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Since accepting the inaugural NU Award For Excellence in Workers’ Compensation Risk Management last year, a lot has been happening for Gary A. Nesbit—both personally, with a big promotion, as well as at the risk management department of his Charlotte, N.C.-based Belk Brothers Department Stores.
• Accident frequency is down 9 percent.
• Loss projections have been reduced by about $400,000.
• The company deepened its commitment to eliminating employee injuries altogether, initiating a Six Sigma program.
Meanwhile, Mr. Nesbit is no longer Belk’s risk manager, having been bumped up to vice president of procurement, facilities and travel. “Now I’m dealing with everything that we buy that we don’t turn around and sell, basically,” he noted.
“The award had everything to do with [the promotion], I’m sure,” he added. “It brought a focus to the [risk management] department—and we have had some pretty good results. What [the award] did was give us some external verification and recognition.”
Mr. Nesbit said Belk is not resting on its laurels, as it is conducting a very specific analysis, using the Six Sigma model, to study unsafe acts, risky conditions and responses to associate injuries in the store.
The project is being headed up by Mark Meek, Belk’s safety manager, assisted by Martha Basco, who assumed Mr. Nesbit’s position as risk manager.
“They’re doing all the things they were doing before and applying a very disciplined problem analysis that started out in the manufacturing industry,” he said. “We’re taking that same approach and applying it to associate accidents.”
The program includes process maps, cause-and-effect diagrams, and failure mode evaluation and analysis, he said.
Mr. Meeks and Ms. Basco are working with other associates in the loss prevention and finance areas. “They’re looking at accidents though a very intensive process- analysis approach,” he said, with the goal of getting as close as possible to zero accidents. “When we started the process, we were running about a 14-to-15 percent accident rate, and now we’re below 5 percent.”