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Director, Risk Management and Insurance
Cornell University
Ithaca, N.Y.

Fixed on filmmaking to get safety messages through to impressionable students.

University risk managers have a tough enough time just trying to reign in the students who all think they're invincible, let alone getting them to read safety brochures. That's why students still engage in dangerous, hazing activities, rappelling down the school's tallest building, and driving haphazardly on and off campus. Of course, no matter what else they do, they can always be drunk. And too many times, the students die.

"We have to find the best way to communicate with them," said Allen Bova, director, risk management and Insurance at Cornell for 20 years. Probably one of Cornell's most difficult challenges has been the campus's historic gorges.

The Cascadilla Gorge, which borders the campus on the south, and the Fall Creek Gorge, which lies on the northern end of the campus, not only add to the beauty of the campus but also provide a serious risk.

For years the legend flew on and off campus about the administration blocking off the gorge bridges to prevent students from jumping off during midterms and finals. But, unfortunately, the gorges are just that dangerous.

"What we had were a number of students who were not paying attention to safety at the gorges and a number of them drowned," said Bova.

Usually it's students who don't realize just how deep the water is in the gorges and drown, or drunk students just fall in. Ironically, technically Cornell doesn't even own the water (it only owns from the high water line up), but Bova knew the school still had an obligation to prevent the drownings and other gorge-related accidents.

He knew the traditional method of communicating danger to students just wasn't going to cut it. He also had to find a more evocative way to communicate other dangers to the students, such as alcohol risks.

First, last year, the university produced a brochure on the gorges, pointing out their recreational and hiking attractions, but also listing warnings to stay away from the gorges' unguarded cliffs. He knew he should supplement the brochures with some other kind of communication, but how?

The answer, unfortunately, came from the father of a student who had just drowned in a gorge--he asked why the school didn't have some kind of movie to show the students. After all, videos speak the students' language. And, surprisingly, so do their parents.

Indeed, Bova said he found research that indicated the best way to reach incoming students was through their parents. Other research said, "We can educate them, but that won't change their behavior."

But what really hit home was the notion that, if parents sat down with their children and watched a movie about safety issues and discussed those issues, that message was more likely to stick. Cornell held focus groups with incoming freshmen about this approach, and their response was "universally positive," Bova said.

He called it an "institutional approach to risk management."

Bova, who acted as the executive producer, and his team of professionals spent eight months and $55,000 creating the film geared toward incoming students, writing the dialog, hiring two student actors, filming all over campus and editing it into a movie students would watch.

In an appealing, low-key manner, the film talks about a litany of student risks, such as alcohol risk--what many incoming freshmen think as the college right of passage--gorge safety, copyright and illegal downloading, and hazing, as well as just showing students around campus. "We knew a guy in a suit wouldn't have the same effect," Bova said.

Bova is targeting incoming freshmen because they're the most vulnerable when arriving at college for the first time. The university began sending out the DVDs to incoming students and their parents in July, but by mid-August, it was still too soon for a response.

Pat Gallagher, CEO of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., commended Bova for creating the movie, calling it "innovative," along with the many other risk management programs he's instituted.

"He's so darned smart," Gallagher said. "He always knows how to work with risk."

--By Susan Gurevitz

Allen Bova has spent untold hours creating policies to keep students safe, and in 1995, he got a handle on one traditional drinking-free-for-all when he changed the rules to the university's decades-old annual Slope Day.

This end-of-the-school-year drinking frenzy that hundreds of students attended, no matter their age, typically landed several students in the hospital. Bova's strategy--he fenced in the area and allowed only Cornell students and their guests through the gates via a strict age-screening process.

The university sold beer only to students aged 21 or older and issued bracelets limiting their beer purchases. Food, water and entertainment were free. These new rules have set the precedent that continues today.

To Dan Thomas, the idea of risk management extends into nearly every nook and cranny of the entire Beaverton Oregon School District. But it just doesn't stop there. He has set up partnership breakfasts with key community constituencies--police, fire, emergency management, and parks and recreation personnel. The objective is to help the entire community address safety issues before a catastrophe happens.

For his communitywide effort to create a culture of safety in Beaverton, Dan Thomas is also recognized as a Responsibility Leader. And he's been innovative and creative trying to be successful in his mission. For example, he's brought together more than 100 people at a single community session to role-play live crisis scenarios. And, as a father of six active in youth baseball and other community activities, he works daily promoting a culture of safety and prevention.

