Fast Break: Culture of Commitment – The Building Blocks of Workplace Safety

Matt Cranney

Welcome to Fast Break. Today we’re tackling a critical topic for small and growing businesses, risk management and safety. It’s not just about avoiding accidents. It’s about building sustainable and resilient business.

Did you know that workplace injuries and illnesses cost US businesses billions of dollars every year? The National Safety Council reported that in 2022, workplace injury costs totaled $171 billion. Effective risk management and safety protocols are essential for protecting your employees, your assets and your bottom line.  

To guide us through this important discussion, we have two experts joining us today. Chris Halverson, Senior Director of Risk Management and Director of R3, our rapid Response and Recovery team from M3 Insurance and Kyle Ricely, Risk Manager from The Employer Group. Guys, welcome to Fast Break.

Chris and Kyle, can you each share a bit about your background and what you do in the field of risk management and safety? Chris, maybe I’ll start with you.

01:00 Chris Halverson

Thanks, Matt. Oh gosh, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the industry, so been with M3 for 21 years. Had the opportunity to build our risk management team and prior to that, I worked in Emergency Management, really focused on prevention, emergency management and firefighting. Prior to that, I worked as a risk manager at a large manufacturing facility, working on property workers compensation programs and prevention.

1:30 Matt Cranney

So you’ve kind of seen risk from all phases as an EMT, and then from a risk manager perspectives. That’s awesome. Kyle, what about you?

1:38 Kyle Ricely

Similar to Chris, I started off at UW Whitewater, got my Occupational Safety degree there with the emphasis in construction. Right away, I started in the heavy construction industry. I did that for a few years between the utility in Chicago and a traveling electrical contractor where I traveled all over the country.

Following that, I came back to Wisconsin after all my travel and I started safety consulting for a few different firms now, and I’ve been doing that for about 7 years. About 3 years ago, too, I wanted to get a little more hands on and a little more in the field as well as I went back to school, got my EMT license, and my firefighter certification. And been doing firefighting for about 3 years, doing about 8 to 10 shifts a month, usually at night or on the weekends.

02:14 Matt Cranney

So, audience, hopefully right away you can get a sense that we have two people here who are on the frontlines and think about risk in a lot of different, a lot of different ways. So we’re in for a real treat in this conversation today.

Why do you believe risk management and safety is so crucial for businesses of all sizes is in today’s increasingly complex world?

02:35 Chris Halverson

Yeah, it’s a great question. And as I think about the importance of profitability with either a smaller business or large business, without adequate risk management controls and employee training, we see time and time again the exposures of either a catastrophic worker that is injured due to lack of controls. Or when we think about property, when we think about sprinkler systems, are they in place? How are they exercised? So those are a couple of key components that we see in the industry that should be addressed and we’ll talk a little bit about that.

But the last thing I’ll kind of highlight on is the changing environment. We see now you know, conductive storms across the Midwest, across the United States, from wildfires on the West Coast. We think of our Midwestern state of increased flooding, and increased tornadoes and conductive straight-line storms that are impacting significantly, which is oftentimes driving that property insurance market.

03:40 Matt Cranney

Yeah it’s fair to say regardless of the size of your business, if you’re listening today and you’re a “solo-preneur”, or if you’re a member of a ten-person organization or five-hundred, a thousand-person organization. The world is a riskier place today than maybe it ever has been. Kyle, what about you? What’s your take on why it’s so crucial for businesses to think about safety?

04:02 Kyle Ricely

Nowadays with OSHA being around the prices of claims going up the hazardous work we’re doing, insurance premiums, there’s no choice really you have what to implement safety into some of these companies and programs. And really not just implementing it but making an initiative, and making it a company goal to reduce these claims and making sure everybody goes home at the end of the day. Without it, you’re having losses go up, premiums go up, and it’s really hard for a company to stay afloat and be an industry leader and bid for jobs with all these high numbers and moderates and everything else going on.

