The Welsh Wire: Randy Boss of Ottawa Kent Insurance

One of the first steps in managing risk in your business is to identify what the risks are. And who knows better what risks are out there than the men and women on the front lines: your employees.

“We use as an employee interview system, we actually get a list of the employees that a company will want us to interview confidentially and we ask them what they think the risk issues are,” says Randy Boss, a risk management expert and partner in Ottawa Kent Insurance.

The next step is analyzing the risk data and looking for patterns. “For example, working with a trailer repair company, I saw a lot of injuries and when we looked at what type of safety glasses they were using we found that they didn’t fit properly. A change of suppliers of safety glasses, and voila, all the all the all the injuries went away,” Boss says.

The third step is having a good set of safety policies and procedures that can help control risk issues. Boss recommends setting up a safety committee to get employees to take ownership in having a safe workplace.

“If you do the first three steps, effectively, you’ll get rewarded here on the finance piece,” he says. “One thing we know is that you have to then match the correct finance insurance policy to the risk once it’s lowered. Otherwise, the only one that wins is the insurance company.”

Monitoring and measuring is the final key element of risk management.  “This is where you score how well your plan is operating, and how well it’s working and what needs to be adjusted. And this is where I take ownership if it’s my scorecard as well. So I’m when I’m walking someone through it, this is where I show them the results if their adjustments need to be made. We make them there and and we start all over again.”

Boss’ final risk management suggestion? “You can’t manage risk from the office, you have to get out into the plant, talk to the folks, kind of see what the situation is out there.”

Learn more about managing risk in your small business by listening to Sheri Welsh interview Randy Boss of Ottawa Kent Insurance on The Welsh Wire podcast.

Listen to Sheri’s entire interview with Randy Boss.

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