Irrespective of whether you are an employee or an employer, it is important that you recognize the significance of workers compensation and are familiar with all its pertaining laws. Employers need to be aware so that they can fulfill their responsibilities to avoid any wrongdoing, and employees need to be informed so that they are aware of their rights.
Often in high-risk manufacturing industries, employees get harmed or incur accidents either due to unsafe working conditions or due to the negligence of their managers. While this simply represents an extra human resource that they have to hire for the managers, for the worker this represents their entire life as accidents can sometimes be fatal or very harmful.
If you are an employee who has been harmed at your workplace and are looking to file a claim under worker’s compensation law, given below is all you need to know about the basics of filing for workers’ compensation:
What are the eligibility criteria for compensation?
To be eligible for a workers’ compensation claim, there are essentially four deciding factors. The first deciding factor is that to be eligible you need to be an employee of the company against whom the claim is being filed. The second factor is that the illness or injury you are claiming should be work-related.
The third factor is that your employer should carry compensation insurance. The fourth, and final, factor is that you must report the claim and injury timely according to the deadlines of your respective state. Hence, you need to fulfill all of these conditions to be eligible for a compensation claim.
What are the types of compensation benefits?
Depending upon the injury or damage you sustain, there exist multiple types of compensation benefits that you can be eligible for. These benefits differ in terms of the damage or disability you sustain, the duration of the damage, the severity of the damage, and its nature.
There are a lot of six compensation categories which include medical benefits, death benefits, temporary partial disability, temporary total disability, permanent partial disability, and permanent total disability.
As the name suggests, medical benefits refer to the payment of all medical expenses for employees whose injury does not extend beyond a week. Death benefits are for the families and dependents of those employees who pass away due to a work-related issue.
Temporary partial disability is a benefit paid to those employees who now have reduced responsibilities as a result of their injury for a limited period, and temporary total disability is for those who cannot return to work at all for a certain time. While the former is an offset for lost salary, the latter is two-thirds of their wages.
Permanent partial disability is a benefit for employees that incur a permanent disability but can still work with reduced responsibilities. Permanent total disability is for those employees who incur a permanent disability and cannot work for the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
While filing a worker’s compensation claim you should take great care in drafting your application as any mistakes you make would set precedence and harm your claim.
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