Episode 3: New, Solo, & Small Staff Tips with Sue Liden

You are not alone! Sue Liden, director of risk services at Pacific Lutheran University, talks with host Jenny Whittington about her experience working on campus as a solo risk manager, and she also shares practical advice from her recent joint conference presentation entitled “New, Solo, or Small Staff Tips to Identify and Dispatch Risks.” Now an URMIA leader, she reflects on her path and development in the field of higher education risk management.

[Member-Only] Sue discusses her session at the 2019 Annual Conference

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Transcript

Jenny: Hello everyone, welcome back. This is Jenny Whittington, executive director of URMIA, and welcome to our podcast URMIA matters. Today we have with us in the studio our board secretary Sue Liden. I've known Sue for a long, long time and today we're going to talk a little bit about the 2019 annual conference in Boston, where she was part of a panel who did a session called new, solo or small staff tips to identify and dispatch risks. 

Sue: That’s a mouthful!

Jenny: So, thanks Sue for being here. I know this session was a bit of a labor of love. Why don’t you just tell us first about who was involved in the session and then we'll go from there.

 Sue: Well Mark Logel from University of Southern Indiana or Southern Indiana University I always get it confused 

Jenny: I think it’s Southern Indiana.

Sue: I think it’s Southern Indiana. It was his idea for the presentation, so he asked if I would join him and we also had Christine Malinski from EIIA, and Bill Powell from Gallagher, who represented our two brokers. 

Jenny: Yeah so it was a nice combination of two small privates and two brokers.

Sue: Right, because Mark had previously been the risk manager at University of Evansville. 

Jenny: That's right in Evansville for everyone who's listening just beat Kentucky in basketball last night so go Evansville. As a Hoosier I had to get that in there. So Sue, poster us about the conference session and give us the highlights.

Sue: Well our idea was to help people who are new to risk management, remembering when Mark and I had been new to help identify some key factors, tips to being able to do the job when you're an office of one and it if that person is even full-time in risk management and to kind of give you some tips and tricks of what to do and how to rely on your Brokers for assistance. 

Jenny: That's terrific and I know I mean out of URMIAs 600 institutions, 775  campuses I would say a third of our members fall into that category where it's a very small staff. I mean they might have a tiny bit of support from someone on campus, but you're pretty common and I don't know if your session was the most popular one during that breakout session but I think we put you in the biggest room because we predicted you would have a very large crowd, was that true?

Sue: It was. It was a packed room and it was a great group of people asking good questions. It was a fun presentation

Jenny: So how did the presentation go? Who kicked off?  Was it Mark?

Sue: Yeah Mark and I kicked it off talking about tips and tricks that we learned how to identify our campus partners, issues that we would run into and then our Brokers Bill and Christine then helped provide some of the information about the various types of insurance coverage that you should have as a small institution. 

Jenny: What were some of the notable questions that you had?

Sue: I think identifying your campus partners and helping to figure out who, since you’re an office of one, who you can work with to identify those risks and mitigate those risks. For example at PLU I work closely with our athletics department and our director of student clubs and organizations to help figure out where those risks are and what we need to do to help the students do what they want to do, but to do it safely.

Jenny: That makes really good sense. I've definitely heard that over the years. I remember I heard Christine Ike a long time ago she partnered with her auditor and they had done kind of a pilot program with her athletics department because they knew they had some allies there that wanted to get some risk management kind of tasks done. So, is that kind of similar with your experience?

Sue: It is, and boy I’ve learned once you help and work through an issue with a campus partner, then they'll keep coming back to you asking for more assistance. They'll give you a heads up. Our campus safety folks, for instance, are great at letting me know when something’s happening that I need to know about. Although in case you didn't know, I’ll get an email.  

Jenny: That's terrific. Now, do you guys use any software solutions to track any of that or is it mostly just regular email and regular channels?

Sue: Yeah, due to limited budget it’s regular emails or I keep a spreadsheet.

Jenny: Okay so out of the partners that you have on campus, you mentioned safety, were there others?

Sue: Safety, athletics, our international study abroad, we have a lot of risk of there so managing that. I find the administrative assistants to our academic departments are great resources because the faculty members will go to them and ask them how to do something so they'll guide them to me if they need to have a waiver or if they have a contract that no they shouldn't be signing a contract.

Jenny: That's a terrific resource, I bet. And a great network to get to know on campus because lots of times they are the first on and that the people that really get some of the work done. 

Sue: Definitely.

Jenny: Okay so we talked about some of your allies on campus, some of the partner, so tell me a little bit about what an average day for Sue Liden , being a solo risk manager.  I know a lot of our days get hijacked early on I'm sure yours do but I mean can you just tell me about a recent day of how your day started and ended up.

Sue: Well I usually get to work at about an hour before anybody else does so that I can get through some emails and contracts without interruptions and then you just, I've got about 4 different claims going on right now, so it's managing those claims because I don't have somebody who does that for me. I'm occasionally fielding a call from a student or parent, which I know at the bigger schools, I've had colleagues say “you talk to parents? Students?” and I do, so it's letting them know we hear their concern and that we’re addressing it. I review all the contracts for the University, so I usually block out about an hour or two a day to do that and then getting out and about and walking around campus to see what's going on and where I can help or where people don't know they need help but I can insert myself.

Jenny: That’s terrific and I know you're still involved in your word, your governance. Are you still serving as the board secretary?

Sue: I'm not the board secretary I’m the recorder for our budget finance audit and compliance committee, our investment committee and then our real property committee and I also manage rental properties for the University, so I report to the real property committee and I also report on insurance issues to our Budget Finance audit compliance committee. So, I get to meet with them three times a year at our on-campus meeting. 

Jenny: And then that's involved your Board of Trustees too?

