Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Buyers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKOM, and I’m the host of this program. And joining me today, Colin Rooke, the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Buyers. Colin, we tend on this program to respond to things that are timely in the news as well as the more broad, general kind of themes that we pop up with, such as, say, for example, cyber or data protection.

But today we’re going to talk a little bit about something that’s really timely in terms of news coverage, and it’s just you’d really be hard-pressed to operate in this country right now without bumping into the news story that says forest fires, wildfires, everywhere you look from BC to Newfoundland. Every province is experiencing it. We’ve got firefighters coming from all over the world to assist us, and it’s got us into the conversation around climate change, all of that sort of stuff. But I’m just wondering, that’s sort of the news part of it. What’s the insurance part of this story? And it’s not something we talk about. So perhaps on this program, we can provide a bit of insight to business owners and those responsible for managing enterprises and looking after corporate assets. These wildfires, something we should be talking about? I mean, is it the topic that business people need to pay a little attention to?

It really is. When it comes to the topic of just wildfires in general, I think there’s a lot to be learned. For example, you think, okay, when it comes to the wildfire itself, there’s actually three different types of damage, four really that occur, and most will not think through that.

I mean, you’ve got direct flames, so that’s the obvious one. I’m way too close to an out of control fire, and as a result, my building, my property caught fire. However, another huge culprit are the airborne embers, where again, pieces, hot coal, burning pieces are in the air and they can travel hundreds of kilometers and start new fires. And then you’ve got impacts from radiant heat. So you might be a ways away from the fire, but then you’ve got this extreme heat that will melt and damage properties. So you see that a ton of all these surrounding buildings that again, didn’t catch fire but then you come back and you say, oh, I dodged that. They wanted us to evacuate. We’re so fortunate that we got out of the path. And then you arrive to your property and everything’s melted. And then sort of the fourth big one, and I think that’s talked about the least, is the impact from smoke. So really anywhere there’s smoke as a rule, there’s damage. So you think about –

Where there’s smoke, there’s damage? We’ve just changed that old adage?

Yeah, so you think about the fires that everyone knows about so Fort McMurray fires. And yes, there’s a lot of buildings caught fire, but the resulting damage of those fires to the homes in Fort McMurray were actually smoke related. So there were certainly airborne embers. There was damage, but the real culprit was how thick the smoke is. So if you could imagine you’ve left your home in Fort McMurray, it’s so hot, the windows have burst, but your home never actually does catch flames. Just think about how much smoke was inside those homes for so long and what the inside would be like when you returned. And actually the damage itself got most of the press. And of course it all adds to the overall number. But when you think about damage, you think, again, burned to the ground structures. But again, the major part is the damage that smoke does.

And so why am I highlighting that? It’s really important if you’re anywhere near these zones to take a look at your property. So you might not realize that there was some heat damage. You may not realize that although your building didn’t catch fire, that there’s damage from embers. But don’t, especially you think of these remote cabin communities, vacation homes, that sort of thing, make sure you’re cognizant of any damage that could be resulting from smoke. And I don’t want to promise that on every policy that there is coverage for this, but it is an insured peril, meaning you may be entitled to something, but don’t discount the damage that smoke can do if you are on the fringe of a blaze. And don’t convince yourself that you made it out of it sort of scot-free. Do your due diligence and say to yourself, is there a lasting smell? And that smell could constitute a claim.

I think you draw a valid point here is that not very many people talk or think about this aspect of it. And yet here you’re saying this is the bulk of the damage. This is where the bulk of the claims come from as the smoke, as opposed to the outright destructive damage that is very visible. And I guess is what captures the attention of the TV cameras, for example, when you’re doing the coverage. So when you look at a Fort Mac, for example, and there’s not much drama and taking a video of a smokey wall inside a house through a broken window, it’s way more dramatic to see an entire block burn to the ground. But your point here is that from an insurance perspective, it’s a totally different aspect.

