by Dan Mays, Director of Risk Management
I’m going to talk about risk management a little bit today, what it is, how it relates to Morrow Insurance, the services we can provide and a little bit of background on the various aspects of risk management.
Insurance is one form of managing risk. It’s methodology is paying a premium to somebody who is going to take care of it, if there is a loss.
Our goal with risk management within the Morrow Agency is to prevent losses, to be proactive in nature, to be out in front of it before there’s a lawsuit and help avoid accidents and injuries.
That is the common sense approach to risk management here at Morrow. There are many approaches to risk management, and they can be very technical in nature. The code of federal reference for construction is this thick. It’s full of rules and regulations that are basically written in blood from accidents that have occurred.
My background is in claims, handling the lawsuits on the downside and being reactive. The goal here is to try to take that experience and translate it into what may happen. Sometimes I can sound like the sky is falling, but risk management addresses the many things that have gone wrong in the past and how can we prevent that through either training, workplace walkthrough audits and many different manners.
One of the training resources we have is some of the JJ Keller training programs. They’re both live and DVD based. This one happens to be on HAZCOM, which is something OSHA requires on a frequent basis. Training is a big piece of what risk management is. My approach to risk management is heavily influenced by having reacted to claims in the past. I can quote you rules and regulations all day long, but I’d rather address situations that have occurred in real life, situations where there’s been a downside after an accident or after an incident.
We can focus on workers compensation, injuries accidents to employees and our associates. We can focus on property risk management, which addresses the many risks that are incumbent with fire, wind, flood and whatnot. We can focus on general liability risk where a company may be operating an environment where others are put at risk or there’s the opportunity for property or bodily injury damage. Another big arena for a risk management is something we do everyday, driving down the road. Auto fleet management, the risks that are incumbent with driving on our highways today, with distracted driving as a huge issue. We can address that through a number of means. Cyber liability is a new area of risk management. We read every day in the newspaper of companies that have been compromised through the internet or through cyber hacking.
Risk management is a is a broad category. Some call it safety, some call it loss control. Many of our insurance carriers have their own risk management or loss control departments. Their goal is a little different than ours here at Morrow. Insurance carriers loss control folks are coming out. They are offering suggestions, but they are also then reporting back to their insurance company as to what they see. It is not negative. Their goal is to prevent accidents, just as anyone else, but the beauty of Morrow is that we’re just there doing this between our client and the agency. We’re actually there to try to be proactive, and when we say we’re here to help that’s as true as it can get. We have no agenda. We’re really there to tell the story. If there are many good things going on, we want to communicate that to our carrier partners. If there are areas for improvement, we’d like to offer the resources through training, through our experience and through participation in a safety program.
We want to offer that kind of help and we do believe it is helpful. Our services to clients include OSHA 10-hour classes. You can get a card that you can present to OSHA showing you’ve been through 10 hours of construction safety training. Mock OSHA walkthroughs, walking through a facility to determine if there’s any hazards that OSHA might be concerned with, in advance of an OSHA audit and possibly avoiding some fines.
From a workers compensation standpoint, safety committee meetings, walkthroughs to identify possible accident causes or review of incident to see if there’s a trend. Ten incidents are going to result in one accident, so if there are number of close calls and maybe something we can assist with to prevent that.
That’s risk management at its core. Many folks just take the path of avoidance, which is transferring a risk, totally having somebody else do a dangerous process or procedure. That occurs to some degree but there’s not as much flexibility there. Our goal is to be Innovative and provide controls and advice that can assistant in proactively addressing the risk management.
For more information about Morrow Insurance Risk Management Services, contact your Morrow agent or email Dan at dmays@morrowinsurance.com.