It Wont Happen to me

Well I will be the first to admit I did not do policy reviews as a small business owners until after about 6 years of running my own company. I wanted to be able to provide a certificate of insurance to my clients and get to work to make money. The company grew I continued to renew. I did not realize how much of an investment my employees really were. They were more than that. They were part of my family, we celebrated birthdays and holidays together let alone 40-50 hours a week sitting side by side in a truck.

It was a cool crisp morning during the fall as I was on my way to work that morning when my phone rang from my operations guy to tell me one of our guys was involved in a motorcycle accident on the way to work. We had just finished training the gentleman who was injured for about 3 months and he was just settling in to his new role. I had all the proper coverages in place to protect my business for anything that happened on the job. Well this did not happen on the job…..

So we scrambled that morning to keep the business going and got all but one truck on the road and I went to see if there was anything I could do to help the current situation. Things were not looking good for a return to work and there was nothing I could do? Well there was one thing I could do and that was take care of the people who helped me build my business. For 6 weeks we continued to pay a decreased salary in hopes of him returning to work. Then that hope ran out. The injuries had moved him 5 hours away back to be with family to help care for him.

I then started going through and learning how to protect my employees not only on the job, but also off the job. Short and Long term disability are the most important for service workers as a small back or leg injury could leave you disabled from a job you love.  I realized I did not know nearly enough about the insurance policy that I currently had. We found an agent to do a policy review and changed nearly every line of coverage we had for exceptional coverage in all aspects, on or off the job. The sickening feeling of wishing I had been better prepared took several months to get over.

 As a business owner employees become part of our circle, we trust each other and depend on each other. This is “The Why” of how I became an agent. I want to work with small business owners and help them understand what their options are to protect them in any event. I want to be their risk advisor so they do not end up in a situation that I did knowing there was more I could do. I believe when we put the disability policy in place we had 10 employees and it was around $500 per month to cover everyone. Just the 6 weeks of pay was more than that. Just remember you do not always have to learn the hard way if we educate ourselves on our own liabilities.