Incorporating workers’ compensation into your employee handbook shows your staff that you take work injuries seriously. It can also save you trouble with legal issues and employee relations down the line.

Consider including these points in your policy:

• Employees must report work injuries right away. 
  Be sure supervisors know the importance of prompt reporting, and to pass along any reports of injury to your claims coordinator as soon as they hear about them.
• Employees will be brought back to work as soon as they are medically able.
  Even if an injured employee can’t return to his or her regular job right away, providing transitional work as soon as possible reduces your claim costs and increases the likelihood that the employee will recover smoothly.
• Fraud is not tolerated.
  Workers’ compensation fraud is punishable under state law. Let employees know that you and SFM have zero tolerance for fraud and actively pursue offenders.

For more details, see SFM’s sample employee handbook policy .

Including these items in your employee handbook is a great start, but it’s a good idea to communicate these same ideas in other ways, such as a training class or employee newsletter.

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.