Workers Compensation Insurance – What About Your Safety Program

Workers compensation insurance for many industries, especially those in construction such as painting contractors, HVAC companies, electricians, landscapers and plumbers just to name a few, can be a huge piece of the insurance budget. In addition, with workers compensation insurance in NC, your policy is experience rated, which means your losses follow you around for years and add to the cost of your particular policy. So why don’t more contractors embrace safety training?

The answer of course is complicated but one of the biggest reason you see so little safety training in the small contractor’s world is that either the contractor doesn’t understand how much it can impact his bottom line, or if he does, he just doesn’t know where to start. This is where company selection can be crucial to the small contractor. There are some companies out there that specialize in workers compensation insurance and don’t deal in any other types of policies. One of the advantages of using these types of companies is that often they will provide you with lots of safety training tools for free.

These tools can range from helping you meet posting requirements in your shop to advice and help with safety services and even helping you develop and create a true, on the job safety training program for all of your employees. One example of a company that does this very well is Summit Insurance. Take a quick look at the offerings that they have on their web site by clicking here. You can see that they are fully engaged with their clients to help them find ways to reduce accidents and downtime associated with injuries.

Let’s face it, when you have a workers comp claim it will cost you money on your policy eventually. But more importantly, think of the immediate costs of stopping work to get your injured employee to the doctor and the downtime associated with waiting on an employee to get back to work. A large percent of accidents that occur on construction sites are preventable with better education and better rules enforcement. If you are already spending money on a work comp policy, you should ask yourself what your insurance company is doing to help you reduce and prevent accidents. Remember, there is much more to the workers compensation policy than just the rate, or the bottom line price. As you can see, there are huge hidden costs in the process and you need to hire a workers comp company that will help you manage those huge hidden costs.

Clinard Insurance Group is a NC insurance agent who specializes in helping small contractors and construction trades all across North Carolina. We understand your difficulties and we speak your language. We have developed specialty programs for all different types of small contractor groups including a landscapers insurance program, and electricians’ insurance program, a special insurance program for painters, an HVAC insurance program, a plumbers insurance program and many others. If you need help with your business insurance, please call us toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.thecontractorshelper.com.

This article was pulled and written from source information, all of which may be found in its entirety at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Plumbers Insurance – Don’t forget the Hired and Nonowned Auto Coverage

If you own a plumbing company then more than likely you travel to and from jobs in a company owned vehicle. Putting your truck in the company name is most often done for tax reasons. But have you evaluated the insurance reasons for doing so? If so, did you remember to insure the vehicles that you don’t own? Failing to do so could cost you your business. But the good news is that the solution is cheap and easy.

Ok, so you have your trucks insured on a commercial auto insurance policy. Hopefully you spent some time with your agent and you set up limits that are high enough to protect your company from a catastrophic loss. But there is one detail to consider when setting up the business auto part of your plumbing insurance program. It’s pretty simple really. You can be held liable for accidents caused by vehicles that you don’t own. The easy example is a vehicle that you rent in the name of your company, or with a company credit card. But while that may be a rare event, consider that when you send an employee out on a company errand and they take their own vehicle, then your company can be held liable for damages to a third party caused by your employee on that errand. So how do you take care of this exposure to make sure that your plumbing company is protected?

Simply add hired and non-owned liability coverage to your business auto insurance business auto policy. The coverage is very inexpensive, rarely costing more than $150 a year. You may already have this coverage on your policy. To check, simply pull out your commercial auto policy declarations sheet and look at the symbol showing beside the liability limit. If the symbol is a 1, then you have liability coverage for any auto.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, plumbers are our specialty. We want all of our clients to be informed insurance consumers. If you need any help with your policy, your general liability insurance policy, or your workers compensation insurance policy, please visit us on the web at www.LowRatesForPlumbers.com or call us toll free, at 877-687-7557.

The source information for this article was pulled from other articles which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Plumbers Here’s The Way To Increase Your Business Strategically

Every plumber worth his salt knows that the busiest repair days out there are the holidays. Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and the 4^th of July. Too many people sharing a house and flushing the same toilet over and over again can stress household plumbing systems to the breaking point. But only the savviest plumbers out there understand that this is a chance to increase their business for the rest of the year. Here’s a tip on how to turn these overworked holidays into big bucks for you all year around.

Let’s face it, most homeowners don’t really have a go to plumber until they have a plumbing emergency. Then they call a friend or go looking. If the plumber that they find does a good job for them, well they have your card and your number and they never need to hunt down a plumber again. They have you. But if you miss that opportunity, then you will never get a shot at their business. So how do you use that information and the insider knowledge you have about the busiest plumbing days of the year to your advantage? Here’s how.

First of all, understand that very few people look in the yellow pages any more. They just go to google. Now you can work hard all year around to build up your ranking on google but there are two problems with that approach. First of all, search engine optimization isn’t geographically specific. Second of all, it is hard and takes a long time. But there is a way to get to the top of the search engine world immediately. That is called pay per click advertising. And with your knowledge of just when people will need you, you can bid high on just those days. You can set up your pay per click, called ppc, account so that you bid very high only on the days that people will be looking and desperate. You can also limit who will see your ad to the geographic territory in which you are willing to operate on the holiday. This will put you at the top of the list for the search terms you think are most likely to be used, such as: plumber Raleigh, N.C., or other terms you deem to be most likely to be searched. Also, always put your phone number in the ppc ad. Some people will click through to your site but if you have an ad that tells them you are available on holidays and just call this number, then you can save the click through cost of the ad because some percentage of searchers will just pick up the phone and call you.

Now you are buying the business here just a bit, but you will be able to charge them holiday rates. Let’s face it if you have 25 people in your house and a plumbing leak that is shutting down the party, you don’t care what the plumber charges, you need a solution and fast. Also, if you handle this correctly, you will have made a client for life. And they will have other plumbing repair needs in the future.

Now, last of all, if you have to pay your employees time and a half, or double time to work on holidays, then you need to know one last trick to save you money. Your NC plumbers workers compensation insurance policy does not require you to include the extra holiday pay in the payroll that you declare at audit. So keep good records on your overtime and holiday pay so you don’t pay to much for your workers compensation or your plumbers liability insurance policies, both of which are rated based on payroll.

At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we work hard to help all of our clients become informed insurance consumers. We also want all of our commercial insurance clients to be successful businesses. We specialize in the insurance needs of plumbing contractors and work hard to help all of our plumbing company clients become successful. If we can help you with your plumbing insurance needs, please feel free to call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at the plumbing insurance headquarters.

The source information for this article was pulled from information which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.