Premium Audits - Paying Manufacturing Rates For An Office Employee

Two weeks ago, I posted on how two computer programmers could be rated as manufacturing employees at the year-end premium audit. Unfortunately, I did not complete the next posting on the subject. I will go ahead and do that now.

Quite often, companies will make the honest mistake of having clerical employees end up in their highest rated classification. My prior example was of two computer programmers that had to cross through the manufacturing area in a plant to go on break. An insurance carrier in CA charged the company the full rate for the manufacturing classification code and not the computer programmer code. Was this proper?

No, it was not as the employees only went through the manufacturing area while on break. In CA, as other states, this would not cause the employees to be rated as manufacturing. The key here is they were on break at the time. If the employees had to cross through the manufacturing area for a job duty, then the premium auditor would have been correct to assign the manufacturing class code.

We see this situation occur on premium audits due to miscommunication between the auditor and the employer contact during the time of audit. How can this situation be avoided? I will post on that next time.