LIVE from RISKWORLD 2022: Oscar Villanueva, Managing Director of Security Services, R3 Continuum

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting Live from RISKWORLD 2022 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, it’s time for Workplace MVP. Brought to you by R3 Continuum, a global leader in helping workplaces thrive during disruptive times. Now, here’s your host.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:23] Hi, everyone. Your host, Jamie Gassmann here at the RISKWORLD 2022 Expo Hall in R3 Continuum Booth. And joining me is Oscar Villanueva, who is with R3 Continuum. Welcome to the show.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:00:38] Hello, Jamie. Good talking with you today.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:40] So, talk to me a little bit about the role you play at R3 Continuum.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:00:44] Well, my role is as Managing Director of Security Services for R3 Continuum. And, basically, what I do is I support the organization and clients when it comes to security services. And that could be anything from investigations, protective services, threat assessments, facility security assessments. Anything that has to do with physical security, I am available for clients to to use and to take advantage of our services.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:01:13] Yeah. You know, and from conversations I’ve had with you, you know, the uniqueness of the services that R3 provides is that behavioral health component to the solution. So, talk to me a little bit about that and how that’s a differentiator or unique in the marketplace.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:01:28] Well, you know, R3 continuum is a leader in behavioral health support and solutions with disruptive event management and crisis response, all of those kinds of services. And R3 has been doing it for many, many years and doing it very, very well as a leader in the industry. What makes my contribution to R3 significant is that every time you have a crisis situation, every time you have a workplace violence issue, every time you have a call that you’re making to R3 Continuum for services, there’s usually a security component that comes along with that. And, you know, having those two services – security and crisis response – along with behavioral health really does a unique and best-in-class response service from R3 Continuum for our clients. So, I think it’s an important component.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:02:26] Yes, it’s almost like they have the holistic response basically. It’s like you can look at it from a physical, you know, what caused the particular, you know, situation or incident, but then also from the behavioral side of it as well. They’re kind of almost getting a comprehensive kind of support from the company, correct?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:02:44] Yes. And I think part of what that type of service means is that R3 Continuum uses a team of experts approach. So, if you come to R3 Continuum, and you’re getting behavioral health, and there’s some security question that comes up, I’m brought into the case, the situation, and I provide an assessment from a security perspective. And if I’m working a security issue, you know, the same thing occurs because, you know, R3 Continuum has experts in behavioral health. So, the combination of the two and a team-of-experts approach is really what makes it a powerful service for our clients.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:26] And from a risk insurance perspective, you know, taking and looking at it through that lens, you know, how does that help them from like a litigation perspective or kind of a risk mitigation perspective?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:03:40] Well, for insurance providers, I think the most important thing is to mitigate crisis and even to prevent it, if you can. And contacting R3 Continuum, for example, I can think of a number of cases where, perhaps, you had a workplace violence issue that started as a threat, and then, through our services and doing a threat assessment, we are able to discover what the cause of the threat is, what’s behind the the potential violence, and we can provide an assessment as to what the best way is to move forward. And when you do this, you’re really either preventing or mitigating risk, which in the insurance world, I’m fairly certain that it’s extremely important. The less claims you have, the better off you are, or if you can minimize the claim to the lowest possible level, so that the loss is contained, then it becomes very desirable for an insurance company to use those services.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:44] Absolutely. And it also helps holistically for that organization to recover, you know, financially and not only that, but with their people as well.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:04:53] Right. Yeah. So, clients that — excuse me. Clients that use us, generally, are able to get the situations resolved quicker and people back to work sooner. And in the long run, that results in some, you know, significant results that really can save not only financial resources but also minimizes the human effects of this type of crisis when it happens to someone at work.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:05:25] Absolutely. And so, you are presenting on Wednesday on the human impact or the human cost, the true cost to human impact of workplace violence. Can you talk a little bit about that presentation that you’re giving here at RIMS?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:05:41] Yes, it’s on Wednesday at noon at the Thought Leader Theater on the exhibit hall. And what I want to talk about is the true impact of workplace violence on individuals at the workplace, and how it’s not just the individuals that are affected at the workplace but their families, coworkers that maybe were not there at the time. There’s a range of individuals, a number of people that get affected beyond the victim.