04:31 Matt Cranney

It’s it might be easy to think. Ohh yeah I have to do that, because I care for my employees. Yes, we would say 100%, yes care for our employees and we care for our clients, and we care for the communities where our projects are, and our products are. But also it has a material impact on the bottom line of the organization.

04:49 Chris Halverson

You know when you think about investments of prevention, oftentimes you think about where is the return on investment by implemented some of these programs? But it’s kind, of Kyle talked about is, without it, we’re seeing the increased cost of doing business, increased premiums. And then when you have an employee that has an injury, how much that’s impacting their coworkers, as well as the brand of the company to run efficiently.

So sometimes they’re overwhelming to think about all the different facets of general liability, workers compensation, property, things of those nature that tie into the insurance program. But building that foundation is critical for the success and the profitability of the organization.

05:36 Kyle Ricely

And it’s interesting too, because nowadays I work with a ton of contractors. And there’s a lot of jobs that you can’t even bid if you’re moderate hits over at 1.0. So if you have a high mod, and you’re paying more on your insurance premiums, you’re not able to bid the amount of work that you want to as well. So it really does affect the company overall. Just having the proactive safety program.

05:59 Matt Cranney

Yeah, for anyone that’s listening to, I can’t imagine, but anyone who isn’t familiar with the experience modification factor on your work comp policy, that is the thing that can broaden based on your claims history, that can either provide a discount to your insurance or a load based on that experience.

You know, I always love the phrase like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You know, one of the things from an M3 Elevate piece that we’ve talked about intentionally is we want to help businesses play offense and defense.

And so how have you both seen, you know, strong risk management and safety help businesses play defense or have that sort of, hopefully more than an ounce, but a lot of that prevention.

06:36 Kyle Ricely

Yeah, that’s a good question. But really having in my mind like a strong safety program putting you in a defensible position is a great aspect to have. Whether you think of it as an overall program or as dealing with OSHA.  Without training inspections, rent programs, disciplinary action, and everything else associated with the safety program you don’t really have much of a defense against fighting on some of these OSHA citations.

So until you get a safety program implemented and start having some of this documentation, and putting all these processes together, we won’t be able to defend ourselves against an OSHA citation or another informal.

07:08 Chris Halverson

It is I think about, you know, the importance of identifying what the true exposures of your organization is and a lot of times we think about, hey, let’s look at lagging indicators as an indicator. What we need to get in place and that’s really easy to work with the Elevate team to identify, let’s look at our loss runs.  What have we seen over the last three to five years of history that you can tie into creating new programs that oftentimes don’t take a long time to complete but definitely has a significant impact.

And then kind of getting to that best practice of let’s get leading indicators, how can you identify what your new exposures could be either through that assessment of your organization identifying all those different controls as well as what we call sometimes near hits or near misses that, hey, something could have happened that should be an indicator to say what additional program should we have in place.

08:04 Matt Cranney

Yeah. Sometimes people think that it’s leading or lagging indicators, right. And we sort of put a real focus on like, hey we the more that we can have leading is better, lagging is not good, we need leading and lagging indicators to really help build that holistic view of an effective safety program. Thanks for calling that out. I really, really appreciate that.

But again, coming back, Chris, do you do you have a story of where you’ve seen maybe a business play defense really well through their risk and safety, attitudes and programs?

08:34 Chris Halverson

Many of our clients that that do best in class when you think about the proactive approach to safety and a lot of times we call it the “culture of safety”. And the example I’ll use is a conference that I was just at with one of our clients that tied in what’s called the “Culture of Commitment”.

So when you think about the culture of safety, but they really looked at how do they change the organizations team effort? Because when you think about leading from the top, they do the reverse of leading from the shop floor, or that store employee to have an understanding of what’s the true goals of the company and they’re a part of that organization. And they’ve literally driven down their experience mod that years ago, it was as Kyle talked about the experience mod when think about it as the average is 1. So they compare you to everyone else in your industry, they’re at, like a 1.3. And over the last five years, they’re down in the point sixes. So they’re 40% below industry average because they tied in of bringing all their employees to having understanding their goals. And they’re a part of the goals and strategies to reduce down loss and keeping them at work if an incident does happen.