Sue: Our Board of Regents is our Board Trustees

Jenny: Ok, sorry. 

Sue: Yeah, different names, different schools call them different things.

Jenny: And how big is that board? How is that structured? 

Sue: There are I believe 35 members, it depends. They come from our ELCA churches, members at large, it's a variety. The bylaws directions, it’s not at the top of my head I couldn't tell you, but it's 35 members, community members and some pastors from local Northwest churches.

Jenny: And they meet monthly?

Sue: No, they meet three times a year ago, so they meed three times a year. The investment committee meets quarterly to redo the investment portfolio. 

Jenny: Well, I’ve always thought you had a really interesting lens because you get to do the, kind of  get to do the boots on the ground risk management activities and then you get to see from the high-level too which I think gives you a really good perspective.

Sue: It is, it’s interesting to see what the board members key in on is usually different than what we're looking at on the ground because they come from the business side, so sometimes folks will think they're going to be so interested about one thing and they’re asking questions completely different than what we prepared for, so we’ve learned to be flexible.

Jenny: And I've always thought it is a great opportunity when it risk manager gets to be involved in any of those meetings you just talked about because in the larger institutions, the time is just so limited.  So I think it’s a great opportunity for you. Remind me how you got into risk management.

Sue: Purely by accident. I was serving as senior administrative assistant for the vice president for finance and operations at the time and the individual who did a portion of what I do now moved to a different job and they asked me if I wanted the job and I said I had no experience and was told I would learn. And my membership with URMIA has been a great asset, that's how I figure it out what I didn't know.

Jenny: That is so great to hear and I've heard that similar story from other members in the past and we're certainly happy that you're part of our leadership team. Is there anything else from the annual conference presentation this year that you want to highlight?

Sue: If you're in a small institution using your brokers as an extension of your risk management department, I think is key. I rely on our broker, EIIA. When I have an issue they can advocate with me with our insurance regarding claims or coverage that we need, when I'm not sure how to address a risk I can contact them and they have plenty of resources, that on top of the URMIA ones I can have their resources to help figure out a solution and if I happen to be out for an extended period of time, then I don't have a backup in my office, so I just leave our contact information for a risk director at EIIA and people can call them to get a claim started, to get a contract reviewed, anything like that.

Jenny: That's terrific. I didn't know that kind of service existed, so that's really good to know and I mean I know from working for URMIA for so long that our institutional members have a very unique and close relationships with their broker partner, so I think that is a great solution, to hook people up with the resources of those brokers can definitely represent.

 Sue: Yeah, I'll bring them my campus. If I'm having a sticky issue, or people aren't taking me seriously about when have a concern about something. I'll bring them on campus, and they'll sit and meet with Folks and just kind of be my backup.

Jenny: Terrific, I love that. Okay, I also wanted to ask you about what else you enjoyed at the Boston conference this year. What were some of your other favorite sessions? 

Sue: The general session on the marathon bombing was so helpful. I was so thankful they were willing to share their experiences and their lessons learned and it helped me go back and talk with our emergency program’s folks and kind of relay some of the things that we need to focus on when we're doing our planning in establishing those connections for that community partners before an incident occurs.

Jenny: Yeah that was a big take away from me too. I think one of the presenters said you know that's not the day to pass out business cards. You need to have that relationship already in the bank and when bad things happen, that you’re able to support each other. What was another one of your favorite sessions? 

Sue: The institutional roundtable. I went to the small institution round table and it's a great opportunity to identify who your peers are and connect with them so that when you have an issue, post it on the URMIA discussion group, but you can also reach out directly for resources so if I have an issue and I need a policy or something I know now I can go to Santa Clara University and ask my friend and colleague Sam Florio for his example versus Gary Langsdale’s stuff at Penn State might be a great resource, but it's a much larger Institution.  

Jenny: Yeah that’s at the roundtables that we offer at annual conferences. I’ve heard great feedback from those over the years, and actually it's come up recently where we've talked about how to get that level of question answered on the community, because the community goes to all of our members, all the institutional members aren’t all of our members comprehensively but and what I suggested that if you have a question that you want an answer from just a particular demographic, is to put it in the subject line. If you're only looking for answers from schools with under 2,000 FTE, put in the subject line and know that it you know the answer from the bug schools might not be as helpful, but I've also found over the years is sometimes those solutions are scalable or maybe you can get support from your broker to do this that or the other. So, I think there's not a right or wrong way to ask a question, but if you're looking for a specific list of people, and the URMIA Office can always help you with that too. If you have a very specific ask, and you want to know who's actually in your membership Tier of URMIA, we can work with you on that. Any other sessions?

Sue: Probably, the other one, the records retention and disclosure session was very helpful because I review all requests for records to go out for the University, especially if it's a subpoena for records. So , it's helpful to have that. I always send them off to our attorney review for review and also the retention in knowing that if you have a  retention policy, follow it otherwise you can get into lots of trouble, which is a key point to get across to folks, that if our file says we're going to delete that record or destroy it after 7 years you better do it or if you only do some of them in that all of them then you're in trouble.

Jenny: Yeah that is a great session. I’m glad you brought that up, I actually had partnered with NACUA, our sister association in the legal world, and they had recommended Terry Blakemore be a speaker, so I'm really glad that that session was well received from you. Well, Sue, thank you so much for being my guest today on URMIA matters, really appreciate your time and all that you've done for URMIA over the years, you've been a wonderful volunteer. So, that's it for today folks, thank you. The URMIA matters podcast is brought to you by the university risk management and Insurance Association. You can find and subscribe to the podcast on any podcast app and while you're there appreciate if you'd give us 5-star review and be sure to visit www.gov.org www.misd.org to check out our wealth of online resources thanks for listening and we'll see you next