Director at Ventura Firm to Head National Group

Carol Dyer, director of human resources at Ventura’s Eclectic Communications Inc., has been named president of the Wisconsin-based National Human Resources Assn.

Dyer said human resources personnel are responsible for making sure the companies they work for comply with workplace regulations.

Fraudulent workers’ compensation claims are a big concern, she said. Dyer said that in Ventura County, with its high number of agricultural employees, handling injury claims can be particularly tricky and time-consuming.

“Agricultural injuries are obviously different than office injuries,” said Dyer. “And there’s a lack of education of migrant farm workers as to how the system works. At one time the number of claims they were filing here was out of sight. A lot of the time farm workers go from job to job. If there was a period of time where they were not working, where there was nothing to harvest, they would file a claim.”

But Dyer said the number of fraudulent workers’ compensation claims filed in Ventura County, by farm workers and by the general work force, have decreased dramatically in the last two years.

She credits the drop to the formation in January, 1993, of the Workers Compensation Fraud Prosecution Unit, a branch of the Ventura County district attorney’s office. The local business community donated $150,000 to support the task force.

County officials have estimated a 20% to 40% drop in workers’ compensation claims in the county since the unit began operation.