His only major claim happened on Easter Sunday in April 2000--an arson at Beaver Acres Elementary School. The damage was significant, including the loss of six classrooms. The entire administration pitched in and came up with a cost-saving plan. First, they put up a big sign--saying "Welcome to Camp Beaver Acres"--because they decided to adopt a more fun approach to living with the burned school while it was repaired, instead of "woe is me."

Instead of renting six portable classrooms, which would have cost more than $100,000 including permits, plumbing, utilities and such, the district decided to just divide the gym into six classrooms.

They found old cubicle dividers in a warehouse to set up the classrooms and 1,000 tennis balls to cut in half and put on the bottoms of the dividers and chairs so they wouldn't scratch the gym floor. That saved them another $100,000.

Because it didn't have to install or purchase another HVAC system, the district saved an additional $100,000. So when the insurance carrier asked who was handling the loss, "We said, 'We will,' and saved more than $300,000 over the cost of the claim, Thomas said. While the claim could have cost $1.2 million, instead it cost $907,000 and the insurance company cut the district a check for $407,000.

"I still have a copy of the check on my wall," said Thomas. The reconstruction of the school was completed by the first of June and Camp Beaver Acres closed its doors.

"We try to be original thinkers and problem-solvers," Thomas said.

--By Susan Gurevitz

To Dan Thomas, the idea of risk management extends into nearly every nook and cranny of the entire Beaverton Oregon School District. But it just doesn't stop there. He has set up partnership breakfasts with key community constituencies--police, fire, emergency management, and parks and recreation personnel. The objective is to help the entire community address safety issues before a catastrophe happens.

For his communitywide effort to create a culture of safety in Beaverton, Dan Thomas is also recognized as a Responsibility Leader. And he's been innovative and creative trying to be successful in his mission. For example, he's brought together more than 100 people at a single community session to role-play live crisis scenarios.

Vice President of Risk Management and Development Accounting
Noble House Hotels & Resorts
Bellevue, Wash.

Risk manager at smaller company employs technology even the bigger boys might not have.

Janette Ament-Pierce is vice president of risk management and development accounting for Noble House Hotels & Resorts, a smaller sized hospitality organization with 14 high-end properties in the United States. You might not be familiar with her name or her company's name, but that's probably because Ament-Pierce has been too busy turning the company's risk management program into something any Fortune 500 organization would salivate after.

At the center of the program is an integrated risk management Web site that Ament-Pierce has meticulously implemented and overseen. For use by hotel operational staff, management and outside vendors, the system is integrated with an Aon RMIS system and also includes immediate claims reporting and tracking features, best practice measurements, loss results by hotel and department, a risk management library and training materials, and disaster preparedness information, among other things.

In short, it's overflowing with data and information. It's got both push and pull communication capabilities, with monthly and quarterly reports coming out from Ament-Pierce to the field and the field sending back in information, explained her broker Wes Brandt of Arthur J. Gallagher.

Brandt recalled showing the site to one veteran loss control expert, whose response was: "That's freaking incredible."

Large hospitality and other companies might have similar Web-based sites, but it's not the technology that matters, it's what you do with it. Ament-Pierce uses the site to demonstrate how she feels about her job--that "I'm always here for the hotel," as she put it. That passion is contagious, and staff at the properties dive into the site, train with it, check their claims numbers with it and compete to do better next time against other properties.

"Every single day of the week, we can see what each of us is doing," said Ament-Pierce.

Chad Levine of Aon Risk Services, the full account executive for the RMIS piece, explained how Ament-Pierce is using his product "to her advantage to put every one of her properties on the same playing field."

"It's all about the properties. Let's make sure they have the tools they need," he said, summing up her vision.

Not even large accounts with 15 to 20 times the number of claims as Noble House get that usage at the ground level, reported Shannon Etter, senior account exec with Ament-Pierce's TPA, Broadspire.

"She is a great innovator for technology and for putting information at people's fingertips," Etter said. "She does the things the big boys should be doing but are not."

Greg Champion, president of Noble House, noted how Ament-Pierce has integrated herself into the day-to-day operations, from their hotels in California, Rhode Island, Key West and all points in between.

Insurance, loss control, risk management--"She's made it a part of our culture in our company," Champion said. "She's taken it to the point where the responsibility overall rests with her, but she turns the responsibility back onto the properties."