It is, and that’s what I find so interesting is that I find it less interesting to stare at rubble because when you look at a total loss, everyone can be an insurance adjuster. You walk in and say, yep, it’s gone, looks like fire. But what I find very interesting is you can have a completely intact house and suddenly there’s a $600,000 claim due to the fact that there is smoke throughout.

And to give a good example for those that are listening, protein fire. So you see it all the time in personal lines, home insurance, condo insurance, tenant insurance. So you fire up the pan, you throw the steak on, you’re cooking it inside, you fire up the pan, you throw the steak on and the phone rings or you’re drawn away outside, you forget that you’ve left it on high, it starts to char, it starts to smoke, and then a small blaze ensues. Now maybe it goes on for a few minutes. The home never actually does catch fire, but the smell created by the burned meat will not go away on its own, and it can cause a significant amount of damage. And again, similar to plastics, oils, petroleum. So if you think of it in those contexts, if you had a protein fire that the smell doesn’t go away, think about the damage that again, wildfire smoke could have caused or is causing to your structure as well.

I never cease to be amazed at what we learn on this program. So I’ve now heard a new term, a protein fire. So I’ll put that one on my-

Yeah, we use it all the time. Yeah.

I’ll put that in my library. But that’s something that you guys in the insurance industry talk about on an ongoing basis, I assume. That’s just parlance for you. But for those of us who are not in the industry, and that’s why we have this program, it’s that we can provide this kind of information and insight into people who don’t live what you live on a daily basis.

Now we’ve got to take a little break. So just to stand by, Colin. You’re listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Buyers. This is Risky Business. We’re going to take a little break. We’ll be back after this.

Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Buyers, Paul Martin here, your host, and joining me, Colin Rooke, the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Buyers and the primary voice on this program for the last few years.

Colin, before the break, we were talking about smoke damage and how as a property owner with these wildfires going on, you don’t necessarily have to be right next door to the fire, but you could suffer some kind of damage. I’m wondering, the thing that we talk about frequently on this program is step-by-step plans, risk reduction, helping business owners and those responsible for running businesses to make preparations, to take the steps in advance of something happening and to try and foresee what might go on. I’m wondering, with this conversation we’re having in Canada right now about wildfires, do you have one of those step-by-step guides available for business people to look at, to say, what about wildfires? What steps do I need to be aware of?

Yeah, we do, and it’s a timely topic. So if you look at the 10-year average for forest fires in Canada, it’s about 3,400 a year. And as of right now, we’re almost in excess of 4,500 and the season isn’t over. And so the idea of giving a wildfire preparedness guide or planning for wildfire is very relevant. So in the last few episodes, we’ve talked about the oldie but a goodie, the disaster recovery plan. And then we had Grant from Apex Consulting come on and say, okay, as part of the plan, you want to talk about the people plan. What are you going to do with your staff and make sure everyone’s educated. But what we do is, so if we’re looking at a typical disaster recovery plan, there are certain categories or certain sectors or depending on where you are in the world or the exposure you face, that we will build it out further.

So if you have a disaster recovery plan, you will have more than the basics complete. What do we do in the event of, but then we’ve taken it a step further and said, okay, we have a complete guide for getting ready for a wildfire. And so yes, it talks about who does what, who’s going to make what phone calls, what are the critical operations, what are the non-critical, how long will it take to get back up and running? But it also goes through everything you would need to proactively prepare your property, your business, for a pending wildfire.

So one, it talks about really, I’ll start with the basics. Do you have the appropriate insurance coverages in place? And so it’s going to force you to review that and say, what are our policy limits? If we haven’t reviewed the building in a while and now we’ve got 300 kilometers away ablaze, do we need to get on that? Do we have the appropriate business interruption coverage? Do we have enough extra expense coverage to find a temporary location? Maybe if your area burns, you have to be in a completely different city center to operate temporarily while you rebuild. So it covers that.

