%) and sets a time limit, such as 12 months. If you believe that you'll need more coverage, increase the amount before disaster strikes.
2. Look for comparable digs. Staying in a hotel gets old rapidly, so you'll want to get settled quickly. However, don't decide too soon - you're entitled to stay in a place that's comparable in size and quality to your house.
3. Count all your extra expenses. In addition to the cost of housing, don't overlook other expenditures - everything from restaurant meals while living in a hotel and fees for boarding pets to the expense of coin-operated laundry and extra mileage for driving further to work.
4. Remember that the key word for ALE is "additional." The insurance company can deduct any money you save from living in temporary housing (such as the amount you would have spent on groceries from your reimbursement for restaurant meals while you're staying at the hotel).
5. Keep your receipts. The insurance company will generally reimburse you for expenses as they're incurred, rather than paying a lump sum. Keep meticulous records of every expenditure, save all your receipts - and store them in a waterproof, zippered pouch.

For more information on your Additional Living Expenses coverage, please feel free to get in touch with us at any time.

A lack of maintenance or poor quality maintenance causes thousands of on-the-job accidents every year. What's more, maintenance workers face significant risks associated with their jobs.

According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics job fatality report, deaths due to poor maintenance rose 14%, year to year, in 2011, the highest level since 2006. Accidents from maintenance have a variety of causes: everything from falls caused by working heights, confined spaces or harsh environments associated with accessing equipment, and shocks and burns if power is not properly isolated, to injuries from moving machine parts, musculoskeletal problems caused by working in awkward spaces and exposure to asbestos and dangerous chemicals.

There are three types of maintenance:

1. Routine or preventive maintenance keeps equipment working - such as a scheduled overhaul or replacement.
2. Corrective maintenance gets broken equipment up and running again.
3. Predictive maintenance uses tests for maintenance that is or will soon be needed.

To make your maintenance activities safer and more productive, follow these guidelines:

• Emphasize planning and scheduling on every maintenance task.
• Invest in affordable technology such as a thermographic camera (around $1,000) to detect variations of temperature that can reveal when a machine motor is not running properly.
• Make sure that supervisors convey the right message consistently. Employees need to be told that accidents happen as a result of short cuts, such as failing to lock out a piece of equipment before performing maintenance.
• Teach workers to intervene. If an employee walks by a piece of equipment that's making an unusual noise and doesn't tell their supervisor, it's the same as ignoring a co-worker who is working unsafely.
• Get employees engaged and accountable. This can lead to culture change which makes safety the responsibility of everyone - not just of the safety and maintenance department.

For more information on maintaining your safety maintenance program, just get in touch with us.

I recently responded to the LinkedIn question "How can a company attract and maintain top talent?" in this way:

"Although you'll get many responses about technique and strategy, in my experience that's just the beginning of the answer. There's a significant emotional aspect to the question. In the words of the Buddha, "What comes to you comes from you." So that's what I'll focus on in this answer; the emotional blockages that stop things from coming to you. Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you really willing to do what it takes to attract and keep great talent?

• Are you willing to hire somebody better than you? Or even better than their manager?

• Does driving towards excellence scare you? Are you prepared to hire the top 10%?

• Would you fit in this category?

• Is there such a thing as an "overqualified" applicant?

• Are you open to hiring and managing different types of people? Can you hire without baggage?

• Do you make a conscious effort to show people you care - or is this just your self-talk?

• Do you allow employees to make a difference? To stretch? To find the good in their work?

• Do you let go of poor performers, thus making room for more good ones?

• Does leadership give a hoot about people, or simply growing their bottom-line?

• Is this a fun place to work or is the attitude that fun and work don't mix?

Most importantly, think about your own experience. Why would you work somewhere or stay there? "

If you're "it" when it comes to risk management for your business, there's a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. How do you determine the best place to start, given limited time and money, to keep your workers safe and keep your company in compliance? Where should you focus? How do you make sure that you stay on top of everything?

There are several important steps you can take to have a world-class safety program, even without many people on your team:

1. Determine the managerial perspective on risk management. This is the single most important thing to do because it will set the tone for your ability to drive the risk management initiatives of your company. Do everything you can to make this attitude proactive, rather than reactive.
2. Analyze the current state of safety in the business. An initial SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) will prove invaluable for planning risk management.
3. Review the mission statement and overall goals of the organization to help align the safety process. The results will determine the direction to go; whether it's compliance, the creation of a safety management system, or some combination of the two. To take the program to another level, take a careful look at how you need to integrate safety into the process.
4. Understand the OSHA standards that apply to your business - and make sure that everyone in the organization is familiar with the basics of these regulations.
5. Evaluate your safety plan from a business perspective. Develop a budget that measures your financial return on investment.

