Marsh, the world's leading insurance broker and risk advisor, has received a 2011 Innovation Award from Business Insurance for its Global Safety Excellence Assessment (GSEA) approach and tool.

Developed by Marsh Risk Consulting's (MRC) Workforce Strategies practice, the GSEA provides risk managers with independent assessments and supporting technology to organize and analyze data related to global employee safety, product safety, and sustainability management systems. The GSEA allows organizations to efficiently gather what may be large volumes of data and administer global safety management systems, and facilitates the establishment of uniform global safety and health management audit programs.

"As safety, social responsibility, and sustainability initiatives take on greater profile within many organizations, risk and safety managers need reliable methods to verify that their operations in various countries are complying with corporate objectives," said Sandy Vietor, president of Marsh's Global Specialties. "Marsh Risk Consulting's GSEA allows organizations to provide geographically dispersed locations and suppliers with consistent safety guidelines, and to improve the quality and ease of the data collection and management process. We're proud of the GSEA's recognition as an Innovation Award recipient, which reflects Marsh's commitment to delivering superior risk management solutions to our clients."

Through the GSEA, MRC experts work with clients to understand which corporate goals need to be evaluated on a global basis. After key criteria are agreed on by the client and MRC, Marsh provides an independent safety and health assessment that incorporates key OHSAS 18000 requirements and allows for recognition of country-specific differences in implementation of safety programs. The software supporting the GSEA allows MRC to easily create new or customize existing audits or assessments, or provide the necessary tools to allow risk managers to perform their own evaluations. Software can be licensed by risk managers to produce on-demand reports or utilize planning and task assignment functionality.

Once an assessment is completed, the GSEA providers risk managers with guidance to ensure compliance of an organization's various locations. As a result, site visits are more efficient, as global operations know what will be measured and how it will be evaluated, and can prioritize efforts and prepare required documentation. This ability to self-evaluate supports continuous improvement efforts between assessment cycles.

In its second year, the Business Insurance Innovation Awards recognize leadership, inventiveness and ingenuity in products and services designed for professional risk managers. An independent panel of judges, comprising active risk management professionals, judged the entries on the basis of originality, relevance to risk managers, effectiveness, presentation, and results achieved.

"Business Insurance is pleased to recognize innovation by companies and organizations providing services to risk managers," said Gavin Souter, editor of Business Insurance. "As business processes become more complicated, risk managers are facing a challenging array of problems and exposures that require the type of innovative solutions our award program honors."