We are having a hell of a time getting our worker's comp insurance renewed. We got dropped and now everyone we speak to doesn't want to deal with us. We are a bit unique in that we are a surveying/engineering/construction firm. The construction part is that the owner holds a GC license (as well as PLS, and PE), but we don't have any construction crews or employees. He builds some stuff, but subcontracts out everything when he does it. For some reason that's making most companies squeemish and the fact that for surveyors (my dept.) they consider us a risk b/c of where we work (streets, roads, highways etc.) and the fact that our payroll is so small (only have 4 dudes that work in the field and that's not full time, only 2 full time). Anyhow, we have 8 employees total, so we are pretty small. We've also been in business over 30 years, and only had 2 claims. Anyone else having a tough time with this? This is in FL by the way.
Don't know about FL. Here in OK the workers' comp insurance was a State agency.
I was 'fortunate' enough to share a company name with an outfit that erected cell and comm towers. It took a long time to get rectified. In OK there was a process in place that one could "appeal" and have an "audit". It took months and merely meant you could sit on the opposite side of a desk from a human being that was actually reading the file. Apparently this duty can only be performed by people with 2" long fluorescent fingernails.
It eventually got settled, but I was without coverage for over six months.
Had the same problem a few years ago. Went through 3 companies in 5 years because they just would not renew us. My firm is like yours in that I only have 7 or 8 employees at the most any time, usually 4. Four years ago I went with the insurance offered through NSPS. It was the easiest company I have ever dealt with for workman's comp and my premiums are lower. I have had 3 claims in 30 years, with the last one a year ago with this company. One phone call and everything was handled.
I will definitely recommend looking into them, but will also say that is about the only benefit I see that I am getting from our National organization, but that is a different topic for a different day.:mad:
[SARCASM]Insurance companies, they want your money and never want to pay any benefits, biggerst ripoff next to ponzi schemes and hedge funds, don't get caught without one[/SARCASM]
What they are saying is that because we are Surveying, Engineering and Construction all lumped together we are too risky for such a small payroll. Most are suggesting break off construction into its own entity and go from there.
One possible remedy would be to have all the employees work for a leasing company that has workers comp. Then you pay the leasing company for their time.
Licensed Land Surveyor
Finger Lakes Region, Upstate New York
hlbennettpls, post: 430665, member: 10049 wrote: What they are saying is that because we are Surveying, Engineering and Construction all lumped together we are too risky for such a small payroll. Most are suggesting break off construction into its own entity and go from there
That's the only way to do it in Florida. Spin the GC portion off into a separate entity and leave the engineering and survey together. You might consider doing the same with the engineering and surveying as well.
hlbennettpls, post: 430665, member: 10049 wrote: What they are saying is that because we are Surveying, Engineering and Construction all lumped together we are too risky for such a small payroll. Most are suggesting break off construction into its own entity and go from there.
Spinning the Construction company off into it's own separate entity might be the best answer because the risk is compounded when you combine construction and surveying. Even if you are subbing out the construction end you still have the ability to do it without subbing it out in their eyes.
When I ran my own Surveying business after the market crashed I was able, for a short time, to make all of my employees 1099 and increased their wages to compensate for what my cost would have been. That only worked as a short term solution as I had a pretty good client following from previous positions and they started transitioning their new work to me. Within a year I had to bite the bullet and buy insurance and pass those costs on in my proposals.
I had 12 full time employees, 3 two man crews, 2 drafters and a Survey Tech and was fortunate to have a client that owned an Insurance agency and took care of all my personal and business insurances at very reasonable rates.
What made the financing manageable for me was that most of the field info was shared between the field, office and drafters and I worked from my home with no office space overhead.
Insurance is what ultimately led me to shut my business down because when the ACA mandates started kicking in I found myself in a position where I either had to hire more people to keep up with the increasing work load and offer a healthcare plan or simply finish the work I had on the books and get another job. I chose the latter as I would have lost allot of work over my pricing that reflected the extremely increased insurance costs.
I would suggest checking with the State to see if there are any risk pool consortiums that you could get pooled into. Running any type of surveying business without insurance is a huge risk, it's typically not the employees you have to worry about, it's usually the idiots around them that are the problem.