09:49 Matt Cranney

Kyle, what about you?

09:49 Kyle Ricely

Honestly, when I work with clients, my main goal is to put some of these companies in a good, defensible position. I can go story after story, but the one I’m thinking of is my plumber in Chicago, before we started working with them, they had a very high mod, kind of like what Chris was saying after about three years of working with them, their mod was below one, they were retaining employees and tracking new employees. They were bidding more jobs than ever. They’re saving so much money on their insurance premium. Some of that money went back into the company.

But it’s really interesting because there is a couple number of clients that I’ve worked with now, but I knocked on their door years ago and I was like, hey, I’m Kyle, this is what we do and I want to help enhance your safety program. Like, no, we don’t need anything. Two weeks later, somebody gets hurt, OSHA comes knocking and they call me back.

Now, that’s a reactive kind of culture there. If we were proactive and we had all these things in the play, I can defend any client of ours against any type of OSHA informal, but you have to have all that stuff proactively complete being in a good, defensible position to be able to handle that properly.

10:46 Matt Cranney

Couple things that I want to just emphasize for our audience. The idea of being proactive versus reactive with your safety efforts, the more that you can be in the former versus the later, the better you are.

Chris, you talked about, hey, a culture of safety is great, we want that. But more than that, we want a culture of commitment from everybody in that organization to know that they have a role, and even if you’re not a dedicated risk manager at that organization or you know have in formal in your title, everybody can help contribute to that.

And I love that call safety is a team sport. The more that we can work togetherfrom a client perspective with, with the likes of you guys to be able to enforce that in your organization I think is fantastic.

So one of the things we try and be on the Fast Break always is really, really practical for people listening so that they can, you know, as I listen to us in the car, on a jog or wherever they are, they can take something away from this, that they can do today, tomorrow, that moves them in in a in a better direction. What are just some really practical first steps that they can do to create safe work environments. Maybe Chris, I’ll come to you first.

11:52 Chris Halverson

Having understanding of what are the current exposures when you think about workers compensation and employee safety. And I think a good starting point is what has been the history of your organization, what types of losses have you had as we always think about, as Kyle indicated, of OSHA, we’re all afraid of that four-letter word. OSHA, coming on site. But if you can kind of look at what you’ve had for losses and if you haven’t had any losses, I always recommend going into OSHA.gov, which will you can pull up your specific industry code and identify what has OSHA looked at in your organization for regulatory compliance, which will then kind of build out of here are the five programs we need to establish an organization.

That’s a really good starting point, Matt, when you think about the work-comp side, when I think about the property protection, or the business continuity, your emergency action plans. Those are some other considerations.

Not to overwhelm the audience, but thinking about, number one, is your employee safety. And then you can kind of build those blocks to move forward to say, now let’s look at our property. Let’s look at if we’ve got customers onsite, or customers coming into our parking lot, what controls do we have in place and if we don’t have any, let’s build that next block to build that complete foundation of protection of your organization.

13:19 Matt Cranney

The idea of your safety mentality being instead of building blocks and wherever you start it can all stack together. You know, it’s easy if you’re listening today and you run a construction company. Yep. I got to have a safe culture. It’s another thing if you’re sitting here, you know, as an office based business or, a sales organization or a small tech organization you have risk too.

I think all of us would say we’ve all seen loss runs and claim examples from people falling off a chair in an office that can somehow run into hundreds of thousands of dollars, by the time that medical bills and surgeries are done. And again, we talked about, it’s not just safety as a team sport, safety is an everybody thing. Kyle, what about you in terms of those practical first steps that you would offer?

14:04 Kyle Ricely

Safety is a really complex thing, but it can be simplified and really, once you simplify it, you create a plan, take it one by one. It’s kind of like running in my mind. The hardest step is that first step out the door and then you just keep going.

