By Roger Audino, EHS Practice Lead

Last month, I interviewed Mary Gibson, Director of Risk Management at Legends Hospitality, at the NAEM EHS Tech conference to learn more about the challenges she faced being a “one-woman show” focused on everything risk and safety.

The conversation was especially interesting as Mary sits at the nexus of risk, safety, and legal initiatives at Legends. Because of her unique vantage point, she was able to see the impact of safety incidents on workers’ compensation claims costs, something no one else in the organization had insight into. It was on her to go out into the field to have critical conversations to make safety more of a priority.

She recalled that “one of the first things I thought when I started the role was: ‘I need to duplicate myself’”. Since that wasn’t a viable option, Mary looked into the next best thing: utilizing technology to supplement her efforts instead of doing all of her analysis manually in spreadsheets, which brought her to Origami.

Her decision to choose Origami hinged on the system’s ability to grow with the needs of the organization, noting “you can add new functionality to the system without an IT degree.” 

The impact of implementing that system was vast.  She commented, “I now had immediate visibility into the top causes of injury, meaning I knew where to focus my efforts from a legal, safety, financial, and vendor management perspective. It was also an important step in making safety seen as a positive part of the culture.”

When I asked Mary for an example, she recalled being able to use reporting in Origami to automatically identify slips and falls as the number one cause of injury, which led to the recommendation of the purchase of absorbent grippy mats and require slip resistant shoes to reduce incidents. Because Mary was able to point to real-world data to make the case to executives, she was able to justify the expense.

But Legend’s commitment to safety goes beyond the financial investment into safety initiatives — safety soon became pervasive in the organizational culture. “We were able to use the audit and safety meeting functionality to educate all employees across the organization and also leverage it as a training tool,” Mary elaborated. 

Since safety and risk had a strategic role at the table, touching all of the pieces of the organization, Legends was more prepared for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Origami allowed us to be more nimble and adapt quickly,” Mary stated, and pointed to a COVID-19 audit that was created during the pandemic as an example. As a result, Legends was able to positively impact its customers and its employees by continuing operations during the pandemic.

During our discussion, I was especially curious about the metrics indicating the impact of the adoption of technology to manage Legend’s risk and safety programs. Mary mentioned she was able to demonstrate:

• Report lag reduction from nearly 12 days to less than two
• A $200,000 in workers’ compensation claims savings from 2017-2018
• Prevention of personal injury and property damage
• Decreased litigation

It was illuminating to hear directly from a risk and safety professional about how a (very mighty) one-person team supplemented with EHS technology was able to have such a pivotal impact on the culture of safety within the organization.

If you’re interested in hearing Mary’s and other Origami clients’ stories, check out our client panel recording or read our recap blog. If you’d like to talk to me to see Origami in action, request a demo.