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Risk Fundamentals with Chris Hansen

2023-08-01

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Welcome to RIMScast. Your host is Justin Smulison, Business Content Manager at RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

Chris Hansen is semi-retired and owns Snug Harbor Risk Consulting. He’s a reliable RIMS virtual instructor and he’ll be leading two upcoming virtual workshops — Fundamentals of Risk Management on August 8th and 9th and Managing Worker Compensation, Employer's Liability and Employment Practices in the U.S., on November 7th and 8th. Links to the registration pages are on the education page of RIMS.org and this episode’s notes.

Chris has had a colorful career managing risk and safety for major companies and chains like Pathmark, Rite Aid, and Walmart. He shares the trajectory of his career and his risk philosophy and how fundamentals of risk management and worker comp played a pivotal role in his career path. Chris Hansen is a longtime, continuing member of the RIMS New Jersey Chapter.

Key Takeaways:

[:01] About RIMScast.

[:27] About today’s episode, where we will discuss fundamentals of risk management and Worker Compensation with Chris Hansen of Snug Harbor Risk Consulting.

[:38] All about exciting, upcoming RIMS events! Registration is open for the RIMS Canada Conference 2023, which will be held September 11th–14th in Ottawa! Visit RIMSCanadaConference.ca for more information.

[:59] On September 14th, the Spencer Educational Foundation returns to New York City for its Annual Funding Their Future Gala. The event will be held at the Cipriani on 42nd Street. A link is on this episode’s notes. You can also visit SpencerEd.org.

[1:15] The RIMS Western Regional Conference will be held October 4th–6th in Vail, Colorado. Visit RIMSWesternRegional.com for more information and to register.

[1:27] Head to the RIMS.org/Advocacy page to find information about The RIMS Legislative Summit, which is returning to Washington, D.C. on October 25th and 26th.

[1:41] We are very excited about the RIMS ERM Conference 2023, which will be held November 2nd and 3rd in Denver, Colorado! The theme is Elevate and Evolve. Registration will open soon as will a call for nominations for the ERM Award of Distinction. Visit the events page on RIMS.org for more information.

[2:05] We are accepting educational session submissions for RISKWORLD 2024. See the link to the online submissions form in this episode’s notes. RISKWORLD 2024 will be held May 5th–8th in San Diego!

[2:23] Chris Hansen is a longtime and continuing member of the RIMS New Jersey Chapter. He’s semi-retired and owns Snug Harbor Risk Consulting.

[2:34] Chris is a reliable virtual instructor at RIMS and he’ll be leading two upcoming virtual workshops, Fundamentals of Risk Management, on August 8th and 9th, and Managing Worker Compensation, Employer’s Liability, and Employment Practices in the U.S., on Nov. 7th and 8th. Links to register are on the show notes.

[2:57] Justin talks to Chris about his career managing risk and safety for major companies and chains like Pathmark, Rite Aid, and Walmart and how worker comp and the fundamentals of risk management influenced his career.

[3:23] Justin welcomes Chris Hansen to RIMScast. Chris is a longtime member of the RIMS New Jersey Chapter.

[4:13] With a degree in industrial engineering, Chris started as an engineer for Pathmark Supermarkets. After the insurance crisis of the 1980s, he became the company’s first safety manager. They didn’t know what to do with the position until they had him report to Risk Management. When the Risk Director was promoted, Chris took that role.

[6:21] Chris led a team of great people until the company was acquired about 12 years later. At its biggest, his team was about 20 people, including clerical support staff.

[7:06] In the days before email, if a store had an accident, they filled out a five-part multicolor form and stuck it in the interoffice mail. It showed up in the risk management department after about four days. In the meantime, an injured party was wondering why they weren’t getting a phone call. Email is a big improvement.

[8:21] Chris went to Walmart from Pathmark, He wanted to work for a company too large to be bought by a competitor. He was a divisional safety manager. Eventually, Chris led the Safety and OSHA Compliance Program in Asset Protection for Walmart’s 4,500 retail stores with 1.3 million employees. He focused on reducing loss frequency.

[9:42] After Walmart, Chris went to Rite Aid in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Chris was VP of Risk Management at Rite Aid for about six years. Much had changed in risk management from the time Chris had left Pathmark. At Pathmark, there was no discussion of cyber or employment practice liability.

[10:41] When you’re in retail, but also you’re a healthcare provider, you’re right in the crosshairs. He enjoyed the work and had terrific business partners. Chris retired in the Spring of 2020. One of Chris’s last projects was helping the offices go virtual. The retail stores remained open during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[12:10] Chris’s job was about protecting the employees the best they could and coming up with HR policies on the fly, including pay. The pharmacists had to be there to take care of the patients. After that project, Chris was ready to retire.