But then it also talks about all the little things that you can do and who should do them. And it is pretty sophisticated. So they talk about zone one, zone two, zone three in fire preparedness. And I won’t go through them all and what they entail, but for example, it’s zone one is zero to 1.5 meters from any building. So what can you do or should you do? And it defines what that is and the steps you should take. And then you’ve got zone two, 1.5 meters to 10 meters. So you expand the area and what can you do there to be completely fire prepared and it takes it further 10 meters to 30 meters.

And it’s a really good, and it walks you through again, all the little things that if you really thought about it, maybe you’d come to that conclusion. But it’s just as simple as is there any debris up against the building? Is there a clear path for the fire to travel right through the yard and to the building? And if there is, you can do the following to deter it. And so very, very good tool for that. Very educational. It talks about how to create a wildfire evacuation plan, which is very different than an internal fire plan. It doesn’t just say, well, there should be a muster point out in the yard, X amount of meters away from the manufacturing facility because right now we could be in position where we’ve got a wall of fire heading towards the muster point, and sometimes the facility is further from danger than the actual muster point. So how do we build that out? How do you review it with the employees? How do you communicate with everyone of what to do in the event we get a notice saying you’ve got hours?

And that’s usually the way it works, isn’t it? And the officials come along and the emergency measures people and just sort of say, we’re evacuating, or you’re on a one-hour notice or something. If you get one hour’s notice to evacuate, you don’t really have time to build a plan, do you? Or to start to look at your yard and rearrange things. This is like everything else we talk about, the preparation, preparation, preparation, get ready in advance storyline.

It is. And just to give you sort of a personal example at Butler Buyer’s Insurance. So we do have a full and complete disaster recovery plan that gets reviewed quarterly, like I portray on the show. But based on where one of our office is located, we are in a position where we often have our water shut off. And so we don’t know when that’s going to happen. They don’t say, Colin, in about three weeks, there’s going to be a water main and you’re going to operate, no water. And so we’ve been in a position where it’s happened a few times, and it’s usually we get to work, you use the tap, nothing comes out. And depending on when the incident occurred, we may have notice from the city, sometimes we have to reach out and find it for ourselves.

But we’ve talked about and said, okay, we need a preparedness guide for what exactly to do when the water’s turned off so then nobody misses a beat. Everyone knows who stays home. Everyone knows who stays here, where we go. And it’ll be a simple guide, but it’s an exposure that we have as an office. And so if you look at it in that context, if you are anywhere near an area where you’re prone to wildfire, do the work now, and hopefully you never have to use this, but in the event you do, and maybe it’s just a simple evacuation, you know exactly what to do, how to do it, what critical documents need to leave, because that’s the other thing. If you’re given three hours notice, who knows what they need to grab on the premise that you might never see that again. And that’s a big component of this guide itself.

Well, I mean, this is a hypothetical situation, preparation in advance for something that hasn’t occurred yet. And people might be saying, gee, you guys, come on. I mean, this is the prairies and you’re talking forest fires and whatever. But were also some parts of Saskatchewan in a drought. And so grass fires would probably be equally as substituted for forest fire. You say wildfire probably an accurate description.

Exactly. We have clients all over, but very, very dry conditions. And back to where there’s smoke, there’s damage comment. If you’ve ever burned a whole bunch of leaves or a whole bunch of grass, that’s particularly potent, strong smelling smoke. And so you think about, okay, now I’m in a position where the farm has fires all around, you could have smoke damage.

Yeah. Listen, Colin, we’ve run out of time. This always goes by so quickly. Thank you for this very insightful, and I just again, want to say thanks for providing this sort of advice and guidance to people who are listening to us today.

You’ve been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Buyers. I’m Paul Martin. This is Risky Business. Thanks for joining us. We’ll talk to you next time.

Welcome to Risky Business, commercial insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKLM, and joining me, Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist at Butler Byers. And we have another special guest joining us today, and I want to welcome Grant Douziech with Apex Performance Consultants.

