Costs of defending an EEOC claim can be expensive.

There are eight major categories of laws and regulations that the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces. As an employer you could be held liable if you violate any of them. Fines can be steep and lawsuits expensive. The best way reduce your risk of exposure to EEOC claims and lawsuits are to use a PEO to help you navigate the ever changing waters of discrimination.

PEOs help protect you a number of different ways.

First they have HR experts that are staying up to date on the many legal aspects of discrimination, including age and gender discrimination, concerns about equal pay between men and women, pregnancy discrimination, genetic information discrimination, and the biggest area of discrimination – civil rights.

PEO specialists should be your first call when you have a question about hiring, firing, and potential discrimination issues. A good PEO will have attorneys available to backstop their in-house experts. A good PEO will do everything within its power to help you avoid a discrimination claim.

When you first engage a PEO to become your one stop for HR related issues they should help you write an employee manual. Don’t worry though because they will do the heavy lifting.

A strong PEO will provide ongoing educational training and materials for your company’s in-house personnel that need to understand the complexities of EEOC related issues.

Currently the eight major areas of EEOC concern are (hyperlinks take you to the actual rules):

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII)
• The Pregnancy Discrimination Act
• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA)
• The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)
• Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)
• Sections 102 and 103 of the Civil Rights Act of 1991
• Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA)

Costs of defending an EEOC claim can be expensive. Settling a valid EEOC claim can cost into the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the severity.

A strong PEO will provide your company direct assistance with any EEOC claims and should provide you with at least $1 million in employment practices liability insurance ( EPLI). This policy will pay for your legal defense costs as well as any awards that may be payable by your company.

Strong PEOs should not charge you additional fees for providing your firm EPLI coverage.

Small businesses are especially vulnerable to EEOC claims because they often don’t have the internal HR resources necessary to stay current on changing laws.

The question is can your company afford not to be protected from potential EEOC claims and lawsuits?

For more information call a Texas PEO Group professional at 1-512-990-8756 to help you find a PEO that meets your company’s needs.

We Texans like to pride ourselves as a state that doesn’t overly burden businesses with regulations, but providing workers compensation insurance for Texas workers really protects employers as much or more than it does employees.

Back in February 2011 I fell from a step ladder.

I was not on the job, but had I been the medical costs incurred would have bankrupted most employers that don’t provide workers compensation coverage for their workers.

When I fell, I was in the master bedroom of my home replacing a 9 volt battery in a smoke detector. I estimate I fell from a distance of three to four feet.

When I set up my ladder I failed to completely extend the legs which resulted in a very unstable platform. As I was standing on the ladder over-reaching to get to the smoke detector, the latter swayed. I overcompensated and fell. My hindfoot (heel) came down squarely on the carpeted concrete floor with the entire weight of my body crashing down on my left heel.

I immediately knew something was broken in my ankle.

When I had my accident I didn’t know that the calcaneous bone (heel bone) was perhaps the second worse bone to break behind any of one’s spinal vertebra. I shattered my heel bone in more than 9 pieces.

Thus began a medical journey that has lasted seven months with a number more to go. As a result of fused bones I will never be able to walk like I did before the fall.

I have come to learn that fracturing one’s heel bone is a common injury for workers that work on ladders and scaffolding.

The second most common way to break this bone after falling from a height is snowboarding. Snowboarders land hard when they are doing aerial acrobatics and even with good protective gear experience shattered calcaneous bones. The third most common way people shatter their calcaneous bone is while playing baseball or softball and sliding into a base that is not designed to break away from its base. As they slide into the base the heel hits the unforgiving base right at the most vulnerable place thus breaking or shattering it.

As of August 31, 2011 the medical bills associated with the fracture, two surgeries, and complications of medical care have come to $385,000 and I still have more physical therapy and medical treatments to go before my foot is as good as it is going to get.

• My recovery has required two surgeries resulting in 9 days of hospitalization.
• I required extensive wound care after the surgical site became infected during the first surgery.
• I required eight weeks of very intense IV antibiotic therapy to kill a staph infection that made its way into my bone.
• I required (18) two hour hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatments to get as much of the IV antibiotic to the interior of the bone as possible.
• I have completed 25 one hour physical therapy appointments with 10 more to go before my insurance benefit for physical therapy runs out.
• I have missed countless days work because of treatments or being transported to or from those treatments.

Let’s assume I was injured on the job and that I am an electrician with an average education and experience. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the average hourly wage in Texas for an electrician in 2011 is $20.54. I figure I have missed 720 hours of work (six months) which equals $14,788 in lost wages on top of what will likely be about $400,000 in medical bills when I am through. My relatively minor accident (falling from a step ladder from 3-4 feet) would set my employer back $415,000 in direct expenses if they had to pay them out of their own pocket.

Perhaps the most expensive exposure to my hypothetical employer would be the potential for my injury to permanently limit my activities on a ladder in the future. As an electrician my work would likely be limited because the fused bones will always limit my foot’s ability to move side to side. It is pretty hard for any electrician to have a job not involving ladders.

Even if my employer was able to pay for the direct costs of my accident, they would not be protected by the most important statutory benefits of maintaining workers compensation. If an employee elects to receive workers compensation, under normal circumstances they may not bring suit against their employer for damages they have as a result of the accident. My employer would have a huge contingent liability associated with my “minor fall.”

The big question every Texas employer has to ask is whether not having workers compensation coverage is worth the potential price you may have to pay.

Please come back soon to visit us and learn more about how we can save small businesses money every month on your workers compensation insurance and other services.

Thank you.