Blog - Month: May 2026
Cal/OSHA Urges Employers to Protect Outdoor Workers Against Heat Illness
As we get closer to another scorching California summer, Cal/OSHA is reminding employers with outdoor workers to take precautions to protect them against the heat.
California employers need to be especially mindful as Cal/OSHA has workplace safety regulations governing the prevention of heat illness and the agency actively enforces its heat illness prevention standard.
Employers should also comply for the safety and well-being of their workers, as heat illness can be deadly.
Cal/OSHA is urging employers to take the following steps to prevent heat-related illness among their employees who work outdoors:
Plan — Develop and implement an effective written heat illness prevention plan (HIPP) that is specific and customized to your specific operations.
The plan must include the following heat illness prevention and response procedures:
Training — Train all employees and supervisors on heat illness prevention. Nobody should be working outside in heat if they have not been trained in heat illness prevention and emergency procedures.
Water — Provide drinking water that is fresh, pure, suitably cool and free of charge so each worker can drink at least 1 quart per hour, and encourage workers to do so. Water should be located as close as practicable to where employees are working.
Access to shade — When temperatures reach 80 degrees, you must have and maintain one or more areas of shade at all times, when employees are present. Locate the shade as close as practical to the area where employees are working and provide enough to accommodate the number of employees on meal, recovery or rest periods at any time
Even if temperatures are less than 80 degrees, you must permit access to shade for workers to rest.
The importance of rest — Encourage workers to take a cool-down rest in the shade for at least five minutes when they feel the need to do so to protect themselves from overheating. Workers should not wait until they feel sick to cool down.
If an employee starts feeling unwell, they must be monitored for symptoms of heat illness and emergency procedures should be initiated if they don’t improve.
High-heat procedures — During heatwaves (when the mercury reaches 95 degrees), employers must institute high-heat procedures that include monitoring of employees, regular communication, more frequent reminders to drink water and rest, and additional cool-down rest periods.
Emergency response procedures should be site-specific and include who/how to call emergency services and steps to respond to signs and symptoms of heat illness.
Observe all employees and any newly assigned to a high-heat area. You should consider giving employees who have not been working in high temperatures time to adapt to the new conditions. You can do this by initially providing them with lighter work, frequent breaks or shorter hours.
Get the plan right
Your heat illness prevention plan must be in writing and include all of the above. The HIPP must be written both in English and in the language understood by the majority of employees. It must also be available to employees at the work site.
Additional information about heat illness prevention, including details on upcoming training sessions throughout the state, are posted on Cal/OSHA’s Heat Illness Prevention page.
The agency also has extensive multilingual materials for employers, workers and trainers on its “Water. Rest. Shade.” public awareness campaign website.
Bureau Recommends Workers’ Comp Benchmark Rate Hike
California’s workers’ compensation rate-making agency has recommended that average benchmark “pure premium” rates increase by 10.4% for policies incepting on or after Sept. 1, 2026.
The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau cited an increase in cumulative trauma claims as well as rising medical and administrative costs. The filing, if approved by the California Department of Insurance, would be the second consecutive year that the benchmark rate insurers use to price their policies has increased. Last year the DOI approved an 8.1% hike after WCIRB had recommended an 11.2% increase.
The pure premium rate increase has not resulted in employers with few or no workers’ compensation claims paying higher premiums since insurers only use the pure premium rate as a guidepost when pricing their policies. The pure premium rate remains at historical lows and the market is quite competitive.
The 10.4% recommended increase is an average across all the state’s workers’ compensation class codes, and each class will see a different change.
Here’s a look at the cost drivers:
Cumulative trauma claims
WCIRB estimates that 26.4% of all workers’ comp claims filed in the state in 2025 are for cumulative trauma injuries, compared to 15% in 2021. CT claims are not for sudden injuries, but rather those that develop over time through repetitive motions, such as:
- Carpal tunnel syndrome — Often claimed by office workers, data entry personnel and assembly line workers due to repetitive hand and wrist movements.
- Chronic back and neck injuries — Caused by years of lifting, bending, twisting or maintaining poor posture.
- Tendonitis and tendon disorders — Inflammation from repetitive shoulder or arm movements, common in construction, warehouse and food service jobs.
- Shoulder injuries — Rotator cuff tears or bursitis from repetitive overhead lifting.
- Knee problems — Develops from repetitive kneeling, squatting or climbing stairs, frequently seen in plumbers or floor layers.
About three out of every five CT claims are filed after an employee is terminated, according to WCIRB. There is a cottage industry of lawyers who find recently laid-off workers and convince them to file these claims. Adding to the cost: nearly all CT claims are litigated, in most cases from the first notice.
Medical costs
One anomaly in CT claims is that they usually have few medical costs in the first year, which masks the growing issue of rising medical costs for workers’ comp claims. According to WCIRB, average medical costs per claim increased 1.7% between 2021 and 2023, but excluding CT claims, that number rises to 3%.
Associated medical-legal costs are up 14% per claim in 2025, while medical equipment and other medical services costs jumped 7% in the same period.
Claims adjusting costs
The high litigation rates for CT claims are seeping into the cost of adjusting claims, according to WCIRB. It projects that insurers’ loss adjustment expense ratio (the cost of adjusting claims) will increase to 37.7% of claims costs, up from 35.7% in the Sept. 1, 2025, filing.
The total cost of claims adjusting increased from $12,636 per claim in 2024 to $14,235 in 2025 and is expected to rise 5.5% annually between 2026 and 2028 to $16,184.
The takeaway
The Rating Bureau has sent the rate recommendation to the Department of Insurance, which will hold a public hearing in the coming months, after which the insurance commissioner, with input from the public and department actuaries, will either accept the recommendation or order a different rate.
While the workers’ comp market is expected to stay competitive, the rate recommendation could portend moderately increasing rates in the coming years.