By Aclaimant

Feb 27, 2026

We have reached the final installment of the New Risk Manager’s Playbook. Over the last three posts, we’ve covered auditing your insurance processes, demystifying your tech stack, and navigating legacy vendor relationships.

(Read Part 3 here)

We have reached the final installment of the New Risk Manager’s Playbook. Over the last three posts, we’ve covered auditing your insurance processes, demystifying your tech stack, and navigating legacy vendor relationships.

Now, it’s time to bring it all together to execute on the most important priorities on your list: Becoming a Historian to Build Trust across the organization.

You cannot build a proactive safety and risk culture simply by mandating it. You have to prove its value. To do that, you must use the past to secure buy-in for the future.

Why You Must Become a Historian

"The past is prologue." Before you implement sweeping changes, you need to pull your loss runs for the last 3 to 5 years.

You aren't just looking at the total financial payout; you are looking for the story behind the data. The Pareto Principle almost always applies in risk management: roughly 80% of your severe claims are likely driven by just 20% of your underlying hazard types.

Look for these trends:

  • Frequency vs. Severity: Are you being bled dry by a high frequency of minor slip-and-falls, or are you exposed to infrequent but catastrophic machinery claims?
  • Repeat Offenders: Are specific locations, shifts, or managers consistently producing higher incident rates?
  • The Root Cause: Are claims clustered around new hires (indicating a training gap) or tenured employees (indicating complacency)?

Translating History into Trust

Once you have analyzed the historical data, your next step is to use those insights to build trust with the two most critical groups in your company: the executive team and the frontline workers. You must learn to speak their respective languages.

1. Building Trust with the C-Suite (The Language of ROI) Executives care about strategic growth, margin, and bottom-line protection. When you present your historical findings to the C-Suite, do not just bring a list of problems. Bring the financial impact.

  • Instead of: "We have a lot of manual material handling injuries."
  • Say: "Over the last three years, manual handling injuries have cost us $X in direct claims and $Y in lost productivity. By investing $Z in ergonomic equipment and an updated RMIS platform, we project a 20% reduction in these costs over the next 18 months."

Remember the golden rule of safety investments: OSHA estimates that for every $1 invested in proactive safety and health programs, companies can expect a return of $4 to $6. Lead with that ROI.

2. Building Trust with the Frontline (The Language of Care) The frontline team doesn't care about insurance premiums; they care about getting home safely. To build trust here, you must get out from behind your desk.

Take your historical data to the site managers and the workers on the floor. Ask them why the data looks the way it does. When workers see that you are using data to make their jobs safer and easier, not just to punish them for mistakes, they will become your greatest allies.

In fact, organizations with high employee engagement in hazard reporting see up to a 40% reduction in safety incidents.

The Ultimate Goal: Active Risk Management

The first 90 days in a new risk management role are chaotic. But by following this playbook, you transition your department away from reactive claims processing.

By upgrading your technology, aligning your vendor partners, and using historical data to bridge the gap between the boardroom and the breakroom, you achieve the ultimate goal: Evolving the risk function into a strategic partner that empowers the entire organization to actively manage risk.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How many years of loss runs should a new risk manager analyze? A new risk manager should pull and analyze 3 to 5 years of historical loss runs. This timeframe is long enough to identify statistically significant trends, recurring hazards, and seasonal spikes, but recent enough to accurately reflect the company's current operational realities and culture.

What is the difference between leading and lagging indicators in risk management? Lagging indicators measure incidents that have already occurred, such as workers' compensation claims, recordable injury rates, or loss payouts. Leading indicators are proactive metrics that predict future performance and prevent accidents, such as the number of near-miss reports filed, safety training completion rates, and routine equipment audits.

How can risk managers prove the ROI of safety programs to the C-suite? To prove the ROI of safety programs, risk managers must translate safety metrics into financial terms. This involves calculating the direct costs of past claims (medical payouts, legal fees) and the indirect costs (lost productivity, equipment damage, overtime, higher insurance premiums). Risk managers can then contrast these historical costs against the exact price of a proposed safety intervention (like new RMIS software or PPE) to demonstrate a clear payback period.