It’s a safe bet that the employees of Rolls-Royce North America can guess the name of the man who oversees the company’s workers’ compensation program. Indeed, the firm’s ongoing effort to improve worker safety and cut comp losses—led by Rob Osha, director of risk management—would certainly make the folks at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration happy.
The loss control program also earned RRNA an Honorable Mention in the inaugural National Underwriter “Award For Excellence In Workers’ Compensation Risk Management.”
The initiative to better manage workers’ comp risks was no small undertaking for the company, which nearly doubled in size after a series of acquisitions in the late 1990s brought significantly different operations under the high-profile Rolls-Royce brand.
While the name Rolls-Royce may be most commonly associated with top-of-the-line automobiles, in actuality the multinational company grew via a different mode of transportation. At the time of the acquisitions, “we primarily did aerospace work,” explained Mr. Osha, who noted that the North American branch consisted of three parts:
• Rolls-Royce Canada—which repaired and overhauled aircraft engines.
• Rolls-Royce Corp.—which manufactured small aerospace engines.
• Rolls–Royce Gear systems—which produced aviation gears.
Mr. Osha said Rolls-Royce was looking to “better balance the business” and expand into new industries to better “ride the ups and downs by not being beholden to the aerospace market.”
That objective was achieved through four acquisitions in roughly 18 months, turning RRNA from primarily an aerospace company into what Mr. Osha describes as a “power systems company.”
“By the autumn of 1999, RRNA had acquired four new businesses in the aero, marine and energy sectors, adding 10 locations and approximately 4,000 new employees” to its workforce of roughly 5,000, Mr. Osha said. “RRNA had almost doubled in a little over a year’s time.”
The expansion also meant an enormous change in workers’ comp risk. “These businesses—especially marine and energy—brought a myriad of challenges stemming from the new risk profiles,” Mr. Osha said.
“For example, RRNA had previously not dealt with U.S. Longshore & Harbor exposures and construction risks—on and off-shore,” he noted. “Each business had a unique culture and a different approach to worker safety, loss prevention, and workers’ compensation injury and claims management.”
Suddenly, he added, “we had a lot of field service reps going to places”—like oil rigs and refineries, to work onsite with their clients. “It’s a totally different risk than the guys assembling turbines in the factories.”