So we actually just had a meeting last week and a client reached out saying, hey, we know we’re not doing this, this and this and we want to have an effective safety program. Can you please help us start? So, so right away, we’re going to meet the management, we’re going to meet the employees in the field. We’re doing assessments of the job sites and everything else, and really just running through all what they have existing and putting a little gap analysis together and tell them this is what we’re doing great and this is where we need a little work. So again, identifying what we need and how to implement it too.

14:43 Matt Cranney

Well said. And I think we’d be remiss too if we didn’t add there are experts out there that businesses can reach out to and connect with like the two of you to be able to partner on that, to be able to figure out where exactly to start. If it truly feels like I just don’t know where to start. Please know they’re in the same way that you know, people feel that way about prior ups as we had about taxation or financial planning. Well, I have a great tax person. I have a great financial planner. Who do you have that’s speaking into your business from a safety perspective?

So we talked about how we get started. But you know, we’re talking today it’s 2025, right, and technology is everywhere in all areas of our lives, so I’m curious for both of you what role, if any, are you seeing technology play in modern risk management and safety?

15:32 Kyle Ricely

For me, some of the technology that we use internally at M3, and The Employer Group has just increased efficiency tenfold. So like before, at the last company I worked at, I would go to the job site. I’d take my observations and then I’d go back to a computer, and one photo type of paragraph. One photo type of paragraph. I’d probably do two a day. Now with the technology and some of the software and the safety inspection, the software that we’re using, I can do 5 + a day, do most of it in my truck and give those clients quality reports at a much faster pace than I ever could.

And then there’s other some other software that we have internally at M3 called GenPRO, which really just helps us develop all these programs, forms, documents that would probably take us eight hours to write. But with some of the technology and AI we have, it can develop probably a better document than any of us could put together in a much shorter amount of time.

16:25 Chris Halverson

Common ones that we see today is is automation through ergonomic solutions for, TuMeke, it’s called. We utilize that to kind of help identify stressors for employees. Bending, twisting, lifting, and how we can eliminate that through AI technology which is really nice to see musculoskeletal exposures and how you correct those through behaviors or through engineering changes.

Kyle talked about trying to look at how do we do efficient audits of operations. So there’s tools out there AI automated, such as, you know, safety reports that we utilize in our company. What I like about even sometimes with Google, you can go into AI to say what is the compliance regulation for this specific topic. It’s going to pull things very quickly for you to kind of help you be successful.

The other thing I think about too, fleet management. We see huge exposures with negligent entrustment where you as an employer should know the driving records of your employees. So we always recommend looking at what that automation looks like, so there’s many different software vendors that will help monitor those drivers. As well as maintain what insurance limits, if they’re using their own personal vehicles for your business, to make sure you have some controls, that’s where we’re seeing some larger insurance exposures. If you don’t have those adequate controls in place.

17:48 Matt Cranney

We’ve talked about tech being something that is here now and also probably more coming. What maybe some other emerging trends or best practices in risk management safety that if I’m a business owner today that I really should be thinking about now, Chris, more of your sort of you know prevention versus cure piece?

18:07 Chris Halverson

Fleet safety controls and making sure there’s accountability in place. That’s a huge room that we’re seeing in the marketplace today that’s impacting insurance programs. If there’s not adequate controls in place.

We kind of highlight a little bit of the changing environmental exposures. Conductive storms, things of that nature. So oftentimes they’re tough to look at. It’s not a leading indicator, but how do you change your philosophy of how do we make sure employees are safe? What’s your evacuation routes to make sure that we can get either your customer into a safe location or your employees and have that accountability in place?

You know, other things that we see too, is the challenges with work comp. We know it’s very expensive and we’ll continue to see the rise in medical costs in the industry, but it’s an opportunity as they look at that leading indicator, how do we look at where they’re getting treated at in Wisconsin, you can’t direct care, but we can also soft channel them to the correct location to have a significant impact on the overall expense of that particular injury, but then you as an employer are controlling that as well.

