Risk Management Bulletin

Once employees have gone through safety training, make sure that they use what they’ve learned. When every worker knows and chooses the safe way on a daily basis, you’ll have a workplace with less chance of accidents and injuries.

This four-step approach to job safety will pay dividends:

1. Team up to solve problems and improve safety. Create employee teams in every department to gather information on potential hazards, analyze problems, develop and test solutions, and implement and monitor results. Being part of a team makes workers feel that they share responsibility, which keeps your safety message top of mind.
2. Talk up safety every day. Update employees on information that affects their safety. Provide ongoing feedback, praising safe performance, correcting unsafe behavior, and pointing out areas for improvement. Make sure that communication flows both ways. Urge workers to offer suggestions, identify problems, and pose questions – for example, through a safety suggestion system.
3. Encourage employees to become hazard detectives – and reporters. Make every worker responsible for finding hazards. Create an effective system for reporting problems, and respond promptly to correct hazards that employees identify. This is harder than it sounds because it means that management has to listen when workers discuss safety concerns.
4. Create a “want-to” safety culture. Encourage your workers to do the safe thing, not because they have to, but because they want to avoid injuries. Remind them of how many safety-related decisions they make every day – and how one bad decision is all it takes to get hurt.

For professional advice on creating or updating your workplace safety program, just give us a call.

Given the dramatic impact of social media on the speed and delivery of news and information, it makes sense to make this fast-growing technology part of your risk management program.

More and more reputational crises – such as the recent stranding of the Carnival Triumph cruise ship – are born on social networking platforms and can grow exponentially if mishandled. Consider how Apple Inc. responded to consumer displeasure with the iPhone 4 shortly after its 2010 introduction. Negative comments about the product spread quickly over social media channels, but were largely ignored by Apple executives until mainstream news outlets began reporting on its flaws.

Failing to actively engage social media users in conversations about crisis or business practice of your company means losing an invaluable opportunity to protect your reputation. Otherwise, you risk having other people tell your story.

Social media participation gives you a way to enhance this reputation through regular interaction with customers, business partners and the public. Using this tool to develop relationships and help people, rather than just sell products and services, can create some valuable allies.

Encouraging your employees to participate in social media offers a great way to use them as advocates for your company. A 2012 poll of more than 1,000 registered voters by Hill+Knowlton Strategies found that a corporation’s employees are the second-most trusted source of information about its business practices, second only to friends and family members.

When it comes to hackers stealing confidential client information, most people think of their primary targets as mega-corporations; banks, credit card providers, online retailers, and so forth. (American Express, MasterCard, and Sony come to mind.)

However, more than half of small and midsize businesses have experienced at least one data breach in the past year, according to a recent nationwide study by the Ponemon Institute. What’s more, only 33% of surveyed companies suffering breaches notified affected individuals that their personal information was ever at risk – despite laws in 46 states that require such notification.

The primary causes of these breaches were employee or contractor error, lost or stolen laptops or smart phones, and procedural mistakes, according to the study commissioned by the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Co.

The survey also found that:

• Nearly nine in 10 respondents (85%) shared their customer and employee records with third parties by providing billing, payroll, employee benefits, web-hosting, or other information technology services.
• Seven in 10 respondents (70%) said that data breaches are more likely to occur if they outsourced data.
• Despite this outsourcing exposure, more than three in five businesses surveyed (62%) did not require third parties to cover costs associated with a data breach in their contracts.

“Smaller companies are targeted by data thieves, but they often don’t know how to respond when sensitive information they keep on customers and employees is lost or stolen,” warns Hartford Steam Boiler Vice President Eric Cernak. “Failing to act in a timely and effective way can harm the reputation of businesses and even risk legal penalties in many states.”

For professional advice on helping you minimize the growing financial and legal threats to your business from data breaches, please feel free to get in touch with our agency at any time.

The primary role of human resources in risk management deals with employment practices; not getting trapped in wage and hour claims, discrimination and harassment litigation, and wrongful termination lawsuits. Then there’s leave management, including ADA and FMLA. Human relations can also play a key role in other aspects of managing risk for your business, such as:

1. Workers Compensation – Insurance companies don’t pay claims, they finance them. When you suffer a Comp claim, your experience modifier (“mod”) increases to repay the claim during a three-year period at a high interest rate – which means that you should do everything possible to get employees returned to work.
2. Cyber Liability – Poor employee practices can leave your information systems vulnerable. Coordinate your HR department with IT to make sure that new employees receive proper security orientation and terminated employees are managed effectively.
3. Social Media – Risks from social media are expanding every day. HR should make it clear who owns your company Twitter account, set social media guidelines, and know how to respond to any perceived risks.
4. Privacy Exposures – Whether it’s medical records (HIPAA), Social Security information, financial information, etc., your employees can both generate exposures and be subject to them.
5. Disaster Planning – One disaster can wipe out your company overnight. HR can help develop a plan to protect you in the aftermath of a disaster.
6. Employee Benefits – With a growing number of ERISA claims and a rapidly changing benefits landscape, HR should be responsible for staying on top of these trends.

