Expand Risk Management into Brand Alignment
At C3 Risk & Insurance Services, we recognize that there are plenty of reputable, high quality brokers out there. Most can offer competent claims and safety representatives. What sets C3 apart, and what makes our program an excellent candidate for the 2022 Workers’ Comp Risk Management Award for Excellence, is how we expand risk management into brand alignment, and how we tailor and customize every service we offer to the specific needs of each client.
Our comprehensive program begins, predictably, with safety. But C3 views safety through a different lens than most brokerages. Safety starts with recruiting and building a workforce that is aligned with the company culture. Most companies put a lot of time, effort and resources into building a very intentional internal culture. But the problem is, they often don’t have an external brand that echoes that carefully curated internal culture. C3 offers services to change that.
At C3, the difference is in discovery. What sets us apart is how thoroughly we audit our clients’ operations. Then, we take over their Indeed and Glassdoor profiles and overhaul them to match the internal culture of the company, breathing life into the external brand. When it comes to recruiting and creating alignment of the workforce, this is a crucial step, not only because it gets a company more applicants, but also because when you pick the applicant, the stage has been set for how to behave and how to treat each other. Beyond that, we also bring a video crew out for each client, capturing its operations, as well as interviews with the owner, leadership team and employees. The videos we put together can be used to help underwriters understand the risk they’d be taking on, but they can also be featured online and utilized throughout the new hire orientation process. An applicant sees positive content on Indeed, and once they are hired, that positive message around the culture, vision and mission is reinforced every step of the way.
Company culture has a massive impact on worker’s comp claims. Tough industries are always going to have physical claims, but where a lot of employers run into problems is with what they perceive to be disgruntled claims. Those claims are about culture. If your culture is one of employee care, and an employee sees and feels that from the moment they apply, when a claim does happen, the affected employee is going to be more inclined to give the company the benefit of the doubt that they are approaching the process from a place of care, because there’s a foundation of trust.
The next step is prevention. C3 takes employee safety training to a new level with custom safety training videos provided through a learning management system that we set up through our software, using our clients’ facilities, equipment, policies and procedures. Most safety training doesn’t connect to the individual. Standardized safety training is not specific to the demands of a job, but custom safety training minimizes the frequency of claims by teaching employees the specifics of the machinery they will be operating. We help our clients provide a customized, multi-step training process, where equipment-specific training is provided on video in a controlled environment, then reinforced with hands-on training. When it comes to the battle of cutting down on the frequency of claims, teaching and reinforcing how to properly operate equipment is a company’s greatest weapon.
Once you’ve aligned your external brand with your internal culture and you are recruiting talent to match it and providing that talent with custom safety training, you have established a system that successfully prevents and limits the frequency of claims. But claims are still going to happen, and how you manage those claims will go a long way in keeping you out of litigation.
What we often see happening in the worker’s comp system is the perception of clients that claims are being exaggerated or that disgruntled workers are taking claims to litigation that don’t need to be there. As previously noted, an employee who feels confident that their claim is being approached with in a sincere, loving and expedited manner is less likely to be disgruntled by the process.
Most claims litigate in the first 72 hours and they often litigate because the workers filing are hourly employees who can’t afford to lose their income. If they don’t feel a sense of care and activation of those around them, and they aren’t being provided with a clear path forward, that allows for an environment where they can be influenced to litigate. But, if they are kept in what we call ‘the corridor of care,’ you can often get through the first week without litigating, which is a major milestone.
To that end, every C3 client is enrolled in our Claims Cost Containment Program, which activates all parties in real time as soon as a claim is made. When an employee makes a report, the Claims Cost Containment Program activates immediate notifications to the employer, C3, the treating physician, and the claim representative. The injured employee receives quick, clear communication from someone who speaks to them from a point of care and helps provide them with a path to treatment and resolution. So many of our clients come to us without a sophisticated claims management system, which puts them in a reactive state. Even with a good human resources department and reporting procedure, they are caught behind on every step. The Claims Cost Containment Program allows us to be in front of the claim, every step of the way.
From brand alignment and recruitment to customized safety training and real-time activation of claims management, C3 offers our clients a comprehensive risk management program that is unrivaled in scope and effectiveness. We bring color to the insurance industry to prevent the unexpected and provide a fresh perspective to risk mitigation.