We're always ready to help - just give us a call.

In the California case, Richie v. AutoNation, an employee out on CFRA (FMLA) was fired by his employer when he was found to have been working at a restaurant he owned during his leave period. The company's leave policy prohibited outside employment during leave. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, stating that FMLA/CFRA (the California equivalent) has a process to follow in shortening FMLA leave if you believe that an employee no longer qualifies for it. You cannot create your own rule or process and, in a sense, do an end run around FMLA protections. The court ruled that because job reinstatement is mandatory, the only way to stop leave properly is by following the CFRA process and questioning the medical opinion of the employee's doctor.

This decision reminds us that ignorance of legal requirements is no excuse. In this case, the company argued that it had a good faith defense because it was not aware of this limitation on managing leave. The court essentially said "So what? It's a mandatory statutory obligation, which you can't avoid." As a different court stated, "A showing that an employee is unable to work in the employee's current job due to a serious health condition is enough to demonstrate incapacity. The fact that an employee is working for a second employer does not mean that he or she is not incapacitated from working in his or her current job."

Some additional notes:

1. The decision reminds us that an employer's policy on secondary employment during FMLA leave must be the same as that for employees who are not on FMLA leave. Otherwise, the policy itself violates the law.
2. Second, the court overturned an arbitration decision in this case which allowed the court's good faith defense. Although review of arbitration is very limited, the court will step in if the arbitrator misapplied the law.
3. Finally, whether it's FMLA leave, ADA accommodation leave, use of PTO or sick pay, etc., if you doubt the veracity of any employee's story (i.e. they were playing soccer or lifting pianos this weekend), you must follow the proper procedures so that you don't find yourself trapped like AutoNation did in this case.

Have you ever wondered about the three numbers that are part of your Auto Liability insurance, usually written in this form: XX/YY/ZZ?

The first number refers to the maximum amount of Bodily Injury Liability (BI) for an individual injured in an auto accident; the second is BI per coverage per accident; while the third covers Property Damage Liability (PD) per vehicle. For example a policy with 30/60/15 Liability coverage would pay up to $30,000 in BI per individual, $60,000 worth of BI per vehicle, and $15,000 in PD per vehicle.

Every state requires drivers to carry a minimum amount of Liability coverage under their Auto policy. Limits by state vary from 10/20/10 in Florida to 80/100/25 in Maine. These numbers have remained fairly stable for a number of years.

However, because a car accident can cost far more than the Liability minimums that most states require, people usually carry more coverage. The Insurance Information Institute recommends that you have at least $100,000 of BI protection per person and $300,000 per accident (known as 100/300).

If you hold the minimum coverage required by your state and you're involved in an accident in another state that requires higher minimum coverage, the chances are that your policy limits will increase automatically to meet the other state's minimum requirements.

We'd be happy to make sure that this feature applies under your Auto insurance - and to discuss the most cost-effective ways of protect yourself and your family from liability for accidents behind the wheel (such as increasing your Liability coverage or choosing higher deductibles).

For a complimentary review of your policy, just give us a call.

Engineers, firefighters, lawyers, teachers, and police officers all have one thing in common: they qualify for Auto insurance discounts with some insurers who have found that people in certain fields tend to be less risky drivers than those in other occupations.

A number of insurance companies offer discounts to those in a variety of professions - everything from architects, CPAs, and college professors through librarians, military personnel, and pilots, to physicians, registered nurses, and scientists.

Here's why: although practicing architecture or flying a plane doesn't necessarily make a driver more responsible, insurance underwriters don't have to prove cause and effect when setting rates. They need only show a relationship between these rating factors and risk.

A variety of factors can come into play in determining discounts. One Auto insurance company offers up to a 5 % discount to first responders, such as firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and paramedics. Because these people tend to work in the communities where they live, they probably don't commute long distances. First responders might speed down the road in emergencies, but not in their own vehicles, and they tend not to work from 9 to 5 - which means that they're at lower risk for accidents.

Discounts vary by occupation, insurance company, and state. Some companies offer discounts for a long list of occupations and professions, while others provide them to only a few, or none at all. Some jobs receive larger discounts than others.

Rules for discounts also vary by field. To qualify for one company's discount, health care providers must have a license to practice, as well as a degree. However, policyholders who have earned at least a bachelor in engineering, math, or science qualify for an 18% discount, even if they work in other fields.

Your occupation or profession might well entitle you to a substantial discount on your Auto insurance - even if you're retired. For more information, please get in touch with us.

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