Risk Management is the process of managing uncertain exposures that have some effect on a business or organizations assets and financials. (Notice I didn’t say eliminate exposure but used the word manage. That’s an important distinction!) To accomplish this goal Risk Managers use these five steps: Identification, Analysis, Control, Financing and Administration. So in this blog we’re going to discuss the import part that workers compensation consulting plays in the risk management process.
The field of risk management is dynamic. It’s constantly changing and improving. Two distinct disciplines of risk management have emerged and are today in practice. They are Traditional Risk Management and Enterprise Risk Management. The difference is generally explained something like this, where traditional risk management is the practice of identifying and controlling risk using the five steps mentioned above enterprise risk management is the practice of collecting and analyzing the data generated from traditional risk management within the context of the whole entity or business. In a recent class, Enterprise Risk Management was defined by the instructor as including management of risk “from the board room to the store-room and everything in between.”
Risk managers will often call on the services of an outside consulting firm to provide special help with projects. You’ll typically find risk managers calling on workers comp consultants to provide assistance when:
- Their organization does not have the internal expertise for a specific project;
- They are looking for an independent view of a specific situation;
- When they are under some type of deadline and their internal staff is busy with other projects;
- When their board has request outside verification of internal findings;
- When it makes more sense from a cost perspective.
Workers compensation consultants provide assistance to risk managers in a variety of specialized fields including performance of:
- Claim reviews;
- Experience modification reviews or EMR;
- Classification code reviews;
- Audit reviews;
- Retrospective adjustment reviews;
- WRAP up reviews;
- Along with a variety of other issues like benefit reviews.
So as you can see, workers compensation consultants provide a variety of additional, independent services to a risk manager. Services that help them do their job for their organization!
If you are a risk manager and need assistance with a specific project be sure to contact an independent workers compensation consultant!
Hope this helps you out and thanks for reading!