I think, Matt, prior podcasts you’ve had on cyber risk we won’t highlight on that today, but that’s another continued emerging risk that we see out in the marketplace.

19:24 Matt Cranney

Yeah, what a great connection Chris, something that most people might not think about from a safety perspective. But when you think about a business holistically and you think about just risk the online risk, the cyber risk is real, and again something that we’ve talked about in past episodes. But Kyle, what about you emerging trends or things that you’re saying that you would want business owners to be keeping their eyes and ears on?

19:49 Kyle Ricely

So some trends I’m seeing as it’s not enough just to be compliant, but I’m seeing a lot of clients go above and beyond OSHA regulations. So OSHA requires a trench box after 5 foot. I’m seeing a lot more companies have 4-foot requirements and more rules like that.

And actually this is a Mike Lowe quote, but just because you’re compliant, it does not mean that you’re out of danger. So just because we’re following all these OSHA standards, it doesn’t mean that there’s not a lot of hazards on this job. So keep your head on a swivel. Be aware of what’s going on around you. Yes, I wanna get you home at the end of the day. But it’s also that employees responsibility to help get themselves home at the end of the day. So going for me, going above and beyond OSHA regulations is a huge step.

20:29 Matt Cranney

Essentially just that idea. I mean, it’s a great thought to close on, which is, you know, risk is not a problem to solve its attention to manage. Our ability to always know maybe there’s some small areas where you can eliminate the risk completely and some things, and if you can you should, great. But if you’re a construction company, you’re not going to stop building. If you’re a trucking company, you’re not going to stop driving. And so these are the things that at great risk and safety mindset and attitude and culture, Chris, like you called out before, is really what gives you that best chance to protect the business, get everybody home safe at the end of the day to take care of your customers, to be able to grow your business. So what an awesome conversation.

But before I let you go, as always, it’s time for our fastest break set of questions. We’ll go rapid fire. Chris. I’ll come to you first favorite book, you’ve read in the last 12 months.

21:18 Chris Halverson

Succeeding Without Stepping In It. It’s a great book on the generations and how do you succeed through leadership, so recommend that.

21:26 Matt Cranney

Awesome how? What about you?

21:28 Kyle Ricely

Stream Ownership by Jocko Willink, a Navy SEAL book on leadership your dream ownership responsibilities on the job.

21:35 Matt Cranney

Complete the sentence for you. Chris leadership is.

21:38 Chris Halverson

A set of mindsets and behaviors that aligns people in collective direction, enabling them to work together successfully.

21:45 Matt Cranney

Whoa. Love that. OK, Kyle what about you? Kyle, what’s leadership for you?

21:53 Kyle Ricely

For me, it’s not just telling people to do something and saying something, but it’s doing it Yourself and building that respect yourself, not just expecting it.

22:01 Matt Cranney

Setting the example, setting the tone. The most impactful piece of professional advice you’ve ever received, Chris.

22:06 Chris Halverson

Gosh, this goes way back with my dad, that work construction, you know, blue collar worker. He’s like you need to work hard with confidence, and strive, you know, moving forward with success. So that’s going to stuck in my brain of sometimes it’s tough to shut it off because I sometimes work too hard. But you got to enjoy life.

22:26 Matt Cranney

Yeah. Love that. What about for you, Kyle?

22:29 Kyle Ricely

When I was just starting off in this industry, if you do not know an answer to a question, don’t make up an answer on the spot. Admit right then and there. I don’t know, but I will get back to you, and then own up to your mistakes as well. Builds up a lot of respect, especially with some construction workers on site.

22:46 Matt Cranney

Yeah. Love that, Chris, your favorite podcast that you would recommend to our audience.

22:50 Chris Halverson

I’m geeky, Matt, so you know, I  listen to the insurance journal. So nothing that you know, most people listen to. But I love to be apprise what’s going on in the industry.

