Risk Management Reimagined: A Practical Guide to Cost Control and Safety Excellence - Paperback

by Sheila Mallett-Smith (Editor), Jiles II Smith (Author)

Most organizations don't think much about risk management until something goes wrong.
Risk Management Reimagined challenges that reactive mindset and offers a smarter, more human way forward.
In this practical and insightful guide, veteran risk professional Jiles Smith II shows how effective risk management is not built on paperwork alone, but on leadership, culture, governance, and sound decision-making. Drawing on decades of real-world experience across public agencies, schools, cities, and corporations, Smith demonstrates how culture and organizational behavior quietly drive losses, costs, and safety outcomes.
This book presents the first published release of the Safety Cultural Competence Continuum (SC3), a practical, field-tested model for assessing safety culture and charting a clear path forward. Using usable frameworks, real examples, and decision-ready KPIs, readers learn how to reduce losses, control the total cost of risk, and build durable safety excellence.
Organized across the full risk lifecycle, the book moves from foundational assessments and cost control fundamentals to fraud, waste, and abuse prevention, workforce engagement, data and technology, and implementation strategies that actually stick.
Inside, you'll learn how to:

• Use risk and safety assessments as decision tools-not just forms
• Align cost control with safety instead of treating them as competing goals
• Identify and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse before they drain resources
• Build a safety culture where people speak up and follow through
• Use data, technology, and behavioral insights without losing the human element
• Translate risk information into leadership-level strategy and action

The result is a clear, field-tested approach to protecting people, preserving public trust, and delivering measurable financial value.
Whether you are a risk manager, administrator, safety professional, HR leader, or executive, Risk Management Reimagined provides tools you can use immediately and a perspective that can transform how your organization thinks about risk.
Because resilience doesn't start with policies.
It starts with people.