Manage Employees, Manage Risk

In the wake of a hemorrhaging of “nuclear verdicts” by juries against companies in liability cases—such judgments roughly quadrupled to more than $18 billion in the U.S. in 2022 from less than $5 billion in 2020—manufacturing chiefs must prioritize risk management. And that means paying attention to people as well as processes.

Brian Gerritsen, assistant vice president and manufacturing segment leader for Travelers Insurance, and Vincent Catteruccia, a consultant and health-services manager for the foundry company Neenah Enterprises, advised these steps:

Create a safety culture. “Protect your business by applying regulations and safety standards,” Gerritsen said. “Plan for the worst.”

Prize your “athletes.” Think of your manufacturing employees as “industrial athletes,” Catteruccia urged. Plant employees “work 10 or 12 hours and sometimes six days a week; one day off is not truly time to recover. They’re truly athletes.” So “take that into account with [paid time off] and general fatigability.” For that and other reasons, Neenah Enterprises runs an in-house medical clinic.

Level up. Democratize the workplace to the extent possible, largely for the sensibilities of younger generations. For Neenah Enterprises, this was as simple as moving the health services and safety department into the corporate-headquarters business so leaders and employees interacted more.

Don’t rely on data alone. There’s no substitute for “going onto the plant floor and meeting people and shaking hands,” Caterruccia said. “If you’re just being driven by the numbers, you won’t hit the level of humanity you need to hit.”

Be wary of temps. “Leased employees do fulfill a [labor] need, but you can’t rely on what you’re being told by the [agency] about a person’s qualifications,” Gerritsen said. “You need to validate that yourself. Accidents happen by people who are alleged to be qualified but aren’t.”