[12:54] Chris tells how his risk philosophy changed from Pathmark to Rite Aid. His aha moment happened in 1992. James Carville, a political consultant for Bill Clinton, came up with, “It’s the economy, Stupid!” for the Clinton campaign. Chris printed up a sign, “It’s the frequency, Stupid!” as a risk mantra over his desk and he used it for all his career.

[14:43] If you take care of eliminating accidents, everything else takes care of itself. All risk-associated costs go down if you take care of frequency first. Chris has 28 consecutive years of claim frequency reductions for his employers!

[15:19] RIMS plug time! Sponsor an episode of RIMScast! Contact us at pd@rims.org. For upcoming virtual workshops visit RIMS.org/virtualworkshops for the calendar. Managing Data for ERMs is a three-module course that begins September 21st.

[16:03] Optimizing Risk Management with Artificial Intelligence will be led on September 28th by Pat Saporito. Information about these sessions and others is on the Virtual Workshops page. Check it out and register!

[16:22] The RIMS-CRMP-FED Exam Prep is on August 15th through 17th, 9:00 am–4:00 pm EDT. For anyone attending RIMS Canada on September 10th and 11th, there will be an in-person workshop for the RIMS-CRMP Exam in Ottawa, and it will be led by former RIMS President Chris Mandel.

[16:48] Visit RIMS.org/Certification for these and future workshops. A link is also in this episode’s show notes, as is a link to the full Virtual Workshop calendar.

[17:11] What mindset is needed for the risk leader of a widely-known brand? What’s paramount is that you’ve got to protect the reputation of the organization. When a company fills 300 million scripts a year, even a low error rate can be disastrous. What can happen if there’s a high-profile claim or a data breach?

[18:04] Chris has dealt with floods, fires, stabbings, and shootings throughout his career. Those are high-profile events that have to be handled delicately. You have to be in lock-step with your business partners, public affairs people, and the leadership team. Even dealing with an individual claim, that person’s a customer and they have neighbors.

[18:34] When you’re self-administered for liability claims, you’re not handing the claim off to someone else. You’ve got to treat people equitably, with respect, but at the same time, protect the interests of the company the best that you can. It’s a delicate balance.

[19:23] Chris was at Walmart when an employee was trampled to death at Valley Stream as a store opened on Black Friday in 2008. It was Chris’s first Black Friday at Walmart. He had never seen an event of that scale.

[20:01] Chris was at a store in Union, New Jersey, standing to the side of the entrance when they unlocked the doors and a horde of people came rushing through. There were pallets of televisions down the first aisle. By the time the crown had thinned, there was nothing left but empty pallets and a few boxes that had been stepped on.

[20:29] It was the most surreal thing Chris had ever seen. Shortly after that, Chris got a call from his vice president at the HQ in Arkansas. She asked where he was and how soon could he get to Valley Stream. Pulling into the parking lot, seeing how desolate it was, and seeing police tape around the entrance, is something Chris will never forget.

[21:12] Chris explains the very unfortunate situation. They had started to open the doors to let a pregnant woman through because she was being pushed and the crowd just thought that was the opening. They just came rushing through the doors and an employee who was standing there got trampled and killed.

[21:35] OSHA was there and Chris had to deal with their investigation. Nassau County detectives were there, as it was a crime scene.

[21:54] What happened as a result of that tragedy was that Walmart put together the most comprehensive crowd-control program that had ever existed in retail. They brought in consultants who were specialists in crowd control who had done security for Super Bowls and big arenas. There’s a science to it and Walmart had been a novice.

[22:36] From that point forward, there was a plan and everybody stuck to the plan. They have never seen another tragedy like that again.

[23:11] That particular store, in Nassau County on Long Island, was the closest store to New York City so it was a very congested, high-volume store. Chris has never seen anything that cataclysmic and he never will again, he hopes.

[24:20] As a consultant, Chris is still focused on frequency; preventing accidents, but now it’s personal. When he’s working with power tools around the house or cleaning gutters, preventing accidents is the first thing he thinks about. He asks himself what could go wrong? Have someone hold the ladder!

[25:10] Chris has always felt you have to have good data to manage risk. That means knowing who your business partners are who have that data, whether it’s engineering, HR, or others. Chris is still focused on data, making sure he knows his numbers, At this point, the numbers he focuses on are cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight.

[25:52] Chris has Fundamentals of Risk Management on August 8th and 9th. Registration closes on August 7th. What will Chris be teaching? The course talks about risk management as a corporate function and how it fits into the organization. Chris talks about risk management processes, fundamentals, and procedures.

