Workplace Risk Mitigation and Workers’ Compensation Evaluation and Audit

The City of Milpitas currently manages a workers’ compensation program through Sedgwick and excess workers’ compensation insurance through Midwest for more than 450 fulltime and approximately 100 parttime employees. The workers’ compensation program currently has about 120 active workers’ compensation cases equaling more than $2 million in annual expenses.

The risk management function is part of the Finance Department, and the City is a member of the PLAN JPA consortium. The Human Resource Department oversees the workers’ compensation program and is the lead department for compliance with California Labor Code and Cal/OSHA. The City is seeking a vendor (or vendors) to perform a workers’ compensation audit to identify and make recommendations on cost-savings/containment strategies, operational improvements, and risk mitigation.

The City currently faces a structural budget deficit where costs are outpacing revenues in future years. In order to solve this, the City is taking a multi-pronged approach which includes cost-savings and cost-containment strategies. This body of work will inform this effort as well.