11.16 Worker’s Compensation

Macalester College provides workers’ compensation insurance to all faculty and staff. This insurance covers all reasonable medical expenses required to cure or relieve the effects of a work-related injury or illness. Workers’ compensation insurance also provides partial payment of an employee’s wages until the employee has reached Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI).

1. A work-related injury or illness, no matter how slight, must be reported immediately to your supervisor, who will work with you to complete an Injury/Incident Report Form. The completed form must be delivered to and/or faxed to the Employment Services department at 651-696-6612 for processing in a timely manner. The College reserves the right to request satisfactory medical evidence to support the report of injury.
2. A completed Report of Workability Form must be returned to both the supervisor and Employment Services by fax at 651-696-6612 following each visit to a treating clinician. 
3. Time off balances may be used for time off due to an injury covered by the Worker’s Compensation Act for the second and third calendar days of lost time since worker’s compensation salary reimbursement begins after three calendar days of lost time. Employees may also utilize accrued time off benefits to supplement Worker’s Compensation payments. Combined time off benefits and worker’s compensation payments may not exceed an employee’s regular FTE defined pay per pay period.
4. An employee injured on the job during the work day will be paid for his/her remaining regularly scheduled shift without his/her medical leave being charged for that day. Then, if the employee is out any time after that first day for that specific injury, the employee would need to use accrued medical and/or vacation days for both the second and third days out. If the employee has no available balance, these days will be unpaid. These three days are called the workers compensation waiting period. All paid and unpaid time must be recorded through “Time Reporting” in 1600 Grand or the Stromberg Payroll reporting system. 
5. After the three day waiting period, if an employee is still unable to report to work, worker’s compensation will begin making payments to the employee at either 60% or 66 2/3% depending on the employee’s status.
6. If an employee is unable to work for more than 10 days because of this initial workers compensation injury, the supervisor must notify the Payroll department to request credit for the two days charged during the initial waiting period against the medical or vacation accrual balance. Worker’s Compensation will retro-actively make payments to the employee for those first three days out and the employee must reimburse the College for day one.