[26:31] Chris wraps up the seminar by talking about risk management as a profession. From his experience, it’s been a heck of a ride. It’s a profession that he’s very glad to have had an opportunity to work in. “War stories” help Chris cover things in context. If war stories don’t get their attention, he talks about his battle scars.

[27:17] On November 7th and 8th Chris teaches Managing Worker Compensation Employers’ Liability and Employment Practices in the U.S. Chris teaches what is the legal obligation for all employers. It’s very procedural and formula-driven. There are nuances to it, as laws vary by state. Worker Compensation is a state-based system.

[28:01] Chris gives folks the flavor of everything involved the loss control side, the cost containment opportunities to manage claims more effectively, take better care of your people, and get them back to work.

[28:16] From there, Chris teaches Elmployer’s Liability, which comes into play when something involving your employee is not covered under Worker Compensation. It’s a defense policy. Chris wraps up the seminar with Employment Practices Liability, which covers all the bad things that can happen to people and how the policies respond.

[29:02] There are links to registration pages for these courses in the show notes. If you’re a RIMS member, you get the benefit of reduced rates.

[29:15] Chris shares his advice for young risk professionals or anyone considering the risk management profession: “There are two things. The first is to be inquisitive. Ask questions. RIMS has a whole variety of courses available and so many different publications and things. … Risk Management Magazine is a terrific one.”

[30:18] “The other thing I would say is to develop your network and build relationships. Develop relationships with your internal business partners, because risk management is a discipline that touches everything in the organization. And to be effective, you have to have command of pretty much everything that goes on in your organization.”

[30:45] “The other thing I would say is if you’re in driving distance from a RIMS chapter, get involved with that chapter. You’ll get an opportunity to talk to your peers, to share concerns, seek advice and guidance, in real time over lunch, and hear some terrific speakers.” The New Jersey Chapter gets some phenomenal speakers.

[31:46] Justin tells Chris it’s been a real pleasure to see him again. There are links to the two courses on this episode’s show notes. Be sure to pounce on Fundamentals of Risk Management, on August 8th and 9th. Registration closes on August 7th. Justin thanks Chris for joining us on RIMScast.

[32:15] “Special thanks to Chris Hansen for joining me here on RIMScast. He’s had a fascinating career and I’m glad he’s sharing his knowledge in the RIMS Virtual Workshop Series. Register by August 7th for RIMS Fundamentals of Risk Management, a two-day course on August 8th and 9th.”

[32:34] On November 7th and 8th, Chris teachest Managing Worker Compensation, Employer’s Liability, and Employment Practices in the U.S. Links are on this episode’s show notes. RIMS members receive steeply discounted registration rates. Learn more about these and other RIMS virtual workshops through the education page of RIMS.org.

[32:56] You can sponsor a RIMScast episode for this, our weekly show, or a dedicated episode. Links to sponsored episodes are on our show notes. RIMScast has a global audience of risk professionals, legal professionals, students, business leaders, C-Suite executives, and more. Let’s collaborate! Contact pd@rims.org for more information.

[33:39] Become a RIMS member and get access to the tools, thought leadership, and network you need to succeed. Visit RIMS.org/membership or email membershipdept@RIMS.org for more information. The RIMS app is available only for RIMS members! You can find it in the App Store.

[34:02] Risk Knowledge is the RIMS searchable content library that provides relevant information for today’s risk professionals. Materials include RIMS executive reports, survey findings, contributed articles, industry research, benchmarking data, and more.

[34:17] For the best reporting on the profession of risk management, read Risk Management Magazine at RMMagazine.com and check out the blog at RiskManagementMonitor.com. Justin Smulison is Business Content Manager. You can email Justin at Content@RIMS.org.

[34:39] Justin thanks you for your continued support and engagement on social media channels! Listen every week! Stay safe!

Mentioned in this Episode:

NEW FOR MEMBERS! RIMS Mobile App

Submit an Educational Session for RISKWORLD 2024

RIMS ERM Conference 2023 | Nov 2-3 in Denver, CO!

RIMS Canada 2023 — Sept. 11–14 in Ottawa!

Spencer Educational Foundation — Funding Their Future Gala — Sept. 14, 2023

Contribute to Risk Management Magazine
RIMS Western Regional – Oct. 4-6, Vail Colorado

RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP)

Dan Kugler Risk Manager on Campus Grant
Upcoming Virtual Workshops:

Applying and Integrating ERM | August 1

Fundamentals of Risk Management | Aug. 8-9