Why Vigilant Retro? Cutter & Buck’s HR Manager, Andrea, tells us why

Claims Support, Safety & Employment Law

Part 1 of a conversation with Andrea McAuliff, HR manager at Cutter & Buck, about her experience with Vigilant’s workers’ compensation Retro program
 

Why does Cutter & Buck participate in Vigilant’s Workers’ Compensation Retro Group?
First of all, we get great support from Vigilant and second, the complexity of Washington L&I can be overwhelming for me as an HR manager to contemplate without additional support. I feel much more confident with Vigilant as a partner.

What do you value most as a member of the Retro Group?
I truly value our Vigilant claims manager, Carl Yamada! He works with us on our L&I claims and really provides us with expertise on the claims processes as well as providing insight into ongoing Retro Group issues. It’s been so beneficial for us to have someone really get to understand our business and know where our company is coming from and where we need to be. He’s been to our facility, met our employees and really understands the unique aspects of what we do and how our employees work. I can’t speak enough about having someone that knows our company so thoroughly as our claims manager.

What kind of advice do you get from your claims manager?
He’s given us advice on how to present information to employees, how to prevent accidents and protect our employees by making corrections and improvements to our facility with the help of Vigilant’s safety professionals. Between the safety and claims support, he has been incredibly valuable.

Is there one circumstance where your claims manager has really come through for you?
Oh, it’s happened more than once. For example, this past winter we had a really, really, cold day with snow and ice, and that’s just not normal here in Seattle. We had multiple slip and falls in our parking lots, so I reached out to both our Vigilant claims manager and our safety professional to answer some questions about safety and responsibility. The thing that really helped from a claims perspective was our claims manager’s past experience. He didn’t just recite the law and tell us what we had to do to be compliant. He gave us real-life advice we could put in place immediately following the slip and falls. His advice about communicating to our employees was invaluable. We were able to tell our employees that we were taking appropriate actions and warn them of the hazards and let them know what they could do to protect themselves. Our employees were grateful to hear from us and know that we were concerned because they were really worried. Having that immediate access to a claims manager was important.

Andrea talks more about the safety side of the Vigilant Workers’ Comp Retro Program in the second and final part of our conversation with her.