And Colin, you invited Grant to come along today, and maybe just a little background about why you did that, and then, Grant, we’ll haul you in here and you can talk about why you’re participating in our show today. So, Colin, over to you.

Yeah, so in the previous episode we were talking about disaster recovery planning, and we’ve touched on it several times throughout the years. And it’s one of those topics where it’s an old one, but it’s always relevant. So we talked about, okay, how can we help plan for disaster, whether it’s a small loss, major loss, total loss. We talked about why the plan’s important. It’s absolutely crucial when trying to get back up and running as soon as possible. It outlines what everyone’s role is within the plan, who’s going to call who and why.

And then most importantly, we take that plan and we talk with the insurance market and say, “This client is prepared.” During that show I did allude to that I wanted to bring Grant on and talk about, okay, the plan addresses getting up and running from a physical standpoint, but it doesn’t really talk about the people, what they’re supposed to do, who’s staying on, is everyone staying on, what planning can you do around people planning.

And, you know, I’m not the expert, and I talk about, we identify the risk, we quantify the risk, and then we reach out to third parties to say, “Can you help us with this?” And Grant from Apex Performance Consulting is one of those people. And so I thought, “Bring him on the show, he can explain what he does and why it’s important to have a people plan as part of a disaster recovery plan, or just really proper planning altogether.”

All right. Well, Grant, welcome to the show. It’s always great to have these trusted advisors that Butler Buyers works with, and that provide some deeper insight into some of the more detailed parts of the program that Colin likes to talk about.

In terms of preparation, this concept or notion of step-by-step planning, and on the people side… And clearly people are the big issue right now, I mean, you hear about job vacancies, employers scrambling to find people… You’ve got to work as an employer and a business owner very, very diligently to make sure that you keep your team in the loop, if I can put it that way. And also figure out how to actually turn into reality this notion that my biggest assets go up and down in the elevator every day.

So Grant, jump in on this. And when I toss that out to you about, and as the way Colin framed it up, is the people side or the people planning side of disaster recovery, I mean, what bells go off for you? What are the key messages you want to deliver on that one?

The key messages, and thanks, Paul and Colin, for the invite, it’s really about preparedness. As Colin mentioned to you, disaster recovery plans, it’s sometimes easy to think about your physical location, easy to think about IT and technology, putting into place, but people sometimes forget what do I with the people that I have. So for example, if you have a manufacturing facility that undergoes a catastrophic fire and is no longer operating, what do you do with the people that work there? What about the office staff? How do you continue to maintain some level of business when you have issues with people that now have to work from home or don’t have a location to work from?

So it requires a lot of communication and pre-planning to ensure that people understand what happens to them. Because at that point too, you don’t want people to suddenly think, “Well, I’m out of work. I need to go look elsewhere,” especially in this environment where they could probably easily find work somewhere else. And how do you keep them intact, and how do you keep your payroll intact? So those are big questions that companies should be answering before an event happens, because you don’t want to be planning it while you’re in the middle of a crisis.

Yeah, Grant, you raise an interesting point about virtually every business will [inaudible] of some form of business interruption insurance, but I’m assuming we think about that in what comes to mind for us is the customer. How do we get the customer and get paid, keep the transaction stuff going. Often we don’t think about the personnel side, the HR and payroll side of the people that we’ve got, their life interrupted too. And so I mean, do business owners in your experience kind of miss that one a little bit?

Yeah, I think it’s something that you think of the last moment after an event happens. And like you said, Paul, a lot of these people have families. They’re not necessarily going to wait around for an owner to come up with a solution. They may have to be proactive because they have bills to pay, they have a lot of anxiety… I think it’s important that you’re on top of that communication to how long they’re going to be off, how are they going to get paid, and when do you plan to spool back up.

And it’s also different for people that are in an office environment, because you might be able to transition some of the work that they would do in a physical office to now working remotely, similar to what happened for us, majority of people, during COVID.