Her strategy and technological tools have won over skeptics like Ron Vuy, general manager at Laplaya Beach Resort in Naples, Fla.

After working with her for more than two years, he can say, "Of all the home office support I get, she's probably No. 1 on my list."

He knows Ament-Pierce is there to help him resolve issues that come up in workers' comp and customer accidents in a professional manner with the company's interests in mind.

"Janette is the bridge between the property and the technical side of it that allows us to do that," he said.

--By Matthew Brodsky

Not to toot the Risk Innovator/Responsibility Leader horn, but after Janette Ament-Pierce earns the recognition she deserves here, she will garner more and more attention as the years go on. It's not because of this award. It's because she is a role model for risk managers everywhere with limited resources at smaller companies.

"I like to use her as an example when my clients look for ways to improve their technology," said Shannon Etter, senior account exec with Ament-Pierce's TPA, Broadspire.

She's worked virtually alone since she started on the job about four years ago, with the exception of help from a corporate trainer. And she's built up the risk management program at an employer of 3,000 to match companies with 70,000 employees.

Her boss and Noble House President Greg Champion has worked for the big boys of the hospitality industry, as have his staff, and so he can say about his larger competitors, "They might want some of what we have."

Founder and Chairwoman, The 60 Summits Project Inc.
President, Webility Corp.
Wayland, Mass.

Anchoring a new model in the world disability claimants actually live in.

Getting some good ideas down on paper wasn't enough for Jennifer Christian, the founder and chairwoman of The 60 Summits Project Inc., as well as president of Webility Corp.

After leading a committee that wrote a white paper for the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine titled "Preventing Needless Work Disability by Helping People Stay Employed," Christian wanted to create a mechanism to get the guidelines in front of as many people as possible.

And rather than just presenting the ideas, Christian wanted to bring stakeholders together and get them talking to each other. "I wanted to make a difference in the real world, not put a document on a Web site," she said.

That was the inspiration behind the 60 Summits Project, which brings stakeholders together to discuss ways they could improve the stay-at-home and return-to-work process in workers' compensation and disability benefits systems in their jurisdictions.

The 60 Summits Project is introducing a new paradigm in the U.S. and Canada to prevent needless work disability by helping people stay employed. In the traditional benefits processing model, the focus is on processing and adjudicating a person's claim for disability benefits or workers' comp accurately and then paying the benefits promptly, according to the organization's website.

In contrast, the point of the new work disability prevention model is to anticipate and assess the impact of illness or injury on the whole situation and to actively drive the real-world situation toward the best achievable overall outcome.

These summits are planned by the stakeholders themselves and give them an opportunity to meet each other. Although many of the stakeholders, such as employers, physicians, labor, insurers, case managers, occupational and physical therapists, return-to-work specialists, lawyers and managed care are involved in workers' comp and disability cases, many of them have never met each other.

At one of the summits in Montana, for instance, Christian and the head of the state's division of workers' comp were standing at the back of the room talking and Christian asked how many of the people attending the summit knew each other.

The state official responded that Montana was a small state and most people knew each other. Christian later went to the front of the room and asked how many people in the room knew each other and no hands went up.

The problem was that while this official spoke to most of the people in the room on a regular basis, most of those people had not spoken to each other.

By gaining an opportunity to speak with each other across the traditional boundaries, they have been better able to see the system's problems and start to collaborate on possible solutions.

Christian said the way the system responds to people who have been injured on the job is critical because most of these injured people are looking to the stakeholders for guidance and support. The way the stakeholders respond can make all the difference between a good outcome and a bad outcome for the injured individual and the employer.

"What we say is the purpose is to change how people think and see the situation as a precursor to later action," she said.

After the summit is over, participants are asked to come up with a concrete action plan and a personal commitment form. Consortiums and coalitions have begun to spring up after these summits so that the stakeholders in these states can continue to propagate new ways of thinking or make changes to their systems.

The response to the summits has been strong because it is not a mandatory program. People who are interested in what the white paper had to say are interested in the summit as well.

--By Patricia Vowinkel

Jennifer Christian is also cited as a Risk Responsibility Leader because of her efforts to tackle a longstanding thorny problem--the poor functioning of the stay-at-work and the return-to-work process. With her "60 Summits Project" she has crossed traditional boundaries between professions and different sectors of society.

