The Brewers have a 5.6% chance of winning the World Series
this year according to Las Vegas. The
Cubs have a 0% chance due to my unofficial odds-making. They always manage to screw it up (Right
Steve Bartman?). 3.3% of all births
result in twins. 0.5% of the U.S.
population has run at least one marathon.
8.5% of the people in the world own a car. Less than 5% of the world’s population owns a
computer. You have a .02%
chance of being struck by lightning in your lifetime. .08% of high school football players will
play professional football.
Here’s two more: Just over 1 in 4 of today’s 20 year olds
will become disabled 3 months or more before they retire. 1 of 8 workers will be disabled for five
years or more during their working careers.
Being invincible, I’m more concerned about the Brewers
winning the World Series this year. I’ve
already been a statistic with the twins, marathon, car, and computer. Surprisingly enough, these are all very much less
likely to happen than missing significant time at work. A U.S. Social Security Administration study shows
that 64% of wage earners think they have a 2% or less chance of being disabled
during their working career. Where do
you fall?
If you’re a business owner, think about who you can’t
afford to lose for three months or more at a time and start there. Is it you?
Your business partner(s)? Shop
foreman or office manager? Chances are
good that at least one of you will miss some serious time before you retire. What have you done to protect your business
from something like this from happening?
Aside from a disability, what if that person leaves the company to
pursue another career or worse, death? I’ll
cover the latter two a different time.
Let’s consider maternity leave for a minute. Everywhere I’ve worked, when we knew someone was
close to maternity leave we had a well-defined plan in place to figure out who
would split the workload, cover the phones, do some other quirky stuff,
etc. When that person would leave and be
out for twelve weeks, we were a little swamped but not overwhelmed. We had a well-prepared plan and a little
cross-training before that person left, and that helped us get by until the
maternity leave was over. It also helped
from a career development standpoint to learn more jobs.
While we all get a bit of a heads up before someone has a
baby, let’s think about what we did to prepare for that person’s absence. It was nothing overwhelming or time
consuming, but it was very effective in helping us keep our service standards
while that person was gone. Now’s the
time to ask yourself what sort of cross-training or plan do you have in place
to cover the absence of some of your other key employees or yourself. Are there jobs so important and difficult
that cross-training is not an option, or are you not large enough to assume
that sort of void? For these types of
situations, a key-person disability insurance policy might be a good investment
for you. It’s relatively inexpensive,
and it can help you pay bills, cover overhead, and make up for lost revenue as
you wait for that person to return or need to hire and train a
replacement. I’ve worked with businesses
that have lost a key employee and have seen the results. It can take several years to get things back
to the old normal if you even manage to survive.
I’m not a
doom and gloom type of a guy, but I am realistic. Cross-training is the most inexpensive way to
manage an unexpected leave of absence. As
a bonus, it can also prepare employees for future leadership positions. If cross-training in your situation doesn’t
make sense, it’s probably time to think about how key-person disability
insurance can help keep you afloat while you manage to find a temporary or
permanent solution.
I’ve been on
this earth for 28 years, and I still have yet to see my Brewers win a World
Series. Our odds are 18/1 this
year. Your odds of you or an employee being
disabled are much higher than that. I
can cheer until my face turns blue, but I can’t affect the outcome. Lucky for you, you can. If you haven’t already, today is a good day
to start planning for the future. And if
you’re like me, be happy – you’re not a Cubs fan J
(Disability statistics are from: http://www.disabilitycanhappen.org/chances_disability/disability_stats.asp. For those of you English majors out there
screaming that I didn’t cite my source correctly, my apologies
Andy Bertram CPCU, ARM-E
Risk Advisor
Phone: 651-800-6173
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