And it’s an interesting point, because we’re still having that controversy and that conversation about working from home. I mean, that’s one of the legacy pieces that came from that. For those businesses who thought, “Hey, that’s behind me, I’ve got that baby resolved, now they’re all coming to work in the office every day,” or, “we’re not going to build a policy around that,” probably, you know, this is another reason to have that policy, isn’t it? It’s not just pandemic.

But if you have some kind of a disaster that you have to deal with, all of a sudden this is back on your table again. And as Colin likes to say, you got to plan in advance. You can’t plan after the crash, right? You’ve got to plan before. So what do you counsel business owners to do on this front?

Well, really it comes to sitting down and not necessarily getting into the weeds or the details of what event you’re trying to mitigate, because there’s several external things that could cause your business to be disrupted, but rather a detailed plan for each employee as to where would they work, how long would they be off, and how would we retain them in the event that they for some reason couldn’t come into work. And identify those roles that can be worked remotely, and what material, and supplies, and resources, they would need to do so.

You need to be able to pivot quite quickly in these cases, otherwise you lose people’s confidence and that’s where anxiety starts to kick in, and people start thinking about working elsewhere.

You just raised a couple of important words that I want to make sure that we get covered through this. And one of them is trust, that the worker has to trust that the boss has a plan, has this thing in hand. And you’ve used the word anxiety a couple of times in this, and clearly this is a part of the conversation or the vocabulary these days, and that people are talking a lot about this. We’re talking more about mental health issues and all of that.

So I mean, this is way more than just we got to close the door for a day or two here while we clean up the water spill or whatever, I mean, that’s the stuff that I want to dig into.

So if you don’t mind, just stand by, we’re going to take a little break. When we come back, those are the areas that I want to dig into, so maybe lend some thought to how you want to address that.

You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler buyers, Paul Martin here. We’ll be back after this break.

Welcome back to Risky Business, commercial insurance with Butler Buyers. Paul Martin, your host, and joining us today, Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Buyers, and a special guest, we have Grant Douziech with us, who is with Apex Performance Consulting. And they specialize in the HR side of this, and we’re talking about disaster recovery.

And before the break, Grant, you were using terminology that is probably relatively recent in the vernacular of the business world these days. Words like mental health, anxiety, that 5, 10 years ago, that wouldn’t even have been a part of the conversation, now it’s pretty mainstream. I mean, what are you advising your business clients on this one? Like, how should they be looking at this? And you try put it in the context of what we’re talking about here is like, how does insurance factor into all of this, so…

Yeah, that’s a good point, Paul, years ago, it wasn’t something that they would look at. However, having worked with some clients that have been through some catastrophic business interruptions, nowadays people are, they need to have confidence and trust with the owner, because people do feel challenged by everything that’s going on around them.

And they’re just trying to provide some stability and security to their own lives. And they do have loyalty to the company they work for, but at some point they have a spouse or a family that they’re accountable to, and they will need to make changes if they don’t feel there’s a plan, if they don’t hear anything from an owner till, you know, 48 hours after an event has occurred. You don’t want to create that thought that they might be out of work for a long period of time.

Colin, you’ve been listening in on this thing, I mean, what are you hearing here and what is resonating with you?

Yeah, a couple of things. One, you mentioned how is this relevant to insurance, and I was thinking too, as part of the story we tell to the insurance market, I mean, which I’m primarily focused on, I was thinking how you could use this as a retention tool, or even a recruitment tool, to say, “We have a plan in place and obviously we hope there isn’t a disaster, however, we can share that in the event of a total loss or a major loss, we could be up and running in X amount of time. And also, with the insurance coverage, based on that, we carry ordinary payroll coverage up to 90 days or 180 days.”

So you could share that to the workforce and say, Look, this doesn’t often come up…” And it’s rare that the employees or even management are involved in a commercial insurance renewal, but something that you could share would be, “We have a plan in place for disaster.”

