Box office bonanza: Your summer guide to risk management & the movies

July 26th, 2011 by Julie Ferguson

NIOSH Science Blog’s recent blog post is taking on Hollywood – specifically, the summer’s blockbuster Horrible Bosses, an irreverent and risque dark comedy in which abused and aggrieved employees decide to murder their psycho bosses. We’d make the case that real life bosses can compete with the ones that Hollywood dreams up any day.
Complaining about bosses is an age-old tradition, but few take the concept of boss bashing literally. According to NIOSH, “The situations portrayed in the movie are not typical–worker-on-worker (or boss) violence accounts for only about 8% of workplace homicides. More than half of all workplace homicides occur in retail or service settings such as conveniences stores, taxicab services, and gas stations with the majority of these homicides occurring during a robbery.” The post author uses Horrible Bosses as a springboard to introduce and discuss the very real issue of workplace violence. It includes an array of links to related posts about professions that are particularly vulnerable to violent events, such as school personnel, taxi drivers, pharmacists, nurses.
This isn’t the first time that The NIOSH Science Blog has turned to Hollywood to illustrate health and safety issues. They’ve previously featured an entertaining pair of posts: Occupational Safety & Health in the Movies and OSH at the movies: the sequel. In the latter, the post author lists the Top 11 Films Depicting Occupational Safety & Health Issues, the Top 7 Films with Occupation Safety & Health Issues During Production, and the Top 10 Films in [a risk-related] Special Category.
Other online forums have tackled the issue of risk related issues in Hollywood from various angles:

  • RiskVue features the
    Top Movies No Risk Manager/Insurance Professional Should Miss
    , saying that, “The simple fact is risk managers and insurance professionals lack solid role models in the entertainment industry. Nevertheless, plenty of films have delved deep into the principles of risk and insurance management, offering lessons, guidance and a form of entertainment that only those in the industry can truly appreciate.”
  • A blog post at Consumer Insurance Blog deals with risks, hazards and liability issues involved in filmaking and production: Risk, insurance, & the movies. The post notes some of the risk issues involved in film making, which can include such disparate hazards as wild and trained animals, technology glitches, actors who have to leave the set mid-production to go to rehab, and weather related events that may delay production schedules or pose danger to the cast, the crew and the props.
  • Risk Management Magazine featured an article On Making Movies, highlighting insurane issues involved in the filmmaking industry. “The role of entertainment insurance is to determine the relevant risks of a project and create the necessary cushions and options to deal with whatever may come. Sometimes the crisis is large, such as that faced by A Simple Plan; other times it is one that requires minor alterations. An innovative and creative energy among all interested parties, from the director to the insurer, is vital to bringing audiences the kinds of movies so perfect in design, one cannot help but believe every minute.”

Here at WCI, our focus has been on TV. We are still awaiting the debut of that wacky TV sitcom Workers’ Comp. We haven’t heard about it since the report of the April filming – presumably the show will air in the fall. We are a tad skeptical and we aren’t the only ones:

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