Dr. Ann Hawkins | Chief Innovation & Marketing Officer | Health Karma®
Ask the Expert: How Can Unions Stop Workplace Injuries Before They Become Claims?
Q: We’re seeing too many of our members dealing with workplace injuries that spiral into costly workers’ comp claims and extended time off. Is there a way to catch these issues earlier—before they become serious problems?
A: After working in workers’ compensation for over 10 years, I can tell you the most expensive claims start the same way: someone feels pain, doesn’t know what to do about it, and waits until it becomes serious.
Understanding Why Workers Wait
A member strains his back lifting equipment. It hurts, but not terribly. He takes ibuprofen and hopes it’ll be better tomorrow.
Day two, it’s worse. Should he report this? It means tracking down his supervisor, who’s at another job site, or calling HR, even though he’s not even sure it’s serious enough. He doesn’t want to look like he’s complaining.
Day five, he can barely move. Week two, he finally reports it. Now you’re looking at imaging, possibly surgery, months of treatment, and lost work time.
What could have been resolved with rest and proper guidance on day one has become a major claim. This pattern repeats thousands of times across union workplaces every year.
The Three Barriers That Create Delays
Workers don’t want to bother their supervisor with something that might be minor.
Most injuries happen when supervisors are busy or at different locations. Workers don’t want to pull their supervisor away for what might be nothing. So, they wait to see if it gets worse. By the time they’re certain it’s serious, the window for simple intervention has closed.
Supervisors don’t have medical training and don’t want to make medical decisions.
When a worker reports pain, the supervisor faces an impossible situation with no clinical background. Should they send someone to the ER? Urgent care? Tell them to tough it out? Most supervisors don’t want this responsibility. They shouldn’t have to carry it.
Workers overreact or underreact—rarely do they assess accurately.
Without medical training, workers panic (“I think I ruptured something”) or minimize (“It’s probably nothing”). Neither response leads to good decisions about appropriate care.
What Actually Works
Direct nurse triage—no supervisor involved.
When workers can call a registered nurse immediately after an injury, everything changes. The nurse assesses the situation in real time. Is this an ER visit? Urgent care? Self-care with follow-up? The worker receives immediate clinical guidance, and the supervisor receives documentation of what happened and the recommended course of action.
This removes the embarrassment factor for workers, the decision burden from supervisors, and catches issues when they’re still manageable.
Available 24/7 because injuries don’t happen on a schedule.
Night crews, weekend work, and irregular schedules, injuries happen around the clock. Access to clinical triage needs to match that reality. A second-shift worker injured at 11 PM shouldn’t have to wait until morning for guidance.
The Stress Factor Nobody Talks About
Here’s what many union leaders miss: a lot of workplace injuries involve stress, distraction, or mental health factors.
A member going through divorce isn’t fully focused. Financial stress causes exhaustion that affects judgment. When workers are stressed, their bodies release hormones that reduce awareness, slow reaction time, and impair decision-making. They’re more vulnerable to accidents.
This is where confidential behavioral health support becomes critical. Workers won’t tell their supervisor they’re having a mental health crisis, but they will call a confidential helpline if that access is immediate and doesn’t require scheduling an appointment weeks out.
Traditional Employee Assistance Programs don’t work because they require appointments. When someone is in crisis, they need help now.
In my work supporting early intervention programs, I’ve seen how connecting members with help at the first moment of stress prevents both behavioral health issues and physical injuries. When workers have immediate access to clinical expertise—whether for a physical injury or mental health concern, minor issues don’t become major problems.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Organizations that provide immediate registered nurse triage and confidential behavioral health support see significant reductions in workers’ comp claims. They also see lower claim severity when injuries do occur, fewer lost workdays, and supervisors relieved of making medical decisions they’re not qualified to make.
Next Steps
The most expensive problem in workers’ compensation isn’t the injuries themselves—it’s the delay between when they occur and when they’re properly addressed.
Talk to your union representative about programs that provide direct nurse triage and confidential behavioral health support with true 24/7 access. Ask about response times, clinical credentials, and actual claim reduction data from similar organizations.