Perhaps the greatest risk that human relations can help with is those involved with growing your business. HR professionals can provide strategic advice about what is needed for growth, and how best to move forward. Because it can be difficult to wear all these HR hats, we’d be happy to offer you our professional advice.

Violence is the second-leading cause of death on the job– killing three employees every day — and one out of six violent crimes occur in the workplace, costing American industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost productivity, legal fees, and related expenses.

Every business needs a comprehensive risk management program to deal with this threat. Effective record-keeping plays a key role in violence prevention by providing data on incidents of workplace abuse (verbal or physical) whether or not they result in injury, together with records on workers with a history of past violence.

Use this information to:

1. Identify potential problems for correction.
2. Review the effectiveness of the program and reevaluate policies and procedures on a regular basis.
3. Develop and implement on-the-job training methods of reducing violence.

If a violent incident does strike your workplace, make sure that you provide support for the workers involved and those who witnessed the violence. Have trained response teams and provide post-incident response assistance that includes prompt medical treatment and psychological evaluation, trauma-crisis counseling, support groups, stress debriefing, and employee assistance programs.

As always, our agency’s risk management specialists stand ready to offer their professional advice.

A lack of maintenance or poor quality maintenance causes thousands of on-the-job accidents every year. What’s more, maintenance workers face significant risks associated with their jobs.

According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics job fatality report, deaths due to poor maintenance rose 14%, year to year, in 2011, the highest level since 2006. Accidents from maintenance have a variety of causes: everything from falls caused by working heights, confined spaces or harsh environments associated with accessing equipment, and shocks and burns if power is not properly isolated, to injuries from moving machine parts, musculoskeletal problems caused by working in awkward spaces and exposure to asbestos and dangerous chemicals.

There are three types of maintenance:

1. Routine or preventive maintenance keeps equipment working – such as a scheduled overhaul or replacement.
2. Corrective maintenance gets broken equipment up and running again.
3. Predictive maintenance uses tests for maintenance that is or will soon be needed.

To make your maintenance activities safer and more productive, follow these guidelines:

• Emphasize planning and scheduling on every maintenance task.
• Invest in affordable technology such as a thermographic camera (around $1,000) to detect variations of temperature that can reveal when a machine motor is not running properly.
• Make sure that supervisors convey the right message consistently. Employees need to be told that accidents happen as a result of short cuts, such as failing to lock out a piece of equipment before performing maintenance.
• Teach workers to intervene. If an employee walks by a piece of equipment that’s making an unusual noise and doesn’t tell their supervisor, it’s the same as ignoring a co-worker who is working unsafely.
• Get employees engaged and accountable. This can lead to culture change which makes safety the responsibility of everyone not just of the safety and maintenance department.

For more information on maintaining your safety maintenance program, just get in touch with us.

If you’re “it” when it comes to risk management for your business, there’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. How do you determine the best place to start, given limited time and money, to keep your workers safe and keep your company in compliance? Where should you focus? How do you make sure that you stay on top of everything?

There are several important steps you can take to have a world-class safety program, even without many people on your team:

1. Determine the managerial perspective on risk management. This is the single most important thing to do because it will set the tone for your ability to drive the risk management initiatives of your company. Do everything you can to make this attitude proactive, rather than reactive.
2. Analyze the current state of safety in the business. An initial SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) will prove invaluable for planning risk management.
3. Review the mission statement and overall goals of the organization to help align the safety process.The results will determine the direction to go; whether it’s compliance, the creation of a safety management system, or some combination of the two. To take the program to another level, take a careful look at how you need to integrate safety into the process.
4. Understand the OSHA standards that apply to your business â€“ and make sure that everyone in the organization is familiar with the basics of these regulations.
5. Evaluate your safety plan from a business perspective. Develop a budget that measures your financial return on investment.

We’re always ready to help just give us a call.