You could share your people plan, call it, and then you could add to that to say, “And we want people to know in advance, just in case there is chaos and we can’t get to everyone, or people forget, that we have coverage in place. So your pay would be secure even if we were closed and then unable to pay.” I think that could go a long way with, yeah, retention, just to share that, which admittedly I haven’t ever suggested to any of my clients they do until I had the thought now.

But also, furthermore, we can share that with the insurance markets to say, “Outside of insurance, they’re working on a people plan too,” which again, if everyone’s aware of their role and you think about getting back up and running to profitability, or at least the same level you were at prior to the loss, the more people that are on board, the less people you lose, the more anxiety you alleviate, the better the organization and the quicker you recover.

Grant, I want you to jump in on this one because I think Colin’s really touched on something interesting about using it as a recruitment retention tool as well.

Yeah, absolutely. What a difference that would make in my mind when you’re recruiting a position and you’re letting someone know not only what you’re offering for benefits, and pay, and the value of working with your company, but also that you care for your staff and your people to a point where you have a plan in case something happens. You don’t hear that during an interview process very often. But for somebody who’s making a decision of, do I go with company A or company B, that could be a significant difference for them.

I also agree with Colin that I think it’s good to every six months or a year, just remind staff that you have a plan in place in case something becomes disruptive, and that you’re prepared, and that you’ll make sure that they’re looked after through the mechanisms of insurance and other programs that might be available after.

Well, I’m thinking just to, sorry, Colin, to doubly reinforce this is that this is a very, very competitive marketplace right now for talent, and every ledge will, well, could use every tool in the kit. And this is one I don’t hear very many people putting in the kit. So maybe it’s an interesting new idea that’s out there, that you may want to just share whether it’s as part of the interview process or onboarding if nothing else. But, Colin, you wanted to jump in?

Yeah, just a similar thought, Grant being someone that would be involved very, very regularly in the interview process, I just wanted to know… And I think I know the answer to my own question. So you would say that it’s fairly rare that an employer would say, “And just so you know, we ensure a half-year’s worth of payroll in the event of a disaster. So if you joined us and something did occur, rest assured, one, we can be up and running in six months, and two, your wages would be safe,” and use that as a difference maker?

And just to add on top of that, I think that also puts you in a position as a small and medium business owner to be competitive with a much larger company or corporation, because you’re now providing security through that offering. And that to me would probably be very reassuring to some people that are making that choice of joining a much larger company versus a small and medium business, which has its own rewards.

I would assume you’d have to kind of define what a disaster looks like and that sort of stuff, because losing a big client isn’t necessarily a disaster, it may feel like one, but it wouldn’t be an insurable one. So you’d have to kind of refine and define that a little bit.

But I think we’re into some really interesting territory here. And the purpose of this program is to inform business owners, and employers, and managers of some of the things that they should entertain when they’re thinking about business planning. And we’re covering some ground today that I’ll guarantee you nobody else has had a conversation about, this is a very fresh type of conversation.

So, Grant, I want to thank you for bringing that perspective here and getting us moved off into this territory, because I think it’s really unique. And we’ve got maybe a half a minute left, so I just want to kind of close on this notion you’d put forward about the idea of trust.

And I think many of us forget that as young people, we’ve got to pick a partner out of the herd and we got to hope that that partner will do what we need done. Then we got to go to the next step, which is pick an employer out of a herd, and hope that one actually knows what they’re doing and can guarantee a paycheck for us. And that then we can go about planning our own family lives, and planning the larger things in life.

And you’ve really put a finger on that today, and Colin is offering up this notion of, “[inaudible] and actually to protect that, we can provide you with some coverage, so…” I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today, Grant, that’s been very insightful.

Thank you, it’s my pleasure.

And, Colin, as always, great to have you aboard and have this conversation. So we’ll pick this up on the next program.

You’ve been listening to Risky Business, commercial insurance with Butler Buyers, Paul Martin here. Thanks for joining us, talk to you next time.