Workers’ Compensation Administration Services

Description

The City employs approximately nine hundred (900) regular employees and approximately 250 temporary employees. The City’s public safety personnel include the Police Department and Fire Department. There are approximately 200 public safety employees within the City’s Police and Fire Department. Other departments include Parks and Recreation, Public Works, Water, Economic Development & Housing, and Planning & Development. Regular employees are California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) members.The City maintains a self-insured retention of $500,000 and excess coverage with statutory limits. The City has been self-insured since 1993. Its Workers’ Compensation program is currently administered by Sedgwick, headquartered in Memphis, TN. Sedgwick acquired Octagon Risk Services, the City’s prior workers’ compensation Third Party Administrator (TPA), in 2000. Exhibit A is the City’s 2022 Public Self-Insurer Annual Report to the State of California.The City manages its workers’ compensation through its Human Resources Department, directed by the Chief People Officer. The program is led by the Principal HR Analyst (PMA), in the Benefits Division, who works in partnership with the Risk & Safety Division of the City's Finance Department. Through the work of the PMA, the City aims to continue developing safety training and educational materials, and establish return-to-work programs, early intervention programs, and training programs for supervisors and managers. The TPA should further help injured employees return to work through timely claim processing and investigations, assistance with lost time calculations and injury reporting, and consistent communications with the injured worker, supervisor and/or manager, and the City. The City of Santa Cruz requests proposals from qualified TPA to administer the City’s self-insured Workers’ Compensation program to provide