Amid excitement of return to work, businesses must be flexible, protective, in face of storms

It has been beyond heartening to see members of my team hitting the road again on visits to our agents and brokers, to trade shows and conventions, and — best of all — to see them spending time with one another again. I know from conversations with my peers across industries that I am not alone in feeling like some semblance of “business as usual” is being restored as vaccinated employees resume travel while abiding by the precautions and protocols we have carefully outlined to keep them safe. I also know the feeling of dreading any potential setbacks to this very welcome normalcy. But it is critically important ahead of the late summer storm season that business owners remember the importance of contingency planning to pull workers out of harm’s way, even if it means feeling like you’re taking a step back from the hum of a bustling in-person business.?

As I’m the CEO of a workers compensation Insurtech, many people expect me to leave worrying over natural catastrophes (or Nat CATs) to my peers in the P&C C-Suites. But in fact, as this particularly prescient article from Business Insurance in 2019 reported, “Natural catastrophes can cause significant disruptions in the workers compensation sector ranging from interrupting medical care and payments for injured workers to displacing the employees at insurers and third-party administrators charged with handling their cases to triggering an uptick in claims from first responders after events.” As Foresight centers the safety of our insureds at the heart of everything we do, the same seasonal trends that trigger large losses in the P&C sector always make me worry for the wellbeing of the people at work in the companies we serve.?

After any sort of disruption — whether it’s due to a pandemic illness like COVID-19, a late season storm like Hurricane Sandy that can shut down the entire Northeast, or the wildfires that have recently ravaged Wine Country in California (and, recently, my home country of Australia) — business owners just want to be made whole and get back to being fully operational again. It can feel like a devastating setback to call your workforce back to their remote offices, or to delay a building plan again, or to have to write off an entire harvest. As leaders, we are constantly weighing risk and reward. But when what is at stake are the lives and livelihoods of our employees, we must err on the side of safety.

As Nat CATs have steadily increased in frequency and severity, year over year, we’ve also seen storms blur their traditional geographic boundaries. Hurricanes have steamed further inland, wildfires have broadened their reach, and tornadoes no longer stick to the loosely defined “Tornado Alley” of decades past. In fact, recently, one of my staff members huddled with her children in her basement at midnight because of a tornado that touched down in the Chicago suburbs. Chicago may be nicknamed “The Windy City,” but it is most certainly not what we typically think of as tornado territory. The EF-3 her family hid from had winds of 140 miles per hour.?

Surely the solution is not to shy away from doing business boldly, but in fact to continue to innovate and become more agile in how we work. Finding the right insurance partner is mission critical in this current environment, and a data-driven, safety-oriented Insurtech like Foresight can help identify the exposures that threaten your employees’ wellbeing and provide you with recommendations to prevent injuries and claims. Become conditioned to having a back-up plan in the face of inclimate weather or threats from pandemic illness. We have all lived through something that we hope we never have to live through again — but if we do, we can leverage the learnings we have and do so without missing a beat. This kind of thinking feeds into the risk management guidelines and recommendations our clients receive via our proprietary technology platform, as well as a safety score to help them know how they’re doing in their efforts to be agile and prepared for what may come.

There will always be setbacks to business as usual, and insurance exists for that very reason. A carrier that helps you roll with the punches while thinking ahead of the coming storm is an investment that will pay dividends — and potentially save lives.