Best Insurance Policy: Make Safety And Risk Management Top Priority

The foundation of every successful propane company is built on a solid safety and risk management program. The propane industry does an excellent job ensuring service technician personnel receive proper safety training, certification, and continuing education classes, and stringent best-practice safety guidelines are made a top priority. What does your company do to ensure that safety is made a top priority in every aspect of the business? Does your company have a safety and risk management plan in place that demonstrates and documents this commitment to safety?

Legal professionals advise that propane marketers be vigilant about adhering to stringent safety protocols across all areas of the business and to document such efforts. Having a risk management program positions your business on a solid foundation and helps to limit potential liability issues.

A common perception among the general public is that the propane delivery business includes inherent risk. In order for a propane company to protect itself, its employees, and its customers, safety must be made the highest priority and evidenced as such throughout all aspects of the business. Safety should be at the forefront of every activity as propane companies daily serve their customers. One thing is certain: Making safety a top priority will be your company’s most economical insurance policy.

A vital component to cultivating a culture of safety for propane marketers is the implementation of a risk management program that identifies inherent risks in the propane delivery process and identifies and documents how these risks are to be handled in each area of the business. Safety and risk management are inseparable.

It’s important to recognize that risk management is a team responsibility and each team member plays a vital role in risk management success, including the following:

1.  Company owners and corporate managers

2.  Legal and insurance (attorney and insurance carrier)

3.  Safety training, continuing education

4.  Service technicians

5.  Office personnel

Several key areas should be considered in the development and implementation of a risk management program, including:

• Hiring, and training high-quality workers

• Providing certified safety training and continuing education

Proper safety training often is a common issue in liability case litigation. Cross-examination questions likely may include, “Was the service technician trained properly? Was the service technician trained to do this specific task? Did he/she follow proper training protocols?”

It is especially important that all training be meticulously documented and records kept up-to-date. Legal professionals recommend documenting all safety meetings, including the date, what was discussed, and who was in attendance.

• Mergers and acquisitions, and the absorption of new employees, should also be addressed in a risk management program. In the event of a lawsuit, providing documentation that industry best practices were followed as outlined in a safety and risk management plan serves as evidence that the company attempted to meet safety standards and eliminate risk. Companies should be aware that they would be expected to prove that new or acquired employees were trained according to the standards of the parent company. If the case were to be litigated, questions could arise regarding how the computer systems of the companies were merged; were employee records correctly merged and documented? Were employees uniformly trained according to industry safety training procedures? Were safety training records documented?

Should a case ever go to trial you can be certain that your company will be held to high safety standards. During litigation expect to be asked for documents and testimony regarding every aspect of your company’s safety training and risk management protocols, including:

1. Was the task or inspection done?
2. Was it documented?
3. Was the person properly trained to perform the task?
4. Was the task performed correctly?
5. What was the scope of the inspection?
6. Was the inspection done carefully? For instance, issues will often be raised to cause doubt in the jury member’s mind, such as, “Was this the technician’s last job before going on vacation for two weeks? The first job back after being on vacation? Each and every detail will be minutely examined and for this reason, it is imperative that every aspect of your company’s safety program be examined for best practices, be documented, and every action taken regarding a safety issue that arises be documented.
7. What is the age of the equipment being used? What parts have been replaced? When was the equipment taken out of service and replaced?
8. Did new employees (from a merger) receive refresher courses?
9. Did an employee who made a mistake receive retraining courses?
10. What is the protocol for a leak check on an out-of-gas/interruption of service situation?
11. What is the propane company’s responsibility in inspecting a system that was installed by another company?
12. Were customers warned that failure to follow proper safety guidelines is dangerous? For example, it could be a claim in a court case that, “You didn’t tell me propane was dangerous.”
13. Propane marketers need to be on the lookout for DIY installations and be knowledgeable about how to address those situations.
14. Annual duty-to-warn mailings, including a PERC safety booklet and/or brochure, should be mailed to customers by an independent third-party mailing service. U.S. Postal Service reports should be kept on file with additional mailing documentation, including the mailing list that it was sent to, to serve as verification that the company made every effort to provide customers proper safety information. The safety mailing documentation should always be sent to the company and upon arrival, the company should file the unopened safety mailing with other associated documentation. This serves as credible evidence should a company ever need to provide such documentation.
15. Past propane lawsuits reveal that an important issue is how a propane company handles a customer who calls with a safety concern. It is critical that the company has in place uniform safety protocols to handle customer concerns or emergency call situations. Questions that could come up during litigation include:

• What was the training of the person answering the phone?
• Was the customer call handled per company procedures?
• What is the company’s standard “after-hours call-in” procedure?
• Were after-hours calls answered in a timely fashion?

An important component of a safety & risk management program is how safety-related phone calls are handled both during and after business hours. If a customer calls about a suspected gas leak, how have employees or an answering service been instructed to handle the urgency of the situation? Does your company have guidelines to be followed and has it documented that employees were trained in accordance with safety guidelines? What about the answering service? Is each such call documented?

In cases involving propane litigation, a jury often holds a propane company to the highest of safety standards. If documentation is not complete, a jury may assume that something was not done, or was not done properly. The jury may then come to the conclusion that, “this is not a safe company.”

These common assumptions require that a business documents every aspect of its safety program including: employee safety training, safety meetings, safety manuals, customer agreements, maintenance and delivery records, continuing education documentation, telephone calls and emails concerning safety, and after-hours telephone call documentation.

Learning from near misses or propane incidents, locally, regionally and across the country, is critical to prudent risk management. The only real mistake is when we don’t learn from a mistake. Experience is a tough teacher. She gives the test first and the answers later.

Review your company’s safety and risk management program now before the busy winter season arrives. Ensuring that your company has implemented a top-notch safety program is the best, and least expensive, insurance policy you can have.