Online safety training

Value-added service helps agencies win new business and create strong exit barriers

By Len Strazewski

From left are Nathan Steffen, Manager of Risk Control Solutions at Universal Insurance Services, Inc., and Account Executive Kimberly Ross.

Loss control and safety training are everyday activities at Fortune 500 employers that keep a close eye on their workers compensation and liability costs. Full-time risk managers and training officers build and execute programs that are designed to reduce dangerous incidents and the resulting claims costs.

But at companies with 1,000 or fewer employees, risk management is often a part-time job and safety training a difficult and expensive proposition—even though executives know they need to comply with state and federal regulations and reduce insurance premiums with good loss control.

Where can they get help? Many turn to their independent agents and brokers who are now able to offer them online safety training services previously available only to Fortune 500 companies.

Nathan Steffen, manager of risk control solutions at Universal Insurance Services, Inc. (UIS), an independent agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan, helped develop the new Risk Control Network for agents that provides Web-based safety training programs developed by Summit Training Source, Inc., (www.safetyontheweb.com) also in Grand Rapids.

The network is the direct result of Universal’s desire to offer comprehensive services and affordable safety training to its own clients, Steffen says.

Four years ago, Steffen joined UIS from the local office of Willis, Inc., an international brokerage company with a large employer customer base and a comprehensive portfolio of risk management and loss control services.

He quickly discovered that UIS—with 112 employees and a diverse client base that includes construction, manufacturing, logistics and transportation, and food processing—had customers with similar compliance requirements and even more urgent needs for services.

“Middle market companies are often in a difficult position,” says Steffen. “Many are trying to get a handle on their costs and initiate programs that can help control their claims without a full-time safety director. Often their only options are to hire a third-party safety trainer—which can be cost prohibitive—or buy safety videos and hope they have the impact they want.”

Kim and Nathan talk strategy with Summit Training Source President Valerie Overheul and Sara Hornik, who handles marketing for Summit.

As Steffen developed a risk control consulting service for UIS, he recognized that training would be a critical component of any risk control program for the agency’s clients. To provide training resources, the agency began a partnership with Summit, which had a national reputation for environmental health and safety training as well as a large library of video and interactive training programs.

Summit provides online interactive training programs that the agency began offering to its customers about two years ago as a value-added service for no charge as part of its own portfolio of services.

According to Account Executive Kimberly Ross, the safety training program has gotten great reviews from clients, and the ability to offer comprehensive risk control services fits in well with their philosophy of service to clients. “We have a total agency commitment to value-added services,” she says.

The agency also provides an online HR and employee benefits resource with the Mywave product from Zywave, Inc. (A feature article about Zywave appeared in the April 2005 issue of Rough Notes.)

“Providing value-added services helps agents differentiate themselves in this competitive market,” she explains. “Middle market companies, in particular, have tremendous needs for service and training that agencies can help provide. The need for safety training is just one good example.”

Ross personally tested the training company’s course in safe driving and was surprised by the ease of access and effectiveness of the interactive program, she says.

Summit has marketed hundreds of videos and interactive training modules to larger employers. Given that the cost can often exceed $10,000 for a single training module, the product was too expensive for many small employers, Ross says.

Due to the response UIS received from its own clients who used the Summit training modules, the agency partnered with Summit to create the Risk Control Network to offer the online training services to other progressive agencies with similar needs. The network provides member agencies and their clients with unlimited access to more than 100 online courses for an annual fee beginning at $28,000, and scaling upward based on agency premium volume.

The Risk Control Network presently has member agencies in seven different states. Exclusive regional access will be limited to about 300 agencies nationwide.

Ross says the network now provides participating agencies with the same training resources that UIS has tested successfully with its own clients, which could provide a competitive edge to agencies in their respective regions.

Valerie Overheul, president of Summit, says the network arrangement also provides her company with access to a broader market of potential customers, especially the middle market employers that do not generally have a full-time safety director or training department and a budget for large-scale training.

She admits the training had previously been available primarily to large employers. In the past, the training company developed video and workshop training programs marketed in conjunction with Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Clients have included IBM Corp. and the U.S. Air Force, among 35,000 other organizations, she says.

