Everybody who’s ever worked has a scenario – resentment against the smoker never at his desk, the drinker always out with “flu,” stress about a company’s rumored collapse that causes folks to spend more time worrying and updating resumes than doing their jobs. All behaviors, all “intangibles,” and all a drain on a company’s bottom line, but the human behavior specialists at the Providence Center now have a weapon to fight back.
It’s called “Behavioral Risk Management,” or BRM, and experts say it’s the final frontier for companies that have pared down all they can and still want to cut costs.
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The Providence Center is the first to offer a BRM service in Rhode Island, said Dianne M. Flaherty, LICSW, director of the center’s Workplace Consulting Services, which also includes Employee Assistance Programs (EAP), Wellness Education and Return-to-Work programs.
“The bottom line is behavior costs a company money,” Flaherty said – alcohol and drug use about $100 billion annually, employee pilferage and commercial bribery about $10 billion annually, embezzlement about $4 billion and the turnover of entry level hourly positions between $500 and $1,000 per employee.
And with employment practices liability rapidly becoming the major risk cost factor for most organizations, the need for interventions that control and or reduce the cost of human risk is growing exponentially.
What sets BRM apart from EAPs (which also inspired skepticism when they surfaced in the 1980s and are now an ubiquitous part of corporate life) is that besides recognizing and targeting individual problems, it looks at the employer as well, in what’s called a “behavioral systems approach.”
“It’s also about companies taking responsibility for their own behavior,” Flaherty said, realizing “it’s not just ‘them,’ it’s ‘us,’ too.”
“There’s always a financial consequence;” problems don’t just go away, Flaherty said, and the point for employers is to be savvy to the reality that the “impaired employee who receives services costs less than the impaired employee who’s fired.”
And more than merely drugs and alcohol, behaviors in which BRM is interested run the gamut, from the worker who takes home pens to those who have a hard time managing the balance between family and work. Then there are negative impacts like low job satisfaction and morale, absenteeism and tardiness, increased worker accidents and injuries, increased grievances, lawsuits and the cost of defending them, increased insurance – it just goes on and on.
BRM “makes business sense,” said Linda C. Valianti, marketing communications director for the Providence Center, because it can prevent or mitigate certain losses in the workplace through management action. The hard part, she said, is selling management on the need for assessing the largely intangible sorts of risks that can cause such losses.
While auditors traditionally focus on hard assets like dollars and computers, BRM involves a new way of looking at an organization’s value, one that also encompasses “soft assets” such as human skills, experience and knowledge and intangibles like information, reputation, vendor and customer relations. And in an information-based society, these soft assets are more important than ever.
“It’s extremely comprehensive,” Flaherty said, of the BRM approach. As an agency, their first task in treating a company is compiling an audit based on 26 risk factors in four main categories, from work habits like absenteeism, drug and alcohol use and stress to interpersonal behaviors like employee conflicts, workplace violence and harassment and diversity issues.
They also examine the company in terms of recruitment and pre-employment practices, staff retention, training and development, health care and other benefits and managerial and supervisory practices, which include safety promotion, communication, supervisory styles, performance planning and review and supervisory styles.
A common area of concern in companies is that when employees are promoted to supervisors, and have to manage folks who used to be their peers, they’re not properly trained, Valianti said. In fact, of all the risk behaviors, management and supervisory practices have been found to be the most troublesome. “They set an ongoing and cultural tone, and employees feel that.”
Providence Center professionals then try to figure out what it is about the organization’s practices and procedures that contributes to the problems of its individuals. “We’re the best ones to do this; we’re used to the soft assets,” Valianti said, adding that it’s not only dollars and cents they care about but making folks want to be at work more. “It’s really such a logical way to enhance the workplace.”
And typically, fixes are quite rudimentary, as simple as actually practicing what’s already in a company handbook, Valianti said. For communication snafus it could be as easy as developing or changing a company newsletter or setting up bulletin boards in common areas. A seminar brown bag lunch program can help employees who struggle with issues like elderly care and achieving personal balance. “Employers don’t have to feel daunted,” Valianti said. “Sometimes people can find lost revenues in simple places.”
Flaherty sees unquestionable success ahead for BRM, with other companies, most likely accounting or insurance firms, the next to board the bandwagon. “If there’s money to save, we’re sure we won’t be the only ones,” she said, and the center has already received a number of calls from companies that are interested.
Fees for the service provided are similar to the $100 to $200 per hour normally charged by any other consultant. Total costs depend upon the size of the organization, the number of employees, the time spent there, and how many risk factors are identified and how many they really want to work on, Valianti said.
For more information, call Workplace Consulting Services, a program of The Providence Center, at 520 Hope St., Providence, 276-4035.
