‘The Best’ Announced: NU’s Excellence in WC Risk Management Award Winners

During the conference on Aug. 19, NU Executive Managing Editor Shawn Moynihan will lead a roundtable from 1-3 p.m. featuring the risk managers representing all three winners, during which they will share the secrets of their award-winning programs. 

Presented by the Workers' Compensation Institute, the WCEC is the largest gathering of its kind in the nation and offers discipline-specific programs and break-out sessions from hundreds of national speakers, as well as CEU opportunities. 

With more than 1,800 employees in six states, American Infrastructure operates in the heavy civil construction industry and boasts $500 million in companywide revenue. Bridges, roads, treatment plants and pipelines span the spectrum of its projects, most of them major and each posing unique challenges and potential safety hazards. 

Fostering a culture of safety—exemplified by AI's "Home Safe Tonight" initiative—isn't fueled by a desire to simply comply with safety regulations and hopefully contain Workers' Comp costs in the process: It's woven into the very fabric of the company. It's a philosophy that starts at the top and filters down to the boots on the ground.    

"It is inconceivable for any of us to believe that a commitment to any other standard of operation is acceptable," says Risk Manager Schwartz. AI's intolerance for incidents or injuries and a basic caring for every employee, he adds, "bleeds through in everything we do."

The proof is in the results: A reduction in the injury rate by over 50 percent in just four years, and a drastic reduction in Workers' Comp loss rate per $100 of payroll in the past six years.

ARAMARK Corp. has built its business on providing professional services, including facilities management, food preparation, and uniform and career apparel. Once challenged by a Workers' Comp incident rate of nearly 12, taking employees off the job and affecting the service they could provide, the company has since brought laser focus to its efforts in managing its WC costs.

Following a corporate-wide initiative to address the issue in 2004, a senior-level task force asked ARAMARK's risk management function to become the center of excellence for risk control and claims management. Nine years later, the company has undergone a cultural transformation that has improved worker safety, halved the incident rate and slashed claims costs. ARAMARK's initiative combined a new safety focus, involving both employees and partners, and new claims processes, including both workflow and technology.

"It wasn't just that our incident rate was extremely high, it was the realization that each of those incidents represented an injured co-worker," says Carla Wynn, Associate Vice President, Strategic Claims Management. "We committed to making sure that first and foremost our employees were safe." 

Miami-Dade County is the fourth-largest school district in the U.S., comprised of 392 schools and more than 50,000 full- and part-time employees. In addition to educators, the district employs food-service workers, janitors, painters and carpenters, bus drivers and mechanics, its own police force and medical professionals.  

The school district, whose risks are managed by former RIMS President Scott Clark, has seen great success through its Workers' Education Rehabilitation and Compensation (WERC) program. Additionally, Clark and his team launched several key initiatives to manage workplace safety, setting a course to re-engage physicians to take ownership of the treatment of injured workers while charging the Workers' Comp adjuster with the responsibility for all aspects of the injured worker's file. 

Another major issue Clark has tackled in trying to contain WC costs is dealing with physicians' expenses for prepackaged pharmaceuticals, an area in which it has made great strides. The district and its TPA pushed for a bill that went into effect last July that has led to $3 million in documented savings of capping the way the district reimburses for prescriptions.

Feature profiles on all three winners of the Excellence in Workers' Compensation Risk Management Award will appear in NU's August issue, and here on PC360 starting next Monday.

For more information on attending the Workers' Comp Educational Conference in Orlando, click here.