Workers’ Comp for Landscaping Businesses in Connecticut

The landscaping industry’s cyclic nature means that a company likely won’t pay a flat annual premium for its workers’ compensation insurance. Instead, its premium will depend on the classification codes on the policy, how payroll is split among them, and its past three years of claims history used in the experience modification calculation. 

While you don’t set the classification codes or the loss costs behind them, you do have some control over how your payroll is divided among those codes and what your claims look like when they’re valued for your mod.

Why Landscaping Carries One of the Highest Workers’ Comp Rates in Connecticut

Landscape workers carry a relatively high workers’ compensation rate due to the risks involved in their work, including powered equipment, repetitive lifting, heat exposure, and uneven terrain. This pushes injury frequency above that of an average Connecticut employer.

Connecticut has designated the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) as its licensed rating organization for workers’ compensation. For 2026, the Connecticut Insurance Department approved an average 3.8% reduction to voluntary loss costs effective Jan. 1, with the Contracting industry group down 4.9%.

How this reduction will be reflected in individual policies will vary by company. Changes in their workforce, their experience modification rate, and class codes will also have an effect, as well as the multipliers their insurance carrier applies.

Three NCCI classifications show up on most Connecticut landscaping policies. Code 0106 is notable because pruning and trimming put a worker up a tree holding a chainsaw or other power equipment. Carefully documenting the hours spent in this class code can help control workers’ compensation premiums.

Carriers assign codes from operations they can document. Under NCCI’s rules, an auditor who cannot separate tree work wages from maintenance wages applies the higher-rated (and more expensive to insure) code across that worker’s entire payroll. 

How Seasonal Crews Affect Workers’ Comp Coverage Requirements

Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 31-284 requires every employer to secure the payment of compensation to its employees, and Sec. 31-275(9) defines an employee as a person working under a contract of service. This means that an employer needs to have workers’ comp insurance for every person it employs, beginning at the start of their employment. This includes full-time, part-time, and seasonal staff.

Sec. 31-288(c) and (d) set the civil penalty for not having adequate workers’ comp insurance at no less than the lesser of $500 per employee or $5,000, capped at $50,000, plus $100 for every day out of compliance after the finding of noncompliance. The Labor Commissioner can also issue a stop-work order in certain cases (§ 31-288(g)). 

The premium is estimated at the start of a policy and then adjusted at an audit after the policy expires or is renewed. A company that budgets for four crew members but runs seven is likely to receive a bill that adjusts their premium payment.

Reporting wages by class code every month, rather than reconstructing the year in one sitting, helps keep the adjustment both accurate and predictable.

NCCI’s payroll rules keep the premium portion of overtime out of the rating base, but only where the books separate it. If you pay time and a half for a portion of the summer, but never document it, the auditor counts the whole amount as straight-time wages, which will inflate your costs.

The Subcontractor Classification Risk Connecticut Landscapers Face

Connecticut decides employee status for workers’ compensation with the right-to-control test, which asks who directs the means and methods of the work. The state Supreme Court reaffirmed this interpretation of employee status in Hanson v. Transportation General, Inc., 245 Conn. 613 (1998). Someone riding in your truck and working off your route sheet, who has to file a workers’ comp claim, may be treated as your employee even if they and you have both agreed they are a subcontractor.

Under Sec. 31-291, a principal employer is liable for compensation when it procures work through a subcontractor, the job is a part or process of its own trade or business, and it is performed on premises under its control. Mowing handed off by a lawn care company meets the first two conditions. Whether the third is met depends on how much control the company keeps over the jobsite, versus how much autonomy the subcontractor is given in how they perform the work.

Collecting the certificate of insurance from a subcontractor won’t change whether Sec. 31-291 applies. But it may keep the subcontractor off of your audit, and it also means the sub’s carrier may pay on a claim for one of its own employees.

The Injury Types That Most Often Drive Landscaping Workers’ Comp Claims

NCCI’s plan splits every claim at a state-approved dollar amount and weights the primary portion below that split most heavily, so ten $5,000 claims produce a higher factor than one $50,000 claim of identical total value. In other words, a business with many small claims is considered higher risk and more expensive to insure than a business with a single claim of similar total dollar value.

Injuries seen in landscaping frequently include strains and lacerations, as well as eye injuries from trimmer debris or mower discharge. Heat exposure is another risk for landscaping crews in summer, and having documented heat safety protocols is both a risk-mitigation factor and a record of the employer’s diligence.

More severe injuries include contact with moving mowers, trimmers, and chippers, with lacerations and crush injuries producing some of the highest per-claim costs. 

What Connecticut Landscaping Employers Can Do to Manage Workers’ Comp Cost

Accurately separating payroll between landscape maintenance, tree work, and other categories is the most direct step employers can take to control workers’ comp costs. NCCI’s own inspection data shows how often this goes wrong. In 2022, Code 0042 ranked fourth among the most reassigned governing classifications, and 73% of the policies NCCI removed went to Code 9102. 

A company running mostly maintenance routes while rated as a gardening and installation operation has likely been charged against the wrong base since the error first appeared, and nothing about the premium will look obviously wrong from the outside.

Landscaping companies that have winter services should look at how that affects their workers’ compensation. Snow plowing and ice management do not automatically fall inside a landscaping classification.

The experience mod uses loss data that is valued six months after the policy expires (with initial data valued 18 months after policy inception). Reserves on unresolved claims count at full value on that date, not at whatever the file eventually settles for. A claim mistakenly coded as lost time that was really medical only, or a reserve the adjuster has not touched in a year, can artificially inflate workers’ comp costs.

Training records, including documented instruction on equipment operation, heat, and seasonal onboarding, bring claim frequency down and also give an underwriter something concrete when applying a schedule credit. 

Review Your Landscaping Workers’ Comp Program With JMG Insurance Corp

With its seasonal payroll swings, relatively dangerous work, and complex classifications, a landscaping business might find that workers’ comp coverage is often complicated. Contact JMG Insurance Corp to review your Connecticut workers’ compensation insurance coverage for your landscaping business, confirm accurate classifications, and identify opportunities to reduce your premium before the next season begins.

The statutory and classification points above are general information rather than legal, tax, or accounting advice, and how they apply to your operation should be confirmed with your own advisor.