23:00 Matt Cranney

Love that, Kyle. What about for your favorite podcast?

23:02 Kyle Ricely

For me, I have a lot of windshield time. I listen to a lot of Joe Rogan, the Sean Ryan show, Gary Bracca, stuff like that.

23:10 Matt Cranney

Chris, you can’t live without it app on your phone.

23:12 Chris Halverson

Google Maps.

23:13 Kyle Ricely

Oh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one.

23:13 Matt Cranney

Yeah, another vote for maps. Everybody almost everybody says maps. Yep.

23:16 Chris Halverson

I can get rid of everything else. But I need that.

23:20 Matt Cranney

Kyle, what about you?

23:21 Kyle Ricely

I like that answer, but I’m kind of a health freak, too. And there’s this app called Yuka, to where you can go to the grocery store and scan all the bar codes on your food, and they’ll tell you tell you don’t eat. This is bad for you or eat. This is good for you and tells you all the ingredients in it, OK? And now I have limited my shopping list greatly because of it.

23:37 Matt Cranney

OK, well I might be scared to download that for what I’ve learned. So OK, Chris, name the last thing you did that truly scared you.

23:45 Chris Halverson

I had to head down to Milwaukee to a meeting a week and a half ago. So heading into Waukesha heavy downpour and a car passed me in the left doing 70, hit a hydroplane and spun out in front of me. It hit the embankment twice, spun in front of my truck. I didn’t hit it. But I thought I was done. So that was scary.

24:04 Matt Cranney

Oh man. OK, well, that’s definitely the scariest answer we’ve ever had on. You’ve got the you, you got the title right now, man. OK, Kyle, what about you?

24:13 Kyle Ricely

So for me, I have no issue entering burning buildings or car scenes, medical scenes, anything like that. And Chris was there for this. But for me, it’s flying. We flew to Nashville,  Tennessee, somewhere that a few months ago and he saw me shaking like a baby.

24:29 Chris Halverson

I had to hold his hand.

24:31 Matt Cranney

Hey, good job, Chris. Yeah, good job, Chris. OK, last question, guys, if you were to give a Ted talk, what would be its title, Chris?

24:41 Chris Halverson

You know, with my reactive approach to my role with director of Disaster Response Recovery, mine would be a podcast on cat-loss, “How to Rise From the Ashes”

24:50 Matt Cranney

Ohh, I like that. I like that I would subscribe. I would subscribe for sure. Kyle, what about you for this one?

24:55 Kyle Ricely

I struggled to think of a name, but in college, my friends had a Twitter page for me called Ricely Reality TV because I would just say and do outrageous things, and they recorded them posted and it would get like a ton of likes.

25:07 Matt Cranney

Two very different Ted talks for our audience to we move. Yeah. Yeah. OK, guys, well done. Before we close, if we have people in our audience who have listened today and so they’d love to connect with, you know, you guys, can you share with our audience where they can find out more about you and the best way to get connected. Chris do you want to go first?

25:28 Chris Halverson

Yeah, absolutely. I would recommend going on M3Ins.com and see contact information for myself or any of our other risk manager team members. That we’re happy to reach out answer any questions. So Chris.Halverson@m3is.com, but yeah, just go to our website M3Ins.com is the easiest.

25:46 Matt Cranney

What about you?

25:47 Kyle Ricely

Similar for me is just go to theemployergroup.com and look up the safety consulting tab. All my contact information will be there but kyle.ricely@theemployergroup.com, e-mail me. You shoot me a text, or any other means.

26:00 Matt Cranney

Awesome. OK, Chris. Kyle, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights into the world of risk and safety with our audience. This has been an incredible conversation. We really appreciate it.

This has been Fast Break brought to you by M3 Elevate. I’m Matt Cranney, thank you for joining me. Do you want more tips to grow protect your business? Subscribe now and catch all of our episodes and we’ll see you next time.