Several years ago, the training company began converting its video library to interactive CD-ROM and an Internet-based delivery platform. The company now hosts its online courses on Summit TrainingWeb 2.0™, the latest version of that platform. Overheul says the updated network not only allows students to receive training wherever they access the Internet, but it also gives them more control over their interaction, including the ability to create their own passwords as well as send and receive messages to a training administrator.

As part of the development of the new Risk Control Network, Summit has launched a special portal for the platform that provides tiers of access for partner agencies, their clients and their clients’ employees. Safety news, product information and reports on training activities conducted on the network are also available.

Nathan introduces one of the online training modules.

As the marketing head of the network, Risk Control Network can assign member agencies access to the online training programs. Once approved for access, member agencies can use the site to assign access rights to their own clients.

The client can then grant access to specific employees and assign specific courses to each employee. When employees access the site over the Internet at work or at home, they are met with a list of courses the employer has chosen for them and can begin the course immediately.

Each online course provides a variety of learning activities to introduce and reinforce training topics. The session then ends with a quiz to test the employee’s comprehension of the material. The site automatically bookmarks areas where employees have stopped training, allowing them to return to the program at another time. When employees complete a quiz successfully, they can print out a certificate to document their completion of the course.

Client administrators can also track course completions and generate reports documenting the training activities of employees.

“The partner site provides our network agencies with a complete turn-key operation that allows them to not only provide their clients training programs, but also manage the training activities and provide their clients with access to the training records of their employees,” Ross says.

HNI Risk Services in New Berlin, Wisconsin, has been part of the online training network for about eight months and has more than 100 clients using the Summit interactive trainings, says Matt Bucher, director of sales and marketing.

“The online training services fit so well with what we are about as an agency in providing our clients with the tools to control their cost of risk,” he explains. “Most risk managers understand the power of training in controlling their total cost of risk, but many employers simply do not have the resources dedicated to broad safety training.”

Founded in 1963, the independent agency has 65 employees and generates more than $75 million in premium volume annually. Difficult risks with the potential for high incidence of workers compensation claims, notably construction, manufacturing, and transportation, are the agency specialties, he notes. The agency has a safety and risk control consulting staff that works directly with small to medium-sized clients in developing risk control plans, he adds.

“Our philosophy is to help our clients reduce their total cost of risk through comprehensive risk control techniques. We look for highly motivated clients open to new ideas to reducing their number of incidents and the resulting claims,” Bucher says.

However, small companies may not have a full-time safety trainer or may not be able to gather employees in diverse locations to conduct workshops about safety skills, he explains, describing the need for Web-based training programs.

“The online training programs allow these employers to deliver the training to their employees, where they are, without disrupting their workflow,” he says.

Above is one of the components of the hazardous materials transportation (HMT) training module.

HNI clients receive free access to the online courses as part of the value-added services provided by the agency, Bucher says. So far, clients have most often implemented the back safety and safe driving programs with employees, but several have recently tested Summit’s new hazardous materials transportation training program.

The new seven-part program, released earlier this year, features video, Flash animation, and high-end graphics to create interactive programs that are designed to increase comprehension and retention, the training company says.

Vivid graphics are used to explain concepts such as the hazardous materials chart, vapor space, and shipping papers. The program also covers the new updates to the hazardous materials transportation (HMT) regulations, including security components for all hazardous materials transportation, penalties for non-compliance, and general awareness issues such as security and safe work practices.

Bucher says his agency requested that Summit develop the hazardous materials training on behalf of its trucking industry clients and says the new program has been well received. He anticipates interest in other new programs as they become available from Summit through the agency network.

“I know Summit has hundreds of video training programs that they are converting to the online interactive model, and we look forward to more of these programs becoming available to our clients,” he says. *

For more information:
Risk Control Network, LLC
Web site: www.riskcontrolnetwork.com

The author
Len Strazewski is a Chicago-based freelance writer specializing in marketing, management and technology topics. In addition to contributing to Rough Notes, he has written on insurance for Business Insurance, the Chicago Tribune and Human Resource Executive, among other publications.