This effort is especially important because it bridges corporate silos that exist among organizations, professions and employees that have made it difficult for all parts of the workplace to reach a common goal--the return of healthy, functioning workers to their jobs.

By holding these 60 Summits throughout North America, Christian, who is also president of Webility Corp., has, almost single-handedly, started the process, person by person, of changing the nature of the workplace to benefit both workers and employers.

Director Of Risk Management
Spherion Corp.
Alpharetta, Ga.

A risk manager applies the most overlooked of innovations: common sense.

There are two things we need to get out of the way when talking about the work of Susan Shemanski, director of risk management for Spherion. She has an amazingly tough job and she is very good at it.

Spherion, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is in the tricky business of providing temporary help to manufacturing facilities, warehouses and other injury-prone environments across the country. Before her head hits the pillow at night, Shemanski has to worry about the health and welfare of more than 300,000 employees spread out over 700 offices who are working for as many as 7,000 clients.

When you factor in that the vast majority of those employees are temporary, who just because of the nature of their employment terms might not have the greatest loyalty to their employer, the task Shemanski faces in trying to cut workers' comp claims and losses is steep.

"Starting right off it is a tricky industry and costs, specifically claims cost in the workers' compensation area, can mean the difference in making a profit on a particular client or not," said Doug Harvill, an account executive and assistant vice president with the Memphis-based third-party administrator Sedgwick CMS.

Part of what's scary about what Spherion does is that when a staffing company sends out temporary help, it is very hard for them to maintain control over the work environment of their client.

"What we are trying to do is make our workers safer and control their behavior by giving them the tools to understand what would put them at risk for an injury so that they are able to avoid the injury," Shemanski said.

That's where Shemanski's award-winning innovation comes in. Drawing on her years of claims management experience, Shemanski has created Industrial Advantage, a Spherion program designed to give temporary workers the tools and training to keep themselves safe, even in situations where they might only be working at a particular company for a week or so.

"We are telling our clients we are going to come in and work your riskier business but at the same time try to reduce the injuries by looking at the mechanics of the job and training our workers on the proper way to do a position," said Shemanski.

That also means that Shemanski wants her company to work in partnership with clients, taking the resources of both her firm and her client's, putting their heads together, so to speak, to cut down on injuries and lost time.

"We are trying to be a better partner to them from a risk management standpoint and change that mindset of focusing on giving the risk to someone else and us being more of a partner and saying we are going to make this particular area that we had problems with a safer area for you as a whole," said Shemanski.

That progressive thinking, being able to reach out across the country and into complicated work environments and make a difference is what sets Shemanski apart from the pack, according to an executive with a large insurance broker who has worked with Shemanski for years, first at CNA and now at Spherion.

"She is a thinker. She's constantly searching out new ideas for ways that she can reduce her total cost of risk," said Phyllis Alexander, an Atlanta-based senior vice president for claims with Marsh.

When that answer isn't readily apparent, Shemanski will go out to a worksite herself to figure out the answer.

In one of her more memorable cases, she and her risk management crew figured out that employees in a warehouse were injuring their backs because they were stacking 35-pound boxes and lifting them in pairs instead of separately to get a jump on their workload before lunch time.

A load that was safe at 35 pounds became unsafe at 70 pounds.

"I looked through our logs and saw that we were having a lot of claims at lunch time," Shemanski recalls. The analysis was completed, safety warnings were issued and losses plummeted.

The safety tips in Shemanski's Industrial Advantage program aren't rocket science. But by the same token, the workers she is trying to protect aren't rocket scientists.

It's common sense stuff that's designed to keep as many of the hundreds of thousands of people Shemanski is trying to keep safe, safe.

And it's working for Spherion.

"They have seen huge reductions in the cost of risk," Sedgwick's Harvill said.

--By Dan Reynolds

Although it might be a bit out of the ordinary, Susan Shemanski has worked with a variety of non-profit organizations to develop transition duty options for Spherion employees. This could be a tough issue for a temporary help company because the workplace can literally change from day to day.

Employees say that they have found the option of returning to work at a nonprofit, like the Salvation Army often more attractive than returning initially to the site where the injury happened.

And the nonprofit organization benefits because these organizations usually struggle under very tight budgets and can't afford additional staffing help. For her efforts meshing the community into the company's return-to-work program, she is also designated as a Responsibility Leader.