With the COVID-19 crisis continuing to alter the business and employment landscape, RPNA wanted to alert its friends and clients that the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (“WCIRB”) recently proposed regulatory changes to payroll reporting and the classification of payroll and claims. On April 14, 2020, the WCIRB Rating and Classification Committee meeting proposed the following changes:
1. Allow the assignment of Classification 8810, Clerical Office
Employees, while the California stay-at-home order is in
place and for thirty days thereafter, for employees whose
reassigned job duties meet the definition of Clerical Office
Employees and who are not assigned to a classification that
already includes Clerical Office Employees.
2. For employees who continue to be paid while they are not
performing any duties of any kind in the service of the
employer, such payments would be excluded from payroll
during the time the California stay-at-home order is in place
and for thirty days thereafter.
3. COVID-19 workers’ compensation claims would be reported
under a Catastrophe code and would be excluded from an
individual employer’s experience modification calculations.
In proposing these changes, the WCIRB noted that many employers have altered the duties of their employees so they can be accomplished from home. Employers have also continued to pay their employees even though the employees are not working. As to COVID-19 claims, the WCIRB noted that with the unprecedented nature of this pandemic and the fact that the occurrence of COVID-19 workers’ compensation claims are not likely a strong predictor of future claim costs incurred by an employer, the inclusion of these claims in an experience modification would not meet the intended goal of experience rating.
The result of these changes should be a reduction in premium costs, and far less worry over the effect on an experience modification from workers’ compensation claims attributable to COVID-19.
RPNA continues to monitor developments affecting workers’ compensation premium that may benefit our family of clients. If you believe you may benefit from the proposed changes listed above, feel free to contact us to discuss how we may be able to assist you or ask your Broker.
Please contact Nicholas Roxborough at (818) 992-9999, ext. 222, or David Ginsburg, at ext. 228.
In the meantime, we hope you are healthy and staying safe.
Click here for the link to the WCIRB’s description of the proposed changes.
Photo courtesy of WCIRB