Safety consciousness tends to slip over time – and it’s your responsibility to make sure that this doesn’t happen. A well-prepared and well-executed safety audit/inspection program can play a key role in your risk management by uncovering conditions and work practices that could lead to job accidents and industrial illnesses.

Stated more positively, this means checking to see that things are in good shape. In addition to help preventing accidents, the inspection program will keep management informed about the “safety status” of your organization, provide a consistent method of recording observations, and reduce the possibility of important items being overlooked.

Safety inspection tours are like preventive maintenance. Every piece of equipment wears down and deteriorates sooner or later, and needs to be checked. Similarly, employee work procedures fall into routines – some of them unsafe – over time, which means that you need to evaluate them at regular intervals.

Safety inspections have a number of objectives:

• Spotlighting unsafe conditions and equipment.
• Focusing on unsafe work practices or behavior trends before they lead to injuries.
• Uncovering the need for new safeguards.
• Getting all employees to buy in to the safety program.
• Re-evaluating the safety standards of the organization.
• Comparing safety results against safety plans.
• Gauging the relative success of safety training efforts.
• Anticipating problems in advance of any OSHA inspection.

Our agency’s risk management professionals would be happy to work with you on developing and implementing a comprehensive safety inspection program for your business. Feel free to get in touch with us at any time.

When an emergency (anything from an explosion to workplace violence) strikes your business, taking the wrong action can result in confusion, damage, injury — or even death. That’s why it’s vital to have a comprehensive plan for dealing with different types of mishaps.

For example, in the event of a tornado, you’d want to have your workers sheltered in a safe place inside your facility. On the other hand, in a fire, you want them to be able to flee the building quickly and safely. The type of building might be a factor in your decision. Most modern factories and office buildings have steel frames, which means they might be more sound structurally than small business premises. However, a major earthquake or explosion will affect nearly every type of structure; some buildings will collapse, while others will be left with weakened roofs, walls, or floors.

Consider both emergency situations that would require evacuation and those that would indicate the need to stay put, and plan accordingly. For example, what would happen if a part of your facility caught fire? Suppose there were severe flooding in your immediate area? How would you respond to a chemical spill? What would you do if an ex-employee with a gun was threatening your workers?

Certain natural disasters, such as windstorms or large-scale chemical or biological releases outside your facility call for “sheltering-in-place” (selecting an interior room or rooms, normally with no or few windows, and taking refuge there). In many cases, local authorities will issue advice to shelter-in-place via TV or radio. Designate a safe haven, or havens, inside your building for employees until the danger has passed. Hold shelter-in-place drills, as well as evacuation drills.

If any employees need to stay behind in an emergency so that they can shut down certain equipment or perform other duties, your action plan should set out detailed procedures for them. Make sure that these workers are able to recognize when to abandon the operation or task and evacuate before their exit path is blocked.

To learn more about designing and implementing an emergency action plan for your business, please feel free to get in touch with us at any time. We’re here to help you protect your business from risk.

Probably less than you think.

There are a variety of ways to reduce the risk of repetitive stress injuries among employees who sit behind desktop computer terminals. However, the proliferation of laptops, tablets, and smartphones in the workplace has created a need for ergonomic guidelines specific to these devices.

Laptops. Workers who set up their laptops on desks should apply the ergonomics guidelines for conventional desktop terminals. Those who use laptops away from their desks should sit in a chair that allows for an upright or slightly reclined posture, center the device in front of themselves, and keep their arms and elbows relaxed and close to the body, with elbows bent at a 90o angle.

Tablets. Overuse of tablets (and notebooks) is so widespread that this condition has acquired its own name, “iPad shoulder,” after the ubiquitous Apple® version. To deal with this problem, workers should: 1) use cases that keep the device propped on a table at about a 60o- 70o angle to prevent neck strain; and 2) set a font size large enough for them to read material with their back and neck in a straight vertical line.

Smartphones. Smartphone users are spending less time talking on their device and more time using it as a visual interface. “The posture we assume while texting and e-mailing from mobile devices — using our thumbs to type, crunched over a tiny keyboard — is unnatural and presents problems when we do it constantly without giving our body enough breaks,” says Kermit Davis, professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Davis recommends that smartphone users:

• Draft shorter messages.
• Use word recognition tools to reduce keystrokes.
• Keep the wrist relatively straight.
• Keep moving and change posture every few minutes (the same principle applies to using desktop computers, laptops and tablets.)

Our risk management professionals would be happy to work with you in developing ergonomic guidelines for employees who use their mobile electronic devices for work-related purposes. Just give us a call.