And when you hear about this workplace violence issues on the news or in the media, typically you think about the victim, right? The victim was, you know, threatened, assaulted or even killed, unfortunately. But there’s a range of other — there’s other victims that go along with that particular one that are almost unnoticed or unmentioned that also suffer. So, I think there’s a bit of a discussion to be had there, along with also talking about how to mitigate it, how to plan for it and how to prepare for it because the better an organization prepares for it, obviously, the less likely it is that it will happen. And if it does happen, then the impact can be minimized significantly.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:04] Yeah, it’s almost like a ripple effect, right?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:07:06] Correct.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:06] You got your kind of point of impact where you have your most concentrated, impacted employees. But there’s always more people that are involved that have to be taken into consideration. And then, not only that, how do you support them to make sure that they get the help that they need, you know, being that they might be in more of like a tertiary kind of layer of of impact and could get forgotten.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:07:28] That’s very true. Very true.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:29] Yeah.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:07:30] And, you know, it all starts with behavioral health, because when somebody goes to trauma and crisis, it’s really important to get them back to some level of normalcy. You never-

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:39] Yeah.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:07:39] You know, it never goes away. You know, the thoughts of being in a workplace violence issue or witnessing a workplace violence homicide or something like that, it really never leaves you. But with behavioral health and psychological support, you can really have people come back to some level of normal and continue their daily lives without it affecting them to a large extent.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:08:01] Yeah. And what I’ve heard, and I don’t know if you can kind of comment on that, I know that there might be others within R3 that can as well, that there’s a different type of — you need somebody specialized in these types of incidents that it’s a different type of coaching or consulting that they’re giving to individuals impacted as opposed to someone that maybe just has like a depression or anxiety. It’s a different type of support, correct?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:08:29] Well, yes, that has been my experience. And I think R3 Continuum does it very, very well with the staff of counselors that are available and how quickly you can get there to provide the services. Because after you have a crisis, it’s really critical to have someone get to those individuals as quickly as possible. The sooner they can talk about how they feel and what happened, the faster they can recover. And so, it’s really critical that that happens. Yes.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:08:56] Yeah, absolutely. So, if there are three takeaways or takeaways that you want your audience to be left with after attending your session, what would those be?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:09:06] Well, one is that it’s important to prepare. And in order to prepare, you really need to do a few things, mainly to put together a workplace violence program with threat assessment teams, and just be ready for anything that comes because through that process, you can prevent or you can mitigate workplace violence going forward. So, that would be number one.

The second is that the impact of workplace violence on individuals goes far beyond that initial victim, and it really affects their families, or communities or workers. So, that would be the second takeaway. So, when you’re thinking about a workplace violence issue, it’s really important to consider who else is being affected by this. So, that would be the second takeaway.

And the third takeaway that I would like to share is that oftentimes, you know, there’s a saying that when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so, many of our clients tend to think about their world on the basis of what they do for a living. For example, they could be in manufacturing, they could be in services, they could be a medical office. And so, their worldview always focuses on that type of service or that type of product that they’re manufacturing. But in reality, when it comes to workplace violence, it kind of goes outside of that. So, you have to shift your paradigm, your thinking to consider, “Okay, I am a manufacturing company primarily, but if I have a workplace violence issue, that could be a problem. So, I’m going to think about that. I’m going to prepare for that. And I’m just going to go back and do my business because now I’m prepared,” right?

And the result of that is that, oftentimes, companies, organizations that have workplace violence issues fail to prepare for it. But when something happens, there’s no end to how much money they have to spend on it and they’re gladly spending it. So, in the long run, it’s easier, cheaper and better to prepare ahead of time than to have an issue later and make it very costly in terms of human capital and also financial capital.

So, prepare early and often, have a plan, and be ready because there’s only really two kinds of companies in this world, one that has had a workplace violence issue and that one that will have a workplace violence issue because as long as you employ people, as long as you have employees, you’re going to have those kinds of concerns. So, those would be my three recommendations.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:11:42] Wonderful. And that sounds like a great presentation. I hope the audience picks up on all those great takeaways that you’re providing to them. If somebody wanted to get a hold of you to learn a little bit more about what R3 Continuum does or a little bit more about what your role is there and the services that we provide, how can they do that?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:12:02] Well, they can get a hold of me through R3 Continuum by going to the website, and there’s a contact information in there. The other way is to just email me the Oscar,Villanueva@r3c.com.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:12:19] Wonderful. And that website’s r3c.com, correct?

Oscar Villanueva: [00:12:22] That’s correct.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:12:23] Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Oscar. It’s been great to have you on the show.

Oscar Villanueva: [00:12:26] Thank you, Jamie.

Outro: [00:12:32] Thank you for joining us on Workplace MVP. R3 Continuum is a proud sponsor of this show and is delighted to celebrate most valuable professionals who work diligently to secure safe workplaces where employees can thrive.