Debra L. Rodgers, vp-global risk management for Philadelphia-based ARAMARK Corp., began her career as a teacher, and educating others remains a key part of her life.

In fact, Ms. Rodgers—this year's Business Insurance Risk Manager of the Year—says “making others understand risk” is the greatest challenge she faces at the company, which provides food service, facilities management and uniforms to a wide range of institutions.

“I think we're an organization that is very focused on our customers and meeting the needs of customers,” she said.

“In connection with that, our front-line associates want to do whatever they can to satisfy the client,” said Ms. Rodgers. “Sometimes that means they take on some unanticipated risks, at least unanticipated to us in the corporate office. So my greatest challenge is to try to indoctrinate people to risk, what it means to them, and talk about how we manage it.”

L. Frederick Sutherland, ARAMARK's senior vp and chief financial officer, gives risk management under Ms. Rodgers high marks for partnering with other business units to improve the company's loss and safety experiences.

“They partner very effectively with our business units to develop really effective safety programs and management of claims,” he said. “Our real exposure is around workers compensation and general liability. They put in place a terrific business intelligence system. They organized the safety area with individuals who are responsible for working with specific units and set up safety councils within the business units.

“To me, the true test is when our operating managers reach out to the global risk management group to help make the work environment safer while also improving business results,” he said, describing the savings achieved as “significant.”

In fact, ARAMARK has cut its workers compensation incident rate by nearly 35% in five years and reduced lost-time claims by nearly half.

Mark A. Lynch, executive vp of Willis Group Holdings P.L.C. unit Willis of Pennsylvania Inc. in Radnor, Pa., noted that before Ms. Rodgers joined ARAMARK in 2003, the company's risk management department was basically an insurance department. Many risk management functions were decentralized, making it difficult to get data on the cause of losses.

“She certainly has attacked a lot of different things,” said Mr. Lynch, who is one of ARAMARK's insurance brokers.

“She's gone from an insurance department to a very cohesive risk management department,” he said. “As they find an area of need, she and the team build an action plan around that.”

“They've truly attacked safety and loss control. She gets the team thinking and planning and then she delegates the responsibility of carrying out that plan to one of the team leaders,” Mr. Lynch said. “She has really taken what I would call a North American concept and is starting to globalize it.”

Not surprisingly, Ms. Rodgers' background in international risk management with Saint-Gobain Corp., a Valley Forge, Pa.-based unit of a French manufacturer, has helped her approach the risks faced by ARAMARK, which has operations in 22 countries with more than 250,000 employees.

“I was the North American risk manager of a French company, so I needed to learn how a French company managed risk and managed insurance,” Ms. Rodgers said.

“Saint-Gobain helped me understand culture a lot, and how challenging it is to be not at the top and really responding to the demands of the parent company,” said Ms. Rodgers. “What I got out of that experience is that you really have to work individually and try and get buy-in from people because I think that's really helpful. Instead of just telling people what to do, if you can get them to understand what it is you're doing and appreciate the value of it, you're going to get a lot better buy-in.”

Ms. Rodgers stressed that cooperation among members of the risk management team and ARAMARK's business operations is key to the company's safety enhancement and loss reduction efforts.

“Teamwork and collaboration are important. We've certainly seen that within our own team, how bringing together the pre-loss and post-loss functions, working with the risk transfer team to manage risks, that collaboration has had a dramatic impact on the results of our organization,” she said.

“We talk a lot, we work together and we interface with our operations that way. That's been very successful, but it's not just about us. It's about the ARAMARK operators, and them teaming with us to manage risk, coming to us whenever there's a question and talking about risk, not just undertaking risk,” she added.

That has meant that ARAMARK's business operators who manage the field units, many of whom initially were suspicious of the centralized risk management approach the company adopted under Ms. Rodgers' leadership, now approach global risk management with their concerns.

“People now call and say, "Help me understand what this means. Is this something we want to undertake? What do I need to think about? What are the processes I have to put in place to manage the risk if I take on a contract of this type?'” Ms. Rodgers said.

“That's been a huge win. But we also have outside partners who have been very integral to our success—all the brokers we use, all the insurance carriers. We use some risk management consultants. We use a number of vendors to help us with opportunities. We really try to be ahead of a problem—(we're) not always successful, but we always try to be ahead of a problem.