Balancing Efficiency and Equity: Protecting Employers in New Jersey’s Diverse Workforce

The New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Statute was created to provide no-fault, efficient relief to injured workers while at the same time, to provide important cost certainty to New Jersey employers by managing injured-worker health care and allowing for resolutions within the law’s statutory framework (N.J.S.A. 34:15-1 to -128). For employers and insurers, maintaining both cost certainty and efficiency is the only way to maintain a viable workers’ compensation administrative system while avoiding unnecessary litigation or worse—avoiding the additional expense of a prolonged litigation process. In recent years, New Jersey’s workforce has become increasingly diverse by almost all measures. Accordingly, the New Jersey workers compensation process has seen that the many cultural implications of that diversity will have an understandable impact on the process. With employees from varied linguistic backgrounds, economic backgrounds, and nationalities, new challenges arise that can complicate claims administration, slow the process and unintentionally add substantial costs even if those costs are measured by time alone.

This article explores how employers and carriers can proactively protect themselves, save time and limit expenses by anticipating these issues, all within the limits and protections of New Jersey workers’ compensation law.

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