By: Stephen Bevan Yeswanth Battina
Many workplace training calendars are built around compliance obligations and annual refreshers. Both are essential, but neither necessarily tells an organisation whether its training addresses the risks that are causing incidents and costing it money.
The answer lies in your claims data. Claims are usually treated as an accounting record. When read collectively, claims provide a rich source of evidence for a training needs analysis, and one the organisation has already paid to generate.
Look Beyond Frequency and Average Cost
Total claim numbers and average cost tell you the size of a problem, not its shape. The indicators that tell you where to intervene are more granular.
- Recurring causes and incident types: Three similar slips in the same goods-in area are not three unrelated events.
- Concentrations by site, vehicle, role, or shift: Exposure is rarely evenly spread. Night shifts, agency staff, and recently acquired sites often carry more than their share of risk.
- Differences between comparable locations: When similar sites produce very different claims outcomes, local training, supervision, or processes may be driving the variation.
- Time from incident to notification: Delayed notification is frequently associated with higher ultimate claims costs and is usually a reporting or supervision problem rather than a safety one.
- Claims with thin or inconsistent evidence: Overwritten CCTV, no witness statement, or an investigation completed weeks later can undermine defensibility long before a solicitor is instructed.
- Repeated failure of the same control: This may indicate that people don't understand the control, can't apply it in practice, or aren't being held accountable for doing so.
- Claims that escalate: Matters that look routine at notification and turn expensive later were often shaped by the first 48 hours.
- Near misses and complaints, read alongside claims: Both are early warnings that haven't yet acquired a claim number.
- Third-party versus fault trends: Understanding whether losses arise from employee actions, third-party behaviour, or environmental factors helps ensure training targets the true cause of claims.
- Seasonal trends: Increases in claims during particular months or weather conditions may highlight recurring risks that can be addressed through targeted awareness and refresher training.
Next, Ask What Kind of Failure You're Seeing
This is where analysis becomes decisive. A data pattern can reflect a knowledge gap, a process gap, or a supervision gap, and each requires a different response.
If drivers don't know how to record a collision scene, that's a training issue. If they know exactly what to do but have no time allocated to do it, that's a process problem — and a course will change nothing. If managers routinely accept incomplete incident reports, that's supervision. Putting an entire workforce through a refresher when the real obstacle is a form nobody has time to complete is how organisations conclude that training doesn't work.
When properly diagnosed, the sequence becomes clear:
- Identify the recurring causes, locations, roles, and behaviours behind your losses.
- Separate genuine knowledge gaps from process and supervision failures.
- Target training at the areas carrying the greatest loss exposure, and at managers, not only front-line staff.
- Re-measure claim frequency, severity, and notification times to test if it worked.
The fourth step is often skipped, yet it's the one that shows senior leaders, insurers, and brokers whether training is changing outcomes and producing a measurable return.
What Claims-led Intervention Looks Like in Practice
Two Gallagher Bassett interventions demonstrate how claims analysis can lead to more targeted action.
- A large logistics client was experiencing a high collision rate. Gallagher Bassett reviewed its incident, collision, and claims data, together with available telematics* information, and used the findings to develop a bespoke, independently accredited Driver Certificate of Professional Competence module targeting the risks identified within the fleet. Following the training, the client's collision rate fell by 60%.
- For a global logistics client, Gallagher Bassett's Site in a Box initiative was designed to preserve the evidence needed to manage claims after an operating site had closed. The process combined desktop assessment, physical inspection, photographic and video evidence, document review, and interviews with site management. It gave the client a defence pack for existing and future claims while identifying weaknesses that could inform risk improvements at other sites. Gallagher Bassett reported £426,000 in attributed claims-cost savings.
*Telematics information is the data collected, sent, and saved from remote objects — most often vehicles — using a mix of GPS, wireless networks, and onboard computers. It turns physical movement and machine stats into live digital details.
Gallagher Bassett Provides a Different Proposition
Gallagher Bassett brings claims insight, risk consulting, and training expertise together. When these disciplines are connected, claims data can do more than explain past losses: It can help identify where controls are breaking down, determine whether training is the right response, and shape programmes around an organisation's actual loss experience.
Gallagher Bassett provides accredited NEBOSH, IOSH, and IRM programmes; bespoke health and safety, enterprise risk, and fleet training; courses covering transport management, driver risk profiling, and post-collision investigation; and one-hour bitesize sessions designed to fit within a normal working day.
To discuss a claims-led review of your training needs, reach out to the Gallagher Bassett Consulting Solutions team today.
Author
Stephen Bevan
Yeswanth Battina
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