2019 is a historic year for our Association’s Retail Services. Besides leadership transitions, we received a large refund check of historic proportions from Labor & Industries for the Retail Retro group. It is not just the amount of the refund we want to celebrate. We want to share the back story behind these large checks.

Retail Services operates two Retro groups – retail and auto. L&I’s state fund retrospective program rewards a group with partial refunds of their premiums based on the whole group incurring better claims experiences than the average of similar risk classes.

Current members who participated in the July 2015 retro group year will receive refund checks this August. The stellar performance, however, is not just about our members receiving refund checks. It demonstrates their commitment to keeping their workers safe and their operations stable.

In addition, the credit is due to the committed Retail Services team and the three key program components:

• Underwriting – While building relationships is key to membership recruitment, our Director of Membership Development, Terry Hopsecger, conducts careful research to pre-qualify prospective members.
• Prevention – Workplace injury prevention is the most effective way to reduce the cost of workers’ compensation premiums and secondary costs related to operation interruptions. Our Safety Specialist, Rick Means, provides customizable services to help members comply with our state’s safety and health requirements and to build sustainable cultures of workplace safety.
• Recovery – Claims do happen to our members. Maria McClain, our Director of Retro Member Services and her team, work hard to maximize refunds by encouraging “Return to Work” programs and other ways to reduce claim costs.  This team of six has more than 100 years of workers’ compensation claims management experience.

Most importantly, our team is grateful for the ongoing partnering opportunity with our members to reduce compliance uncertainties and to build sustainable cultures of safety. A safe work environment makes for happy and healthy employees.